StackBest web & product analytics for solo founders
You need to know if anyone visits your site and whether those visits turn into revenue, without burning hours in a dashboard built for enterprise marketing teams. The catch for a solo founder is that analytics costs sneak up in two ways: per-event pricing that scales with traffic you cannot predict, and privacy tools that charge 9 to 20 dollars a month for numbers Google gives away free. This category compares lightweight privacy-first trackers, full product analytics suites, and revenue-attribution tools built specifically for indie hackers.
| Tool | Free tier | Paid from | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
 Plausible$9/mo | $9/mo | Founders who want a clean traffic dashboard they will actually check, and value EU hosting | |
 Fathom$15/mo | $15/mo | Indie hackers running a portfolio of 5+ small sites who want one flat bill | |
 PostHogusage-based from $0 | usage-based from $0 | Founders who need product analytics, replays, and feature flags, not just traffic counts | |
 Umami$20/mo | $20/mo | Cost-zero founders comfortable with a free cloud tier or running their own instance | |
 Simple Analytics€20/mo | €20/mo | Founders who want a free unlimited-traffic dashboard and only care about the last 30 days | |
 Google Analytics 4$0 | $0 | Founders spending on Google Ads or who need free analytics and tolerate the complexity | |
 Mixpanelusage-based from $0 | usage-based from $0 | Product-led founders who qualify for the free startup year and need serious cohort analysis | |
| $9/mo | Solo SaaS founders on Stripe who care about revenue per channel more than pageviews |
Start with Umami's free Hobby tier (100k events, 3 sites, $0) or PostHog's free tier if you also want session replays and feature flags; either covers a pre-revenue product at zero cost. Once you have Stripe revenue, DataFast at $9-19/mo is the strongest fit for StackTracker's audience because revenue-per-channel is the metric a solo founder actually acts on, and its MCP server plugs into an AI workflow.
Skip GA4 unless you run Google Ads (the consent banner and complexity tax outweigh free), and skip Mixpanel unless you get the free startup year, because $0.28 per 1k events gets expensive fast. Realistic monthly spend: $0 pre-launch, $9-20/mo once you are earning.
UmamiDefault pickFree tierAsk about these tools
The fine print, tool by tool
Plausible$9/mo+
A one-page traffic dashboard that replaces Google Analytics with something you can read in 30 seconds, hosted in the EU with no cookie banner needed. Solo founders pick it when they want simple visitor counts they will actually look at, plus an open source escape hatch if the bill ever bothers them.
$9/mo (Starter, 10k pageviews)
The advertised 2 months free requires annual prepay. Pricing scales with a pageview slider, so budget for the next tier up if you expect growth. Hard tier limits rather than metered overages: exceed your pageview cap and you are pushed to upgrade. The Stats API and custom properties are locked behind Business ($19/mo).
- + Setup takes under 5 minutes with a 1 KB script that will not hurt page speed
- + No cookie banner required, GDPR compliant out of the box with EU hosting
- + Open source, so you can self-host free on a $5 VPS if you outgrow the pricing
- − Starter at $9/mo only covers 10k pageviews and 1 site; a modest launch spike on Hacker News can blow past that
- − Team members and multiple sites are gated: 3 sites and 3 seats need Growth at $14/mo, Stats API needs Business at $19/mo
Fathom$15/mo+
A cookieless traffic dashboard in the same simple style as Plausible, but priced around volume: 100k pageviews and 50 sites on the entry plan. Solo founders pick it when they run several small sites and want one flat bill instead of per-site pricing.
$15/mo (100k pageviews, 50 sites)
Auto-upgrade trap: exceed your pageview limit two months in a row and Fathom upgrades your plan automatically (you can then cancel). 500k pageviews costs $45/mo. Extra site packs are $10/mo per 50 sites. Annual billing gives 2 months free, cutting entry to about $12.50/mo effective. Only a 7-day trial versus 30 days at Plausible.
- + 50 sites included even on the $15/mo entry plan, the best multi-site deal in the privacy niche
- + Forever data retention on all plans, no expiry while you are a customer
- + 100k pageviews at entry versus Plausible's 10k for a comparable simple dashboard
- − No plan cheaper than $15/mo, so low-traffic single-site founders pay 66 percent more than Plausible's $9 Starter
- − No funnels-by-cohort, session replay, or product analytics; it is traffic stats only, and there is no open source self-host escape hatch
PostHogusage-based from $0+
A product analytics suite that bundles event tracking, session replay, feature flags, A/B tests, and error tracking under one usage-based bill. Solo founders pick it when they need to understand what users do inside the app, not just how many showed up, and the monthly free tier usually means paying nothing until real traction.
usage-based from $0 ($0.00005/event after 1M free)
1M events, 5k session replays (plus 2.5k mobile), 1M feature flag requests, 1.5k survey responses, 100k exceptions per month, every month, no credit card
Free tier resets monthly and requires no card. Per-unit prices drop at volume ($0.000009/event past 250M). Adding a card (still $0 until you exceed free limits) unlocks 6 projects and 7-year retention versus 1 project and 1 year on free. The trap is autocapture plus replays quietly stacking meters; set billing limits on day one and disable autocapture on noisy pages. No seat-based pricing for the core products.
- + The monthly free tier (1M events, 5k replays) covers most pre-launch and early-stage products entirely, so real cost is often $0
- + Session replay, feature flags, A/B tests, error tracking, and surveys in one tool replaces 4 or 5 subscriptions
- + Billing limits let you hard-cap spend so a traffic spike cannot surprise-bill you
- − Costs stack across products: at 5M events plus 20k replays you are paying roughly $200 to $275/mo across the two meters
- − Autocapture inflates event counts fast and each replay over 5k costs $0.005, so an unconfigured setup burns the free tier quickly
Umami$20/mo+
An MIT-licensed traffic dashboard you can use on a free cloud tier or run yourself on a cheap server. Solo founders pick it when they want the Plausible experience at $0, either through the Hobby plan or by self-hosting with no event limits.
