vsPlausible Analytics

A Plausible alternative for when pageviews stop being enough

Plausible tells you how many people came and where from. It can't tell you whether the people who signed up in March are still around in May, because it never knows who anyone is. OpenPanel keeps the cookieless web dashboard and adds retention, cohorts and user profiles on the same events.

Carl-Gerhard LindesvärdUpdated Oct 18, 2026Prices checked Oct 18, 2026

Pick Plausible for traffic stats on a content site. Pick OpenPanel when you also need to know what logged-in users do over time.

Pick OpenPanel if

SaaS and apps that need retention by signup cohort
Teams that want funnels and user flows without paying for a Business tier
Products with logged-in users you need to look up one by one
Self-hosters who want funnels and retention, not a reduced community edition

Pick Plausible Analytics if

Blogs, docs and marketing sites that only need traffic numbers
Teams that want the smallest possible script (under 1 KB)
Anyone who needs to import years of Google Analytics history
People who value a dashboard nobody has to learn

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The differences that decide it

Most rows in a feature table match. These are the ones that don't.

Topic	OpenPanel	Plausible Analytics
Who it knows about	Anonymous visitors, plus identified users after you call identify()	Anonymous visitors only, by design
Retention and cohorts	Retention tables, curves and saved cohorts on every plan	Not available
Funnels	Steps from any event, a conversion window, breakdown by any property	2 to 8 steps, Business plan only
Self-hosted version	Full product; releases follow Cloud by a month or two	Community Edition: twice a year, no funnels, user journeys or revenue goals
Tracking script	About 3 KB gzipped	Under 1 KB

Where Plausible is better

For traffic stats on a content site, these are good reasons to stay.

A smaller script

Plausible's tracker is under 1 KB. OpenPanel's is about 3 KB gzipped. Both are small next to most analytics tools, but Plausible is smaller.

A dashboard nobody has to learn

Plausible puts everything for a site on one page. OpenPanel has more reports, which also means more to learn.

Google Analytics import

Plausible can import your Google Analytics history. OpenPanel can't, so a switch from GA starts with an empty chart.

Lower prices for traffic stats only

If you only need pageviews and sources, Plausible Starter is cheaper from 1M pageviews up: $69 against $90 at 1M, and $169 against $350 at 10M.

Pricing at the same traffic

Plausible bills by monthly pageviews and puts funnels, user journeys and custom properties on Business. OpenPanel bills by events with every feature on every tier; one pageview is one event, and custom events count too. Plausible prices from plausible.io, October 18, 2026, monthly billing.

Monthly volume	OpenPanel	Plausible Analytics
10k pageviews	$5	$9 Starter, $14 Growth, $19 Business
100k pageviews	$20	$19 Starter, $29 Growth, $39 Business
1M pageviews	$90	$69 Starter, $104 Growth, $139 Business
10M pageviews	$350	$169 Starter, $254 Growth, $339 Business

OpenPanel

Monthly event volume, all features included

10k events: $5. 100k: $20. 1M: $90. 10M: $350. 30-day free trial, then paid; there is no free tier. Self-hosting is free with no event limit.

Plausible Analytics

Monthly pageviews, features by plan

Starter / Growth / Business at 10k pageviews: $9 / $14 / $19. 100k: $19 / $29 / $39. 1M: $69 / $104 / $139. 10M: $169 / $254 / $339. Yearly billing gives 2 months free. Funnels and user journeys need Business.

Free tier: No free tier (30-day trial)

Plausible Analytics pricing page

What Plausible does well, and where it stops

Plausible is a well-made tool. The dashboard fits on one screen, the script is under 1 KB, and nobody on your team needs training to read it. If you run a blog, a docs site or a marketing site, it does the job and you can stop reading here.

The limit is by design. Plausible counts visitors anonymously and never ties events to a person, so it can't answer questions that need a person: what share of last month's signups came back this week, which accounts use a feature, what a single user did before they churned. Its funnels (2 to 8 steps) and user journeys exist, but only on the Business plan, and they count visitors within a visit rather than following a user over weeks.

OpenPanel tracks the same pageviews and referrers without cookies, then lets you call identify() when someone logs in. From that point the same events feed retention tables, cohorts you can reuse as filters, user profiles with their full event history, and funnels you can break down by any property. You don't need a second tool for the logged-in part of your product.

Self-hosting is the other difference. Plausible Community Edition ships twice a year and leaves out funnels, user journeys and revenue goals. OpenPanel's self-hosted version is the full product, with releases arriving a month or two after Cloud.

