Plausible vs. Umami: Choosing a Self-Hosted Analytics Platform

Privacy-focused web analytics has two clear leaders: Plausible and Umami. Both are open source, both avoid cookies and fingerprinting, both are GDPR-compliant by default, and both run in Docker. Choosing between them comes down to your priorities around simplicity, features, and hosting requirements.

Photo by Random Thinking on Unsplash

Overview

Plausible Analytics started as a commercial SaaS product that later open-sourced its codebase. Its design philosophy is radical simplicity — one clean dashboard with the metrics that matter, nothing else.

Umami was built as an open-source self-hosted alternative from the start. It's more feature-rich and supports multiple sites in a single instance with individual user accounts.

Plausible: Simplicity-First Design

Plausible's dashboard shows you everything on one page without pagination:

• Unique visitors, total pageviews, bounce rate, visit duration
• Top pages, referrers, countries, browsers, OS, and device types
• Goals/conversions with event tracking
• 30-day traffic trend

No segmentation, no funnel analysis, no heatmaps. Just the numbers that answer "how many people visited, from where, on what pages" — quickly.

Plausible strengths:

• Dashboard is genuinely beautiful and fast
• The simplicity is intentional — less decision fatigue
• Goal and event tracking works without tag manager
• Script is ~1KB (much smaller than Google Analytics)
• Excellent documentation

Plausible limitations:

• Multi-site is awkward with the self-hosted version (each site is separate)
• No user accounts for team access (single admin on self-hosted)
• Less granular data than more complex tools

Umami: More Feature-Rich

Umami offers a slightly more complex dashboard with:

• Pageviews, unique visitors, bounce rate, average visit time
• Per-page analytics
• Real-time visitor count
• Custom event tracking
• Funnel analysis (in newer versions)
• Multiple websites in one instance
• Multiple user accounts with role-based access

Umami strengths:

• Multi-site management from one dashboard
• Multiple user accounts (good for agencies or teams)
• More detailed session data
• Active development with new features

Umami limitations:

• Dashboard is less polished than Plausible's
• Setup requires more configuration for multi-site
• The version 2 rewrite (TypeScript/Prisma) is a significant change from v1

Installation Comparison

Plausible (Docker Compose):

services:
  plausible_db:
    image: postgres:16-alpine
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - db-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres

  plausible_events_db:
    image: clickhouse/clickhouse-server:23.3
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - event-data:/var/lib/clickhouse

  plausible:
    image: ghcr.io/plausible/community-edition:v2
    restart: always
    command: sh -c "/entrypoint.sh db createdb && /entrypoint.sh db migrate && /entrypoint.sh run"
    depends_on:
      - plausible_db
      - plausible_events_db
    ports:
      - 8000:8000
    environment:
      BASE_URL: https://plausible.yourdomain.com
      SECRET_KEY_BASE: your-64-char-random-string
      DATABASE_URL: postgres://postgres:postgres@plausible_db:5432/plausible_db
      CLICKHOUSE_DATABASE_URL: http://plausible_events_db:8123/plausible_events_db

volumes:
  db-data:
  event-data:

Plausible requires two databases: PostgreSQL for user/site data and ClickHouse for analytics events. This is the main infrastructure complexity.

Umami (Docker Compose):

services:
  umami-db:
    image: postgres:15-alpine
    restart: always
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: umami
      POSTGRES_USER: umami
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: umamipassword
    volumes:
      - umami-db:/var/lib/postgresql/data

  umami:
    image: ghcr.io/umami-software/umami:postgresql-latest
    restart: always
    depends_on:
      - umami-db
    ports:
      - 3000:3000
    environment:
      DATABASE_URL: postgresql://umami:umamipassword@umami-db:5432/umami
      DATABASE_TYPE: postgresql
      APP_SECRET: your-random-secret

volumes:
  umami-db:

Umami requires only one database (PostgreSQL or MySQL). Simpler infrastructure than Plausible.

Tracking Script Size

Script size affects page load time:

Both are dramatically lighter than GA4. For performance-conscious sites, both are fine.

Data Accuracy

Plausible and Umami both use a first-party cookie-free approach. They're not blocked by most ad blockers by default (since they self-host on your domain). However, Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) and some privacy extensions may still block or limit tracking.

For accurate pageview counts (not relying on JavaScript), both support optional server-side event tracking.

Dashboard Comparison

Plausible shows everything on one screen — time range selector at the top, then metrics, then geographic/device/referrer data arranged in a clean grid. No loading between sections. The UX is genuinely delightful.

Umami has separate pages for different metrics and a more traditional analytics dashboard layout. More information depth but requires more navigation.

Which to Choose

Choose Plausible if:

• You want the cleaner, faster dashboard experience
• You're tracking 1-3 sites for personal use
• Simplicity matters more than feature depth
• You don't need multi-user access
• The ClickHouse dependency doesn't bother you (it's straightforward)

Choose Umami if:

• You manage analytics for multiple sites or clients
• You need multiple user accounts
• You prefer one database over two
• You want more feature development velocity
• MySQL support matters (Plausible is PostgreSQL-only)

Both are excellent tools. Plausible is aesthetically superior and simpler. Umami is more practical for multi-site or multi-user setups. Either is a significant upgrade over Google Analytics for privacy and simplicity.

Plausible: plausible/analytics Umami: umami-software/umami