# Simple Analytics

> Simple Analytics is a privacy-first, cookieless web analytics tool built and hosted in the EU by a bootstrapped Dutch company, giving site owners a one-page dashboard of pageviews, events, referrers, and campaign parameters without cookies, browser storage, IP collection, or a consent banner, and positioning itself both as a Google Analytics replacement and as a parallel measurement layer that captures the visitors GA4 loses to consent denial and ad blockers.

- Category: GTM Analytics (https://saastracker.org/categories/gtm-analytics)
- Website: https://www.simpleanalytics.com
- Starting price: $0 (free forever), then €20 per month
- Free plan: Free forever with unlimited pageviews under a fair-use policy, 5 websites, 1 user, and 30 days of data history.
- Free trial: 14 days on the paid plan, no credit card required
- Founded: 2018, HQ: Amsterdam, Netherlands, Ownership: Bootstrapped; 100 percent owned by its founders with no outside investors
- Profile last reviewed: 2026-08-22
- Canonical profile: https://saastracker.org/products/simple-analytics

## Overview

Simple Analytics has the same founding logic as Plausible and Fathom, which is that Google Analytics collects far more than a website owner needs and creates a legal problem in exchange. It counts pageviews, events, referrers, and UTM parameters, shows them on a single scrolling page, and stores no cookies, no localStorage, no IP addresses, and no visitor identifiers. Everything runs on EU infrastructure under a Dutch company, so the transfer questions that dominate European GA4 reviews do not arise.

What separates it from its neighbours is the second half of the pitch. Rather than assuming you will delete GA4, Simple Analytics markets a traffic recovery argument: consent banners and ad blockers hide somewhere between 20 and 60 percent of visitors from Google's tag, and because Simple Analytics needs no consent and is less aggressively blocked, running it alongside GA4 gives you a fuller count of what is actually happening. That is a more realistic sales motion for a business that cannot switch off its Google Ads measurement, and it is the reason the tool often appears as a second script rather than a replacement one.

The commercial structure is unusually friendly at the bottom. There is a genuinely free forever plan with unlimited pageviews under a fair-use policy, five websites, one user, and 30 days of history, which is more generous on volume than any competitor's free offer and more restrictive on history than any of them. The paid self-serve plan is €20 a month at up to 2.5 million pageviews, with additional users at €20 each, and an Enterprise tier adds raw data access, SSO, SOC 2, and the managed traffic recovery setup.

The company is small and self-funded: founded in 2018 by Adriaan van Rossum in the Netherlands, later joined by co-owner Iron Brands, with no investors. That means no acquisition drama and no pivot risk of the venture-backed kind, and also a roadmap that will never chase enterprise checklists. For a small business the relevant fact is that the free tier is real and the paid tier is one flat price rather than a slider you have to model.

## How it works

1. You add a lightweight script to your site, install the WordPress plugin, or deploy the tag through Google Tag Manager. Because the script sets no cookies and writes nothing to browser storage, it can fire before any consent decision, which is the mechanical reason it sees traffic GA4 does not.

2. Visitors are counted without IP storage or persistent identifiers. Country-level location is derived and then discarded rather than kept as an IP address, and there is no cross-site or cross-device identity graph, so the tool cannot build visitor profiles even if asked. That constraint is the product, not a shortcoming of it.

3. Events and goals cover the conversion side: button clicks, signups, downloads, and custom actions sent from the page or from your own backend. Referrers and UTM parameters break traffic down by source, medium, and campaign, which is enough to judge whether a newsletter, an ad set, or a Reddit thread produced the visits.

4. Data leaves the tool through a Stats API for aggregates and an Export API for raw rows, in JSON or CSV, plus native connections to Looker Studio and Power BI for anyone who reports in a BI tool. The dashboard itself can be made public or shared, and an in-product AI assistant answers questions about the numbers in plain language rather than requiring you to build a report.

## Best for

European site owners, bootstrapped SaaS companies, and privacy-conscious marketing teams who want a readable cookieless dashboard with no consent banner, plus GA4 users who want a parallel measurement layer that captures the visitors their banner and ad blockers are hiding.