$20/mo (Pro, 1M events, 20 sites)
Hobby: 100k events/mo, up to 3 sites, free forever
The free Hobby tier is the real product for solo founders; you only pay when you cross 100k events/mo or need more than 3 sites. Cloud overages run about $20 per additional 1M events above your plan. Self-hosted is free forever with no event limits, minus your server cost. Pro comes with a 14-day free trial.
- + Free Hobby tier with 100k events/mo and 3 sites is enough for most indie projects indefinitely
- + MIT-licensed and fully self-hostable, so the $0 path scales as far as your $5 VPS does
- + Pro at $20/mo includes 1M events and 20 sites, cheaper per event than Plausible or Fathom
- − Hobby tier data retention is limited, and Pro caps retention at 2 years versus Fathom's forever
- − Self-hosting means you own updates, backups, and database growth, which is founder time
Simple Analytics€20/mo+
An EU-hosted, cookieless traffic dashboard whose free plan takes unlimited pageviews but only keeps the last month of data. Solo founders pick it when they want a zero-cost dashboard that survives traffic spikes and do not care about long-term trends.
€20/mo (about $22/mo)
Free forever: 1 user, 5 websites, unlimited pageviews with fair use, but only 1 month of history and a required badge on your site
The 1-month history cap is the upgrade lever: the free tier deletes your trend data. Paid pricing scales with a datapoint slider (100k to 2.5M). On annual plans, if traffic exceeds your estimate you get 7 days to adjust before the system auto-adjusts your bill. Annual gives 2 months free. Bitcoin payments carry a 10 percent surcharge.
- + Free plan has unlimited pageviews, rare in this category, so traffic spikes cost nothing
- + One-page dashboard, cookieless, EU-hosted, GDPR compliant without a banner
- + 14-day paid trial with no credit card
- − Free plan keeps only 1 month of history and forces a Simple Analytics badge on your site, so month-over-month comparisons are impossible without paying
- − Paid entry at €20/mo is more than double Plausible's $9 Starter for a similar feature set, and each extra user costs another €20/mo
Google Analytics 4$0+
Google's free event-based analytics platform, the default choice for anyone running Google Ads because campaign data flows straight in. Solo founders pick it when the price has to be zero at any traffic level and they can stomach the learning curve and the EU cookie banner.
$0 (GA360 upgrade starts around $50,000/yr)
Free: effectively unlimited events at solo founder scale, plus free BigQuery export up to 1M events/day
Free tier has no dollar cost but real hidden costs: consent banner conversion loss, 14-month UI retention, and hours of learning curve. The paid jump is a cliff, GA360 at roughly $50k/yr, so there is no mid-tier. BigQuery storage beyond free limits bills separately on your Google Cloud account.
- + Genuinely free at any traffic level a solo founder will see
- + Deep integration with Google Ads and Search Console if you run paid acquisition
- + BigQuery export gives raw unsampled event data at no cost up to 1M events/day
- − UI retention is capped at 14 months and Explorations get sampled past roughly 10M events, so long-term analysis requires BigQuery and SQL skills
- − Requires a cookie consent banner in the EU, and answering a question like which page converts best can take 20 minutes of Exploration-building
Mixpanelusage-based from $0+
A product analytics tool centered on funnels, retention curves, and cohort analysis, aimed at teams asking why users churn rather than how many visited. Solo founders pick it when they qualify for the free startup year and need deeper behavioral analysis than PostHog's dashboards give them.
usage-based from $0 ($0.28 per 1k events after 1M free)
1M events/mo, 10k session replays/mo, 5 saved reports per seat, no credit card
The $0.28/1k event overage is the trap: costs rise steeply and event-heavy instrumentation (autotracked clicks, pageviews as events) multiplies the bill. Growth includes 20k session replays free with limits customizable up to 500k. Apply to the startup program before paying anything. Growth is pay-as-you-go with no annual lock-in.
- + 1M free events per month covers most early-stage products at $0
- + Best-in-class funnel, retention, and cohort analysis once you need real product questions answered
- + Startup program gives eligible companies (under 5 years old, under $8M raised) the first year free
- − At $0.28 per 1k events, 5M events/mo costs about $1,120 before volume discounts, an order of magnitude above PostHog's roughly $200 at the same volume
- − Free plan caps you at 5 saved reports per seat, which you will hit in the first week of real use
DataFast$9/mo+
An analytics tool built by an indie hacker that connects every visitor to your Stripe account, so the dashboard shows revenue per marketing channel instead of raw pageviews. Solo founders pick it once they have paying customers and want to know which channel actually brings money, not just clicks.
$9/mo (Starter, 10k events, 1 site)
Prices scale with an event-volume slider (10k, 100k, 200k, 1M+ tiers exist). Starter keeps data 3 years, Growth 5+ years. The dashboard-lockout on overage means you should size one tier above expected traffic before a launch. Annual billing gives 2 months free. 14-day trial, no card required.
- + Built for exactly this use case: ties every visitor to Stripe revenue so you see revenue per channel, not just traffic
- + MCP server plus API and CLI means Claude Code or Cursor can query your analytics directly, a natural fit for an AI-heavy solo workflow
- + Growth at $19/mo includes 30 websites and 30 team members, generous for a portfolio of projects
- − Starter's 10k events/mo is tight and overage is a hard gate: events keep being tracked but dashboard access is blocked until you upgrade, so one decent launch day can lock you out
- − Young single-maintainer product from an indie founder, so longevity and support depth are a real bet versus 8-year-old Plausible, and there is no free tier or self-host option
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