---
title: "Lightweight alternatives to Google Analytics"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/lightweight-alternatives-to-google-analytics-swkoxaqzc
source_url: https://lwn.net/Articles/822568
type: article
source: "Ben Hoyt"
published: 2026-05-31T07:54:47.920Z
updated: 2026-05-31T09:18:22.191Z
tags: ["privacy", "google-analytics"]
reading_time: 24
upvotes: 0
comments: 0
language: en
---

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# Lightweight alternatives to Google Analytics

**[Ben Hoyt](https://daily.dev/sources/ben-hoyt)** · 24 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

A detailed comparison of two lightweight, open-source Google Analytics alternatives — GoatCounter and Plausible — with a focus on privacy, self-hosting, and ease of setup. GoatCounter is written in Go, uses a privacy-preserving session hashing approach (rotating salt every 4 hours), supports non-JavaScript tracking, and is straightforward to self-host. Plausible is built with Elixir, offers a more polished UI, and has a much smaller tracking script (781 bytes vs GA's ~18KB), but self-hosting is experimental. Both tools avoid storing personally identifiable information. The piece also covers Google's extensive passive tracking via GA and DoubleClick cookies, and briefly mentions proprietary alternatives like Simple Analytics and Fathom.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://lwn.net/Articles/822568>

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---

Tags: [#privacy](https://daily.dev/tags/privacy), [#google-analytics](https://daily.dev/tags/google-analytics)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/lightweight-alternatives-to-google-analytics-swkoxaqzc)