## Not the right fit for

- Performance marketers who need conversion import and remarketing audiences in Google Ads; Simple Analytics refuses the cross-site tracking that makes those features possible, so GA4 has to stay installed.
- Product teams wanting retention cohorts, session replay, feature flags, or user-level funnels; this measures websites, and PostHog or Usermaven own that job.
- B2B companies that need pipeline attribution against a CRM; there is no HubSpot or Salesforce revenue joining here, which is what Dreamdata and HockeyStack are for.
- Anyone who needs more than 30 days of history without paying; the free plan is generous on pageviews and stingy on retention, which is the opposite tradeoff to most free tiers.
- Buyers who want SSO, SOC 2 attestation in hand, and contractual SLAs on a self-serve plan; those sit behind a demo-gated Enterprise tier at a company with a small team.

## Features

### The dashboard

One page, no configuration, readable by someone who has never used an analytics tool.

- **Single-page overview**: Pageviews, visitors, referrers, top pages, countries, devices, and browsers on one scrolling page with click-to-filter on every row, so segmentation happens without building a report.
- **Campaign and UTM breakdowns**: Source, medium, campaign, term, and content parameters are parsed automatically, which is the reporting most small businesses actually use to judge a newsletter or an ad set.
- **Events and goals**: Custom events for signups, clicks, downloads, and purchases, sent from the page or from your own server, with conversion counts attached to sources and pages.
- **Real-time visitors**: A live count and recent activity feed, useful for confirming a launch landed and for the small dopamine hit that keeps founders logging in.
- **AI assistant**: A built-in assistant answers questions about your traffic in plain language, which is a meaningfully better interface than a report builder for people who do not think in dimensions and metrics.
- **Bot filtering**: Known crawlers, bots, and referrer spam are excluded from counts by default rather than requiring filter rules.

### Privacy architecture

The engineering decisions that remove the consent banner from the equation.

- **No cookies or browser storage**: The script sets no cookies, no localStorage, and no similar browser storage, which is the specific technical claim that removes the ePrivacy consent trigger for analytics.
- **No IP collection or storage**: Country is derived and the IP address is not stored, so there is no personal data at rest to disclose, export, or delete on request.
- **No visitor IDs or cross-site tracking**: There is no persistent identifier and no identity graph across sites, which structurally prevents the profiling that European regulators object to in GA4.
- **EU hosting**: Infrastructure and processing sit in the EU under a Dutch entity, so international transfer paperwork is not part of the review.
- **Compliance posture**: The vendor states GDPR, CCPA, ePrivacy, PECR, CNIL, and DSGVO alignment, with SOC 2 work in progress rather than complete, which is the honest gap to raise in a security review.
- **First-party proxy support**: The script can be served from your own domain, which keeps measurement first-party and makes it far harder for blocklists to remove.

### Traffic recovery

The commercial argument that sets Simple Analytics apart from its privacy-first neighbours.

- **Consent-independent collection**: Because nothing requiring consent is collected, the script can fire before a banner decision, capturing visitors GA4 never sees when a user declines.
- **Ad blocker resilience**: Blocklists target Google's tag far more aggressively than a small vendor's, and proxying the script through your own domain removes most of the remaining blocking surface.
- **Parallel measurement alongside GA4**: The tool is explicitly positioned to run next to Google Analytics as a cookieless second count rather than as a replacement, which is a realistic answer for anyone who cannot switch off Google Ads measurement.
- **Managed recovery setup**: The Enterprise tier includes vendor help implementing the recovery configuration, which the vendor markets as returning 20 to 60 percent of otherwise invisible traffic.

### Data access and reporting

Getting numbers out to the people who will never log in.

- **Stats API**: A read API over aggregate metrics for custom internal dashboards and automated reporting.
- **Export API and raw data**: Raw data export in JSON and CSV, with fuller raw data access reserved for the Enterprise tier, so warehouse pipelines are possible but not a self-serve headline feature.
- **Looker Studio and Power BI connectors**: Native BI connections mean agency and stakeholder reporting can live in whatever tool the client already opens.
- **Public and shared dashboards**: Dashboards can be made public or shared with stakeholders and clients without creating accounts for them.
- **Email reports**: Scheduled summaries so the numbers reach people who will never open the tool themselves.

