# Pirsch Analytics

> Pirsch Analytics is a cookie-free, GDPR-compliant web analytics service built and hosted in Germany by the two-person team at Emvi Software, offering real-time traffic, events, conversion goals, funnels, session analysis, A/B testing, and a built-in URL shortener across up to unlimited websites, with a developer-facing REST API and SDKs and extensive white-labelling on its $12 per month plan.

- Category: GTM Analytics (https://saastracker.org/categories/gtm-analytics)
- Website: https://pirsch.io
- Starting price: $6 per month (Standard at 10,000 monthly pageviews)
- Free plan: None; the trial is the evaluation path and there is no free hosted tier.
- Free trial: 30 days, no credit card required
- Founded: 2019, HQ: Rheda-Wiedenbruck, Germany, Ownership: Bootstrapped; privately held as Emvi Software GmbH with no outside investors
- Profile last reviewed: 2026-08-22
- Canonical profile: https://saastracker.org/products/pirsch

## Overview

Pirsch started the way a lot of good developer tools do: Marvin Blum rebuilt his personal website, wanted to know how his blog posts performed, refused to install Google Analytics, and wrote an open-source Go library to count pageviews instead. That library grew into a hosted product run by Emvi Software GmbH in Rheda-Wiedenbruck, Germany, alongside co-founder Daniel Schramm, who handles design and interface. The company is fully bootstrapped by two people and now handles hundreds of millions of pageviews a month across thousands of sites.

The privacy architecture is the same category bet as Plausible, Fathom, and Simple Analytics: no cookies, no persistent identifiers, no personal data, therefore no analytics consent banner and no international transfer questions. Being German rather than merely EU-hosted matters to a certain kind of buyer, because German data protection authorities have been among the most aggressive on Google Analytics, and a supplier subject to the same jurisdiction as your DPO is an easy conversation.

Where Pirsch pulls ahead of its neighbours is what it puts in the cheap tier. The $12 Plus plan includes unlimited websites, funnels, A/B testing and segmentation, teams, custom domains, custom themes, and extensive white labelling. That combination is a small agency's shopping list, and getting it for twelve dollars rather than a per-client subscription is a genuinely different economic proposition from most competitors, which reserve funnels and multi-site allowances for higher plans.

The developer surface is the other differentiator. Because the product grew out of a Go library, there are real SDKs and a documented REST API rather than a bolted-on stats endpoint, which makes server-side tracking, backend event submission, and custom dashboards practical rather than theoretical. There is no free tier, only a 30-day trial without a card, and on-premise installation and SAML SSO sit on a quote-only Enterprise plan.

## How it works

1. You add the Pirsch script to your site, or integrate server-side with one of the SDKs, and traffic appears in real time. Because the counting method uses no cookies and no persistent identifier, the script can fire before any consent decision, which is the mechanical basis for both the GDPR argument and the fuller counts relative to Google Analytics.

2. The dashboard covers visitors, sessions, pageviews, entry and exit pages, referrers, UTM parameters, devices, browsers, operating systems, countries, and screen sizes, with session analysis for understanding how visits move through a site in aggregate rather than by identified user.

3. Conversions are handled by events and goals. Events can be sent from the page or from your backend through the API, and goals turn them into conversion rates by source, page, and campaign. The Plus plan composes goals into multi-step funnels and adds segmentation so you can ask which channel converts rather than only how many conversions happened.

4. For agencies and product teams, the Plus plan adds A/B testing, teams, custom domains for serving the script first-party, custom themes, and white labelling so the dashboard can be handed to a client under your own brand. A built-in URL shortener with campaign tracking closes the loop on link-level attribution without a second subscription to a link tool.

## Best for

German and European site owners who want a cookie-free analytics supplier inside their own jurisdiction, developers who want real SDKs and a REST API rather than a stats endpoint, and small agencies who need unlimited white-labelled client dashboards without paying per client.

## Not the right fit for

- Anyone hoping for a free plan; Pirsch has a 30-day trial and then charges, unlike Simple Analytics, Umami Cloud, PostHog, or GA4, all of which will host a small site for nothing.
- Performance marketers who need Google Ads conversion import and remarketing audiences; the cookie-free design makes that structurally impossible and GA4 has to stay.
- B2B teams needing CRM-joined pipeline attribution; there is no HubSpot or Salesforce revenue model here, which is Dreamdata and HockeyStack territory.
- Product teams wanting session replay, retention cohorts, or feature flags; Pirsch measures websites and stops there.
- Enterprises that want SAML SSO, on-premise deployment, and a named account team on a published price; those sit behind a quote-only tier at a company run by two people.