When OpenPanel is the better fit

If none of these describe you, Plausible is probably the simpler choice.

You need retention by signup cohort

"Of the people who signed up in March, how many still use it?" needs a stable user ID. Plausible doesn't keep one; OpenPanel builds the cohort table from your signup and return events.

OpenPanel retention report with a daily retention curve and cohort table for new users

You want funnels without a Business plan

At 100k pageviews, Plausible Business costs $39 a month for funnels and custom properties. OpenPanel's 100k tier costs $20 with funnels, retention and user flows included.

OpenPanel funnel report showing conversion between steps

Support asks what a specific user did

OpenPanel user profiles list every event and session for one person, so you can answer a support ticket without guessing.

You have a mobile app as well as a website

OpenPanel has Swift, Kotlin and React Native SDKs, and app and web events land in the same project.

You self-host and want the whole product

Plausible Community Edition leaves out funnels and user journeys and updates twice a year. OpenPanel self-hosts with every feature, and releases follow Cloud by a month or two.

Technical comparison

What you install and what you run.

Feature	OpenPanel	Plausible Analytics
Tracking script	About 3 KB gzipped; session replay loads as a separate script only if you enable it	Under 1 KB
SDKs	Script tag JavaScript / Web React Next.js Vue Astro Remix Express / Node.js React Native Swift (iOS) Kotlin (Android) Python REST API	Script tag npm tracker WordPress plugin Events API Community SDKs exist for OpenPanel in PHP (Laravel), Ruby, Rust and Java.
Self-hosting stack	Docker Compose: ClickHouse, Postgres and Redis, set up by one command	Docker Compose: ClickHouse and Postgres
Self-hosted release cadence	Follows Cloud by a month or two	Community Edition, twice a year
Self-hosted support	GitHub issues and Discord	Community support only

Moving from Plausible to OpenPanel

There's no importer for Plausible data, so the usual path is to run both for a few weeks and switch once OpenPanel has enough history.

Difficulty:easy

Estimated time:An hour of setup, then a few weeks running both

Add OpenPanel next to Plausible

Install the script tag or SDK and leave Plausible running. Both are cookieless, so your consent setup doesn't change.

Rename your goals as events

plausible('Signup', { props: { plan: 'pro' } }) becomes op.track('signup', { plan: 'pro' }). Pageview goals need nothing: OpenPanel records every pageview.

Identify logged-in users

Call op.identify({ profileId }) after login. This is the step Plausible can't do, and it's what retention, cohorts and user profiles need.

Rebuild your funnels and dashboards

Recreate your Plausible funnels, then add the retention report you couldn't have before.

Remove Plausible when you have enough history

Compare a few weeks of numbers between the two dashboards, then drop the Plausible script and export anything you want to keep.

SDK Compatibility

Both track named events with a properties object, so goal calls map one to one.

Historical Data Import

OpenPanel can't import Plausible history. Export it from Plausible as CSV before you cancel, and run both tools in parallel during the switch.

Feature comparison

Plausible plan names are noted where a feature needs a specific tier. Checked against plausible.io on October 18, 2026.

Show all 26 features

Feature	OpenPanel	Plausible Analytics
Web analytics
Visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, visit duration
Referrers and UTM parameters
Country, region and city
Devices, browsers, operating systems
Realtime view
Google Search Console data
Annotations on charts
Product analytics
Custom events Plausible calls them goals
Custom properties on events		Business plan
Funnels		Business plan, 2 to 8 steps
Funnel breakdown by property Plausible funnels can be filtered by source, page, device or location
User journeys / user flows OpenPanel shows flows before, after or between events as a sankey		Business plan
Retention and cohort tables
Saved cohorts usable as filters
User profiles with event history Plausible never identifies individual users
Group (account) analytics for B2B
Revenue tracking		Business plan
Session replay	Opt-in
Reports and alerts
Custom dashboards and saved reports Plausible has one fixed dashboard per site
Shared and embedded dashboards		Growth plan and up
Email and Slack reports or alerts
Import from Google Analytics
Privacy and hosting
Cookieless by default
Cloud hosted in Germany
Open source license	AGPL-3.0 (SDKs MIT)	AGPL-3.0
Self-hosted funnels and journeys Not included in Plausible Community Edition

Frequently asked questions

Short answers, including the cases where Plausible wins.

Related resources

Explore more comparisons and guides to help you choose the right analytics tool.

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