### Setup, accounts, and administration

Deliberately shallow, which is most of the appeal.

- **Multi-site management**: Five websites on the free plan under a single login, which is unusually generous and makes it viable for a freelancer with a handful of client sites.
- **WordPress plugin and GTM support**: Official WordPress plugin plus Google Tag Manager deployment for teams who already manage tags there.
- **Additional users**: Team access is priced per seat at €20 a month each on the self-serve plan, which is the line item that surprises teams used to bundled seats.
- **SSO and role-based access**: Single sign-on and role-based permissions are Enterprise-tier features, not available on the self-serve plan.
- **Data retention by plan**: 30 days of history on the free plan, with longer retention on paid plans; the free tier's real constraint is time, not traffic.

## Use cases

- **Bootstrapped SaaS founder in the EU**: Wants to know which channels bring signups without adding a consent banner to a conversion-critical landing page or reading a GA4 tutorial. Outcome: One script, no banner, and a dashboard that shows sources and signup events on load. At typical early-stage traffic the free plan covers it entirely, and €20 a month buys the paid tier when history beyond 30 days starts mattering.
- **Marketing lead who cannot remove GA4**: Google Ads spend requires GA4 conversion import, but the banner's decline rate means reported traffic is visibly lower than server logs suggest. Outcome: Simple Analytics runs in parallel as the cookieless count. GA4 keeps feeding Google Ads, and the traffic and channel numbers people actually plan against come from the tool that sees the whole audience.
- **Content site at 100,000 monthly pageviews**: Needs referrer and campaign reporting that a non-technical editor can read, on a budget that does not grow with traffic. Outcome: The €20 self-serve plan covers up to 2.5 million pageviews, so 100,000 sits well inside it with no slider modelling and no overage anxiety. Compared with Plausible or Fathom, the flat headroom is the differentiator.
- **Freelancer managing five small client sites**: Each client wants a monthly traffic number and none of them will pay for an analytics subscription. Outcome: The free plan covers five websites with unlimited pageviews under fair use, and public dashboard links let each client check their own numbers. The 30-day history ceiling is the reason to eventually upgrade.

## Pricing

Freemium with a free forever plan, one flat self-serve paid plan priced by pageview volume via a slider, per-seat add-ons, and a quote-only Enterprise tier.

- **Free**: €0 forever. Unlimited pageviews under fair use; 5 websites, 1 user; 30 days of data history; Cookieless, no consent banner needed; EU-hosted. The most generous free volume allowance in the privacy-first group; the 30-day history window is what eventually pushes you to pay.
- **Self-serve (paid)**: €20 per month, up to 2.5M pageviews via slider. Up to 2.5 million monthly pageviews; Full data history; Events, goals, and campaign reporting; Stats API and export API; Looker Studio and Power BI connectors. Additional users are €20 per month each, which is the line to check before assuming a team of four costs €20.
- **Enterprise**: Custom quoted, demo required. Managed traffic recovery implementation; Raw data access and team reporting; SSO and role-based access control; SOC 2 and priority support; Custom pageview volumes.

Billing notes:

- Annual billing is advertised as two months free, so €20 a month becomes roughly €200 a year on the self-serve plan.
- The pageview slider tops out at 2.5 million on the self-serve plan; a site at 100,000 monthly pageviews sits comfortably inside the base price with no modelling required, which is a real simplicity advantage over slider-priced rivals.
- Seats are the hidden multiplier: at €20 per additional user, a four-person marketing team pays €80 a month, which changes the comparison against Plausible Business (10 team members included) considerably.
- SSO, SOC 2, and raw data access require the demo-gated Enterprise tier, so a security review that demands those items removes this from the self-serve bracket.