## Features

### Traffic and session reporting

The everyday numbers, updating live, without a report builder.

- **Real-time dashboard**: Visitors, sessions, pageviews, bounce rate, and time on page updating live, with entry and exit page reporting rather than only top pages.
- **Session analysis**: Aggregate views of how visits move through the site, giving path insight without storing an identified visitor journey.
- **Referrer and UTM reporting**: Full source, medium, campaign, term, and content breakdowns so newsletters, ad sets, and social pushes can be judged separately.
- **Technology and geography breakdowns**: Devices, browsers, operating systems, screen sizes, countries, and regions, all filterable in place.
- **Bot and spam filtering**: Crawlers and referrer spam are excluded from counts automatically rather than requiring manual filter rules.
- **Google Search Console integration**: Organic search queries and impressions surface inside the Pirsch dashboard alongside referral and campaign traffic.

### Conversions, funnels, and testing

Where the $12 plan stops being a pageview counter.

- **Custom events**: Events with custom metadata sent from the page or from your backend through the API, which is how server-side conversions get measured without a browser tag.
- **Conversion goals**: Events and pageviews promoted to goals with conversion rates attributed to sources, pages, and campaigns.
- **Funnels**: Multi-step conversion funnels built from goals and events showing drop-off between steps, included on the $12 Plus plan rather than reserved for a business tier.
- **A/B testing**: Built-in split testing on the Plus plan, which is unusual at this price and removes the need for a separate experimentation subscription on a marketing site.
- **Segmentation**: Saved segments for slicing reports by source, campaign, geography, or event property without rebuilding filters each time.
- **URL shortener with campaign tracking**: A built-in link shortener, upgraded on the Plus plan, so campaign links are created and measured in the same tool instead of a separate link service.

### Privacy and compliance architecture

German jurisdiction plus cookie-free counting, which is the shortest path through a European privacy review.

- **Cookie-free counting**: No cookies and no persistent identifiers are set, which removes the ePrivacy consent trigger for analytics and is the reason no banner is needed for Pirsch itself.
- **No personal data collection**: Reporting is aggregate, with no visitor profiles, no cross-site tracking, and nothing to hand over on a subject access request.
- **German hosting and jurisdiction**: Data is processed and stored in Germany by a German GmbH, which is a materially easier position to defend to a German or Austrian data protection authority than any US-hosted alternative.
- **Data processing agreement**: A GDPR data processing agreement is available as standard rather than as an enterprise concession.
- **First-party custom domains**: The tracking script can be served from your own domain on the Plus plan, keeping measurement first-party and resistant to blocklists.

### Agency and white-label features

The reason a small agency reads this page twice.

- **Unlimited websites**: 50 sites on the $6 Standard plan and unlimited on the $12 Plus plan, so an agency's client count never becomes a pricing conversation.
- **Extensive white labelling**: The dashboard can be presented under your own brand on the Plus plan, which competitors typically either do not offer or sell as a separate add-on.
- **Custom themes**: Visual customisation of the dashboard so client-facing reporting matches the agency's own design.
- **Teams and roles**: Multiple team members with access control on the Plus plan, included rather than charged per seat.
- **Shared and public dashboards**: Dashboards can be shared with clients and stakeholders without creating an account for each of them.

### Developer surface and data access

The part that betrays the product's origins as a Go library.

- **REST API**: A documented API for reading statistics and submitting events, designed as a first-class interface rather than an afterthought bolted onto a dashboard.
- **Official SDKs**: SDKs across common languages, with the Go implementation being the original open-source library the whole product grew from.
- **Server-side tracking**: Events can be submitted from your backend, which sidesteps ad blockers entirely and captures conversions that never touch a browser.
- **Google Analytics import**: Historical GA data can be imported so switching does not orphan your trendlines, which several privacy-first competitors do not offer.
- **CSV export**: Dashboard views export to CSV; raw data access is reserved for the Enterprise tier.
- **Self-hosting on Enterprise**: On-premise installation and managed cloud setup exist but only on the quote-only Enterprise plan, so this is not a self-serve self-hosting option the way Umami is.

