Google Analytics is powerful, but for many small sites it is overkill, and its cookie banners and data-sharing terms make visitors uneasy. Privacy-friendly analytics tools answer the questions small sites actually ask, which pages get traffic, where visitors come from, and what they click, without tracking individuals across the web. Better still, two of the best options can be self-hosted for free.

This guide compares Umami and Matomo as self-hosted options with Plausible as the paid reference, so you can decide whether free self-hosting is worth the maintenance for your site.