Value assessment: The free plan is the most useful free offer in privacy-first analytics because it does not meter your traffic, and for a small site the 30-day history limit is genuinely liveable for months. The €20 paid plan buys unusual headroom, since 2.5 million pageviews for a flat fee undercuts what Plausible or Fathom charge at the same volume. The value breaks down on teams: at €20 per extra seat, a marketing department of five costs €100 a month for a tool whose competitors bundle ten users, so this is best value as a one-person or two-person purchase and worst value as a departmental one.

## Strengths

- A free forever plan with unlimited pageviews under fair use and five websites, which no other serious privacy-first tool matches on volume.
- Flat €20 pricing up to 2.5 million pageviews means most small businesses never have to model a traffic slider or worry about overages.
- The strongest privacy architecture claims in the group: no cookies, no browser storage, no IP storage, no visitor IDs, EU hosting under a Dutch entity.
- The traffic recovery positioning is commercially honest, acknowledging that most businesses will keep GA4 and selling a complement rather than pretending a replacement is realistic.
- The built-in AI assistant is a better interface for non-analysts than any report builder, and it is included rather than sold as an add-on.
- Looker Studio and Power BI connectors plus a raw export API mean the data is not trapped in the vendor's dashboard.
- Bootstrapped and fully owned by its two operators, so there is no investor-driven pivot or acquisition pressure in the near term.

## Limitations

- Per-seat pricing at €20 per additional user is expensive relative to competitors that bundle three to ten team members into the base price.
- The free plan's 30-day history window means trend analysis and year-over-year comparison are impossible without paying, unlike free tiers that limit volume instead.
- SOC 2 is described as in progress rather than complete, which will stall some procurement reviews that a competitor with a finished report would pass.
- SSO, role-based access, and raw data access sit behind a demo-gated Enterprise tier, so the self-serve product has a hard ceiling for larger teams.
- No user-level analysis, retention cohorts, replay, or product analytics by design; the privacy architecture that removes the banner also removes those capabilities permanently.
- No CRM integration and no pipeline attribution, so B2B revenue questions need a different tool entirely.
- A very small team means the roadmap moves at indie pace and support is email rather than a staffed desk.

## Comparisons

- **Simple Analytics vs Plausible Analytics**: The two closest competitors in EU privacy-first analytics. Plausible is open source with an inspectable codebase, bundles three to ten team members, and gates funnels, user journeys, and revenue attribution behind its €19-plus Business plan. Simple Analytics has a free forever tier, flatter pageview pricing, and an AI assistant, but charges €20 per extra seat. Solo operators and small sites lean Simple Analytics; marketing teams that need funnels and several logins lean Plausible.
- **Simple Analytics vs Fathom Analytics**: Fathom bundles unlimited sites and forever data retention on every paid plan, which beats Simple Analytics on history and site count, and it is Canadian with EU isolation options rather than natively Dutch. Simple Analytics wins on the free tier, the AI assistant, and the traffic recovery pitch. Choose Fathom if permanent history matters most; choose Simple Analytics if you want to start free and never pay until you need history.
- **Simple Analytics vs Pirsch Analytics**: Pirsch is the German equivalent and starts cheaper at $6 a month, adding funnels, A/B testing, white labelling, and unlimited websites on its $12 Plus plan, which makes it the better agency tool. Simple Analytics has no free-tier equivalent in Pirsch (only a 30-day trial) and offers far more pageview headroom per euro. Agencies who want white labelling pick Pirsch; solo founders who want to start at zero pick Simple Analytics.
- **Simple Analytics vs Umami**: Umami is MIT-licensed and self-hostable, so a technical team can run it on their own server for the cost of infrastructure and own the database outright, and its cloud free tier gives 100,000 events a month. Simple Analytics is fully managed with no server to patch and a more generous hosted free allowance. Developers who want the data in their own Postgres pick Umami; everyone else picks Simple Analytics.
- **Simple Analytics vs Counter**: Counter is a pay-what-you-want, AGPL, solo-developer project with a roughly one-kilobyte script and deliberately minimal features. It is cheaper than free-tier Simple Analytics in spirit but carries real continuity risk (its domain lapsed once) and no events, goals, or API to speak of. Use Counter on a personal site; use Simple Analytics anywhere a business decision depends on the numbers.
- **Simple Analytics vs Google Analytics 4**: GA4 is free at any volume and uniquely able to push conversions and audiences into Google Ads; Simple Analytics is €20, needs no consent banner, and sees the traffic GA4's banner and blocklists hide. Simple Analytics explicitly positions itself to run alongside GA4 rather than replace it, which is the correct answer for anyone spending money on Google Ads and the wrong one for anyone who is not.