## Use cases

- **German SaaS company under a strict DPO**: Legal has flagged Google Analytics after repeated regulator decisions against US transfers, and the marketing team still needs channel reporting. Outcome: A German supplier, German hosting, cookie-free counting, and a standard data processing agreement close the review quickly, and the GA import means historical trendlines survive the switch.
- **Small agency with fifteen client websites**: Every client wants a branded monthly traffic report and paying per client for analytics destroys the margin on small retainers. Outcome: The $12 Plus plan covers unlimited websites with white labelling, custom themes, and teams, so the analytics line across the whole book of business is twelve dollars a month rather than fifteen subscriptions.
- **Developer running a product marketing site**: Wants conversion events fired from the backend where ad blockers cannot reach, and a stats API to feed an internal dashboard. Outcome: Server-side event submission through the SDK captures signups reliably, and the REST API drives the internal dashboard without scraping a UI or waiting on a vendor export.
- **Content site at 100,000 monthly pageviews**: Needs referrer, campaign, and goal reporting on a predictable budget, without a consent banner suppressing measurement on landing pages. Outcome: The pageview slider prices the plan against actual traffic rather than a flat unlimited fee, funnels are included at the $12 tier, and no analytics banner is required, so measured traffic is higher than GA4 reported for the same site.

## Pricing

Subscription tiered by feature set (Standard, Plus, Enterprise) with the price scaling by monthly pageview volume from a 10,000-pageview base; no free plan, 30-day trial.

- **Standard**: From $6 per month at 10k pageviews; scales with traffic. 50 websites; Events and conversion goals; Session analysis; Built-in URL shortener; REST API and SDKs; Google Analytics import.
- **Plus**: From $12 per month at 10k pageviews; scales with traffic. Unlimited websites; Funnels; A/B testing and segmentation; Teams and custom domains; Custom themes and extensive white labelling; Priority support. Labelled best value by the vendor and correctly so; funnels, white labelling, and unlimited sites for $12 is the cheapest agency-capable bundle in this category.
- **Enterprise**: Custom quoted. Managed cloud or on-premise installation; SAML single sign-on; Raw data access; Personal onboarding and user training; Custom features and dedicated support.

Billing notes:

- Published prices are the entry point at 10,000 monthly pageviews; the real figure comes off a traffic slider, so model your actual volume rather than assuming $12 is the final number.
- Annual billing is discounted relative to monthly; EUR and USD are both supported, with SEPA direct debit available for euro payments alongside card and PayPal.
- There is no free tier at all, which makes Pirsch more expensive than Simple Analytics, Umami Cloud, or GA4 for a site that generates no revenue yet.
- Self-hosting is an Enterprise-only entitlement rather than an open-source option, so do not confuse Pirsch's on-premise offer with Umami's or Plausible's free self-hosted editions.

Value assessment: The $12 Plus plan is the best price-to-capability ratio in privacy-first web analytics for anyone managing more than one site. Unlimited websites, funnels, A/B testing, teams, custom domains, and white labelling at that price undercuts Plausible Business and Fathom on the agency use case by a wide margin, and the REST API and SDKs give developers something the others do not. The costs are the absence of a free tier, which makes it a poor fit for hobby projects, and the pageview slider, which means a high-traffic publisher should check the real number before quoting the headline. Judged as an agency or developer tool, it is underpriced; judged as a first analytics install for a site with no revenue, it is the wrong shape.

## Strengths

- Funnels, A/B testing, teams, custom domains, and white labelling are all included at $12 a month, which competitors reserve for tiers costing several times that.
- Unlimited websites on the Plus plan makes agency economics work without a per-client subscription.
- German company, German hosting, and a standard data processing agreement give the strongest jurisdictional answer available to a German or Austrian privacy review.
- A genuine developer surface: documented REST API, official SDKs, and server-side event submission, all descended from the original open-source Go library.
- Google Analytics import preserves historical trendlines through the switch, which several privacy-first competitors simply do not offer.
- The built-in URL shortener with campaign tracking removes a separate subscription for anyone running link-level campaign attribution.
- Bootstrapped by two people with no investors and a real customer base at scale, so there is no acquisition or pivot pressure.

## Limitations

- No free plan at all, only a 30-day trial, which puts it behind Simple Analytics, Umami Cloud, and GA4 for anyone starting from zero.
- Pageview-based pricing means the $6 and $12 headline figures apply at 10,000 monthly pageviews and rise from there; high-traffic sites need to model the slider.
- Self-hosting is gated to a quote-only Enterprise tier rather than being an open-source option, unlike Umami, Plausible, or Matomo.
- No user-level analytics, replay, retention cohorts, or product analytics by design, which is the permanent cost of the cookie-free architecture.
- No CRM integration or pipeline attribution, so B2B revenue questions need a different tool entirely.
- A two-person company means email support, an indie-pace roadmap, and no staffed account management below the Enterprise tier.
- Smaller ecosystem than Plausible or Fathom: fewer third-party integrations, fewer community plugins, and less written about it when something goes wrong.

