Stack
Umami
An MIT-licensed, cookieless web analytics tool available as a free cloud tier, a paid cloud plan, or free self-hosted software.
What it actually does
Umami reports pageviews, visitors, referrers, top pages, countries, devices, and events on a clean dashboard similar to Plausible. It is cookieless and does not require a consent banner.
The hosted Cloud service has a free Hobby tier covering 100k events per month across up to 3 sites, and a paid Pro plan that raises the event and site limits. Because the code is MIT-licensed, you can also run it yourself on a small server with no event limits.
The trade-off is retention and maintenance: cloud retention is capped rather than unlimited, and the self-hosted path means you own updates, backups, and database growth.
Umami vs its main rivals
The tools people actually weigh against Umami: Plausible, Matomo, GoatCounter. Same criteria for every column, including where Umami loses.
| Umami |  Plausible |  Matomo | GGoatCounter | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Pricing & access | ||||
| Free tier | Yes100k events, 3 sites | NoNo | YesFree (self-host) | YesFree |
| Starting price | $20/mo (Pro) | $9/mo | $0 self-host | $0 (donation) |
| Open source license | YesMIT | YesAGPL | YesGPL | YesEUPL |
Privacy & hosting | ||||
| Cookieless, no banner | YesYes | YesYes | YesOptional | YesYes |
| Self-host unlimited events | YesYes | YesYes | YesYes | YesYes |
Analytics depth | ||||
| Goals / events | YesYes | YesYes | YesYes | YesPartial |
| Funnels | YesPro | YesBusiness plan | YesYes | NoNo |
| Session recording / heatmaps | NoNo | NoNo | YesYes | NoNo |
Developer & API | ||||
| REST API | Free | Paid | Free | Free |
Scaling & limits | ||||
| Cloud data retention | 2 yr (Pro) | 3+ yr | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Sites on free tier | 3 | None (trial) | Unlimited (self-host) | Unlimited |
| Managed cloud option | YesYes | YesYes | YesYes | YesYes |
- Free Hobby tier with 100k events/mo and 3 sites is enough for many indie projects indefinitely
- MIT-licensed and fully self-hostable, so the free path scales as far as your own server does
- Pro at $20/mo includes 1M events and 20 sites, a low per-event cost among privacy dashboards
- Hobby retention is limited and Pro caps retention at 2 years, short of Fathom's forever or Matomo's unlimited
- Self-hosting means you own updates, backups, and database growth
- No session recording or heatmaps, so it stays a traffic dashboard rather than a product tool
Pay less for it
4 ways found100k events/mo and 3 sites at $0, enough for most small projects
The MIT edition runs on a ~$5/mo VPS with no event limits, free forever
14-day free trial before paying for the Pro plan
GoatCounter — An even simpler open-source counter with a free hosted tier and unlimited retention if you only need pageview totals
StackTracker tracks what you actually pay for Umami and every other tool, flags overpayment, and shows the dollars you would save by switching.
Is it the right tool for you
- You want a $0 privacy dashboard on a free cloud tier
- You are comfortable running your own instance for unlimited scale
- You prefer an MIT license over copyleft
- You need revenue attribution tied to Stripe → use DataFast
- You need product analytics or session replay → use PostHog
- You want managed forever retention without self-hosting → use Fathom
Track what Umami and the rest of your stack cost
StackTracker adds up every subscription, plus your hours, so you see the real number.
Prices and limits last verified 2026-07-20.