## Implementation

- Setup time: Under ten minutes: paste one script, install the WordPress plugin, or deploy through Google Tag Manager, and data appears immediately. Proxying through your own domain for blocker resilience takes an extra half hour of DNS and routing work.
- Learning curve: Effectively none for the dashboard, which is the entire design goal. Events, the export API, and the BI connectors are the only pieces that need documentation time.
- Onboarding: Fully self-serve with a free plan and a 14-day paid trial without a credit card. Only the Enterprise tier involves a sales conversation, and the managed traffic recovery setup is the thing you would be buying there.
- Migration: There is no Google Analytics historical importer, unlike Plausible, Fathom, and Pirsch, so switching means starting fresh unless you keep GA4 running in parallel, which is what the vendor recommends anyway. Leaving later is clean via the export API in JSON or CSV. Expect visitor counts to run higher than GA4's, because consent-declined and blocked traffic that GA4 loses is counted here.

## Platform, API & security

- Platforms: Web app (EU-hosted cloud), WordPress plugin, Google Tag Manager, Looker Studio connector, Power BI connector
- API: Stats API for aggregate metrics and an Export API for raw data in JSON or CSV; server-side event tracking is supported for backend conversions.
- Compliance: GDPR, ePrivacy Directive and PECR, CCPA, CNIL and DSGVO alignment, SOC 2 in progress
- Data residency: All data processed and stored in the EU under Simple Analytics BV, a Dutch entity.
- SSO: Single sign-on and role-based access control on the Enterprise tier only.
- Security notes: No cookies, no localStorage, no IP address storage, and no persistent visitor identifiers, so there is minimal personal data at rest to secure in the first place. Subscription revenue is the company's only revenue and there are no advertising relationships.

## Support

- Channels: Email support, In-app chat, Priority support on Enterprise
- Documentation: Public documentation covering script installation, events, proxying, the APIs, and BI connectors, alongside an active blog on privacy and consent regulation.
- Community: No large official forum; the company maintains a visible presence in indie hacker and privacy communities instead.

## Company

- Founded: 2018
- Founders: Adriaan van Rossum, Iron Brands (co-owner, joined later)
- Headquarters: Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Ownership: Bootstrapped; 100 percent owned by its founders with no outside investors
- Employees: Very small; the company is fully owned and run by its two operators
- Funding: None; profitable on subscription revenue alone.

Timeline:

- 2018: Adriaan van Rossum founds Simple Analytics in the Netherlands as a cookieless alternative to Google Analytics.
- 2020: Iron Brands joins as co-owner to lead marketing, and the company grows past six figures of annual revenue while staying bootstrapped.
- 2023: Universal Analytics shuts down, pushing a wave of European businesses toward cookieless alternatives and accelerating growth across the category.
- 2025: The traffic recovery positioning becomes central, marketing the tool as a cookieless layer that runs alongside GA4 and recovers 20 to 60 percent of otherwise invisible visitors.
- 2026: A free forever plan with unlimited pageviews under fair use, an in-product AI assistant, and Looker Studio and Power BI connectors define the current product; SOC 2 work remains in progress.

## Integrations

WordPress (official plugin), Google Tag Manager, Looker Studio, Power BI, Data warehouse export via the Export API, Zapier and webhooks for event forwarding, Stats API and Export API for custom integrations

## FAQ

### What is Simple Analytics?

Simple Analytics is a cookieless web analytics tool built and hosted in the EU by a bootstrapped Dutch company. It shows pageviews, events, referrers, and campaign parameters on a single page without setting cookies, storing IP addresses, or creating visitor identifiers, which is why it does not require a cookie consent banner for analytics purposes.