## Comparisons

- **Pirsch Analytics vs Plausible Analytics**: Plausible is open source with an inspectable AGPL codebase, a free self-hostable Community Edition, and a larger ecosystem; Pirsch is closed source but cheaper, ships funnels and A/B testing at $12 rather than $19-plus, offers unlimited websites, and adds real SDKs and white labelling. Buyers who care about auditable code and free self-hosting pick Plausible; agencies and developers optimising for capability per dollar pick Pirsch.
- **Pirsch Analytics vs Fathom Analytics**: Fathom bundles unlimited sites and forever data retention on every plan with a famously simple interface and Canadian ownership with EU isolation options. Pirsch is German end to end, cheaper at entry, and considerably deeper on funnels, A/B testing, white labelling, and the API. Choose Fathom for permanent history and minimalism; choose Pirsch if you want agency features and a developer surface at a lower price.
- **Pirsch Analytics vs Simple Analytics**: Simple Analytics has a free forever plan with unlimited pageviews and flat €20 pricing to 2.5 million pageviews, but charges €20 per extra seat and offers no funnels or white labelling. Pirsch has no free tier but includes teams, funnels, unlimited sites, and white labelling at $12. Solo founders who want to start at zero pick Simple Analytics; multi-site operators and agencies pick Pirsch.
- **Pirsch Analytics vs Umami**: Umami is MIT-licensed and free to self-host forever, with funnels, retention, journeys, and revenue reporting in the open-source build, and a cloud free tier at 100,000 events a month. Pirsch charges from day one but gives you a managed German service, A/B testing, white labelling, and SDKs without running a Postgres instance. Technical teams who want to own the database pick Umami; teams who want the features without the operations pick Pirsch.
- **Pirsch Analytics vs Counter**: Counter is a pay-what-you-want, AGPL, solo-developer project with a one-kilobyte script and almost no features beyond daily visitors, referrers, and countries. Pirsch is a real business with SLAs, funnels, testing, and an API. Counter is fine for a personal blog; Pirsch is what you buy when a client is paying you to explain the numbers.

## Implementation

- Setup time: Minutes for the script or an SDK integration; funnels, goals, and A/B tests take an hour of deliberate configuration, and serving the script from a custom domain adds a short DNS task.
- Learning curve: Low for the dashboard, moderate for the API and server-side tracking, which is the piece that rewards a developer's involvement rather than a marketer's.
- Onboarding: Entirely self-serve on Standard and Plus with a 30-day trial and no card required. Personal onboarding and training exist only on the Enterprise tier.
- Migration: The Google Analytics import brings historical data across so year-over-year reporting survives the change. Expect counts to differ from GA4's, because cookie-free measurement with no consent banner captures visitors GA4 loses while measuring returning visitors differently. Leaving later is clean via CSV export and the REST API, though full raw data access is an Enterprise entitlement.

## Platform, API & security

- Platforms: Web app (German-hosted cloud), JavaScript tracking script, Server-side SDKs, On-premise installation (Enterprise only)
- API: Documented REST API for reading statistics and submitting events, plus official SDKs across common languages, descended from the original open-source Go library.
- Compliance: GDPR, ePrivacy and TTDSG, CCPA, Data processing agreement available as standard
- Data residency: All data processed and stored in Germany by Emvi Software GmbH, a German limited company.
- SSO: SAML single sign-on on the Enterprise tier only.
- Security notes: No cookies and no persistent identifiers are set, so there is no personal data profile at rest. The tracking script can be served from the customer's own domain to keep measurement first-party, and subscription revenue is the company's only revenue with no advertising relationships.

## Support

- Channels: Email support, Priority support on Plus, Dedicated support on Enterprise
- Documentation: Developer-oriented documentation covering the script, the REST API, SDKs, server-side tracking, funnels, and the Google Analytics import.
- Community: Small; the original open-source Go library on GitHub is the main community surface rather than a user forum.

## Company

- Founded: 2019
- Founders: Marvin Blum, Daniel Schramm
- Headquarters: Rheda-Wiedenbruck, Germany
- Ownership: Bootstrapped; privately held as Emvi Software GmbH with no outside investors
- Employees: Two; fully bootstrapped by its founders
- Funding: None; self-funded and operating profitably on subscription revenue.

