Plausible vs Statcounter Comparison 2026
Both cover analytics. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
At a glance
- Plausible starts cheaper, at $9.
- Only Statcounter has a free tier.
Side by side
Plausible | Statcounter | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $9 | From $18 |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free trial, then paid | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier (they differ) | No | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | 30 days | 30 days |
| API | Yes |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
Plausible
Privacy-first analytics without cookies
Plausible answers what a Google Analytics dashboard takes four clicks to answer, on one page, without cookies or a consent banner. The script is a fraction of the size, which shows up in a page speed score. There are no user-level reports at all, so anybody who needs to follow one visitor around is in the wrong tool.
Our note
Not running a consent banner is a saving the price does not show. No cookies means no banner and no consent records to keep, and on a small site that is worth more than the gap between $9 a month and free analytics.
Statcounter
A visitor log with a lasting free tier
Statcounter has been counting visitors since before analytics became a discipline, and it still does the thing that made it useful: a live feed of individual visits rather than only aggregates, which is how somebody works out what one specific referral actually did. The free plan keeps two weeks of history for a small site. Paying buys longer retention, more sessions and session replay. It is a visitor log rather than a product analytics suite, and anybody wanting funnels and cohorts is looking at the wrong tool.
Our note
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.