### How much does Simple Analytics cost?

There is a free forever plan with unlimited pageviews under a fair-use policy, five websites, one user, and 30 days of history. The self-serve paid plan is €20 a month covering up to 2.5 million monthly pageviews, with additional users at €20 each and annual billing discounted by two months. Enterprise is quoted and adds SSO, raw data access, SOC 2, and managed traffic recovery.

### Do I need a cookie consent banner with Simple Analytics?

For analytics purposes, no. The script sets no cookies and no browser storage, does not store IP addresses, and creates no visitor identifiers, so the ePrivacy and GDPR triggers for consent are not met. Other things on your site, such as advertising pixels or embedded video, may still require a banner of their own.

### What is traffic recovery and is the 20 to 60 percent claim believable?

It refers to visitors that Google Analytics never records because they declined the consent banner or run an ad blocker. Because Simple Analytics collects nothing requiring consent, it can fire before a banner decision, and its script is far less aggressively blocked than Google's, especially when proxied through your own domain. The 20 to 60 percent range is the vendor's own figure and varies enormously by audience: a developer-heavy site loses far more to blockers than a consumer retail site does.

### Can Simple Analytics replace Google Analytics?

For traffic, referrer, campaign, and conversion reporting, yes, and it will do it faster and without a banner. It cannot import conversions into Google Ads or build remarketing audiences, because doing that requires the cross-site tracking the product refuses to do. If you spend money on Google Ads, keep GA4 and run Simple Analytics alongside it, which is exactly how the vendor positions the product.

### How does the free plan compare to paid?

The free plan is unusual in that it does not meter your traffic: unlimited pageviews under fair use, five websites, and one user. What it limits is time, at 30 days of history. So it works indefinitely for checking current performance and not at all for trend analysis or year-over-year reporting, which is the moment you pay €20.

### Does Simple Analytics do funnels, attribution, or product analytics?

It does events, goals, and campaign-level source reporting, which covers whether a channel produced conversions. It does not do multi-step funnels the way Plausible Business does, multi-touch attribution the way Attribution or Dreamdata do, or user-level product analytics the way PostHog and Usermaven do. The cookieless architecture rules out the visitor-level identity those features need.

### Where is my data stored and can I export it?

All processing and storage is in the EU under Simple Analytics BV, a Dutch company. Data comes out through a Stats API for aggregates and an Export API for raw rows in JSON or CSV, plus native Looker Studio and Power BI connectors. Fuller raw data access is an Enterprise feature.

### Is Simple Analytics SOC 2 certified?

Not yet. The vendor states GDPR, ePrivacy, PECR, CCPA, CNIL, and DSGVO alignment, with SOC 2 described as in progress rather than complete. If your buyer or security reviewer requires a finished SOC 2 report, raise that early, because it is the most likely reason a procurement process stalls here.

### Who is behind Simple Analytics?

It was founded in 2018 by Adriaan van Rossum in the Netherlands and is now co-owned with Iron Brands. The company is bootstrapped with no outside investors, fully owned by its two operators, and profitable on subscription revenue, which means no acquisition or pivot pressure but also a small team and an indie-pace roadmap.

## Editorial verdict

Simple Analytics is the most sensible starting point in privacy-first analytics for a one-person or two-person business, because the free plan gives you unlimited traffic on five sites and only asks for money when you want history back. The €20 paid plan buys unusual pageview headroom, the AI assistant is a better interface than any report builder for non-analysts, and the Dutch EU-only architecture is the cleanest answer available to a European privacy review. Two things to check before buying: seats cost €20 each, which makes it a poor fit for a marketing department of five, and SOC 2 is still in progress. The traffic recovery pitch is the most honest thing any vendor in this category says out loud, which is that you are probably not deleting GA4, so buy the tool that gives you the numbers you can actually trust while Google keeps feeding your ads.

## SaaSTracker awards

- Innovation (GTM Analytics, Summer 2026): "Recovers the traffic your consent banner hides, answering the measurement gap that cookieless analytics itself created."

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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