Timeline:

- 2019: Marvin Blum writes an open-source Go library to count pageviews on his own site after refusing to install Google Analytics; Daniel Schramm joins to handle design and interface.
- 2020: The library becomes a hosted product under Emvi Software GmbH in Rheda-Wiedenbruck, Germany.
- 2023: Universal Analytics shuts down and German privacy scrutiny of Google Analytics intensifies, driving a wave of German businesses toward domestically hosted alternatives.
- 2025: The Plus plan consolidates funnels, A/B testing, segmentation, teams, custom domains, and white labelling at a single low price point aimed squarely at agencies.
- 2026: Two founders serve more than 500 customers across thousands of sites, handling hundreds of millions of pageviews a month, still with no outside investment.

## Integrations

Google Search Console, Google Analytics (historical data import), WordPress and common CMS platforms via the tracking script, REST API and official SDKs for custom integrations, Server-side event submission from any backend, Built-in URL shortener for campaign links

## FAQ

### What is Pirsch Analytics?

Pirsch is a cookie-free web analytics service built and hosted in Germany by Emvi Software GmbH, a two-person bootstrapped company. It reports traffic, sessions, referrers, campaigns, events, goals, and funnels in real time without cookies or personal data, and adds A/B testing, white labelling, and a REST API with SDKs on its Plus plan.

### How much does Pirsch cost?

Standard starts at $6 a month and Plus at $12 a month, both quoted at 10,000 monthly pageviews with the price scaling up a traffic slider from there. Enterprise is quoted and adds SAML SSO, on-premise installation, and raw data access. There is a 30-day trial with no credit card required and no free plan.

### Do I need a cookie consent banner with Pirsch?

Not for Pirsch itself. It sets no cookies and no persistent identifiers and collects no personal data, so the GDPR and ePrivacy triggers that require an analytics consent banner are not met. Other components on your site, such as advertising pixels or embedded media, may still require a banner independently.

### Why does German hosting matter?

Because German and Austrian data protection authorities have been among the most aggressive in Europe on Google Analytics and international data transfers. A supplier that is a German GmbH processing data in Germany removes the transfer question entirely rather than answering it with contractual clauses, which is a much shorter conversation with a German DPO.

### Is Pirsch good for agencies?

It is the strongest agency proposition in this category at the price. The $12 Plus plan includes unlimited websites, teams, custom domains, custom themes, and extensive white labelling, so you can hand every client a branded dashboard without paying per client. Most competitors either cap site counts or charge per site.

### Does Pirsch have funnels and A/B testing?

Yes, both on the $12 Plus plan. Funnels are multi-step conversion paths built from goals and events showing drop-off between steps, and A/B testing is built in, which is unusual at this price and removes the need for a separate experimentation tool on a marketing site.

### Can I self-host Pirsch?

Only under an Enterprise contract. On-premise installation and managed cloud setup are quote-only entitlements, not an open-source option. If free self-hosting is the requirement, Umami (MIT), Plausible Community Edition (AGPL), or Matomo are the products to look at instead.

### Can I bring my Google Analytics history across?

Yes. Pirsch offers a Google Analytics import so historical data comes with you and year-over-year trendlines survive the switch. Expect the numbers to differ going forward, because cookie-free measurement with no consent banner sees visitors GA4 loses while counting returning visitors differently.

### Does Pirsch do attribution or CRM reporting?

Only at the campaign level. UTM parameters, referrers, goals, and funnels tell you which channel produced conversions on the site. There is no CRM connection, no multi-touch attribution model comparison, and no pipeline reporting, so B2B revenue attribution belongs to Dreamdata, HockeyStack, or Attribution instead.

### Who is behind Pirsch and is it a stable supplier?

It was founded in 2019 by Marvin Blum and Daniel Schramm and is run as Emvi Software GmbH in Rheda-Wiedenbruck, Germany. The company is fully bootstrapped with no investors and now serves more than 500 customers across thousands of sites handling hundreds of millions of monthly pageviews. That means no acquisition pressure, and also that support is two people and the roadmap moves at their pace.

## Editorial verdict

Pirsch is the best-value tool in privacy-first web analytics for anyone who runs more than one website or writes code. Twelve dollars a month buys unlimited sites, funnels, A/B testing, teams, custom domains, and white labelling, which is a combination the better-known names in this category charge several times more for or do not offer at all, and the REST API and SDKs make server-side tracking a real option rather than a footnote. The German company and German hosting is the cleanest jurisdictional answer on the market for a European privacy review. Two honest caveats: there is no free tier, so a pre-revenue project is better served elsewhere, and self-hosting is an Enterprise contract rather than an open-source right. If you are an agency or a developer, this is the first thing to try in the category.

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Source: SaaSTracker (https://saastracker.org), an independent editorial project. This profile is compiled from public information, carries no peer reviews or paid placement, and was last reviewed 2026-08-22. Awards are judged on published criteria: https://saastracker.org/methodology