Counterscale vs Plausible (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Plausible grades higher than Counterscale: 2.4 against 2.0 out of 4.0.
Checked Oct 18, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 · graded Oct 18, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA
Counterscale grades higher on the free plan. Plausible grades higher on ease of use and platforms. They get the same grade on value for money and features.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Plausible
Cookie-free, privacy-first website analytics made and hosted in the EU
Which one is for you
Pick Counterscale if
- Fits if you already use Cloudflare and want simple traffic counts
- Works for developers who like a command-line install
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you don't have a Cloudflare account, as it needs one
- Watch out: data is kept for only 90 days
- Too light for funnels or session replay, which aren't listed
- Watch out: costs beyond the free Workers plan are billed by Cloudflare
- Not for you if you want a hosted version, because there isn't one
Pick Plausible if
- Fits if you want traffic numbers without putting a cookie banner on your site
- Works for EU organizations leaving Google Analytics that want data kept in the EU
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you want to watch visits or follow one visitor's path
- Tight if you're on Starter, which covers one site
- Pricey if you need funnels or ecommerce revenue, which start on Business at $15.83 a month for 10k pageviews
- Watch out: there's no free hosted plan, and the free Community Edition is self-hosted, updated twice a year, with no funnels or SSO
- Pricey if traffic grows: Starter is $19 a month at 100k pageviews and $69 at 1M, and SSO is Enterprise only
How we grade them
| 2.0GPACounterscaleFair | 2.4GPAPlausibleFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CThe code is free, but you bring your own Cloudflare account and host it yourself. | C100,000 pageviews puts Starter at $19 a month billed monthly; the $7.50 yearly price only covers 10k. That lands mid-category, and it climbs to $69 at 1M. The free Community Edition only counts if you run your own server. |
| Free plan and trial | BNo paid plan and no limits listed, but beyond Cloudflare's free tier you pay Cloudflare. | CThere's no free hosted plan, just a 30-day trial with no card. The free Community Edition is yours to keep, but you host it yourself, and it leaves out funnels, ecommerce revenue and SSO. |
| Features | CLive traffic, referrers and engagement. No funnels or session replay, and it's a small job. | CVisitors, sources, pages, goals, campaigns, Search Console queries and visits from AI tools, all on one page. It does the page counting job fully, and it's a smaller job: no recordings or per-visitor profiles, and funnels wait for Business. |
| Ease of use | DYou deploy and update it yourself with a command-line installer. | BNo rating on record, but the hosted version is a small script and one dashboard page, with nothing else to configure. The free Community Edition is a different story: your own server and your own updates. |
| Platforms and integrations | CWeb only, running on Cloudflare Workers. | BWeb only, no desktop or phone app. It works with Google Search Console, WordPress, Tag Manager, Google Data Studio and Slack, imports old Google Analytics data, and has an API. |
| Best for | cookie-free stats on your own Cloudflare account | simple visitor counts without a cookie banner |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Counterscale and Plausible. How we grade
Price against what you get
Counterscale has no paid plan and scores 1.7 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. Plausible starts at $7.50 a month and scores 2.7.
Plausible scores higher, and starts $7.50 a month higher: the question is whether the extra is worth that to you. Of the other website and product analytics tools on the chart, none scores higher than Counterscale for less, and none scores higher than Plausible for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
- Counterscale also covers dashboards.
At a glance
| Counterscale | Plausible | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free | Free plan |
| Starts at | Free | $7.50 per month for up to 10k pageviews, billed yearly ($9 billed monthly) |
| Free plan | None | Plausible Community Edition: the free, AGPL-licensed release you host yourself. It leaves out funnels, ecommerce revenue goals, SSO and the sites API, and has community support only. |
| Free trial | None listed | 30-day free trial of the cloud plans, no credit card required |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Counterscale | Plausible Analytics |
| Price read from | counterscale.dev | plausible.io |
| Checked | Nov 13, 2026 | Oct 18, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Counterscale
- Needs a Cloudflare account; costs beyond the free Workers plan are billed by Cloudflare.
- Data is kept for only 90 days.
- You deploy and update it yourself; there is no hosted version.
- Covers web traffic only, with no funnels or session replay listed on the site.
Plausible
- There is no free hosted plan, only a 30-day trial; the free option is the Community Edition you run yourself.
- Stats are aggregate only: there are no session recordings or per-visitor profiles.
- Funnels, ecommerce revenue attribution, custom properties and the Stats API start on Business; SSO is Enterprise only.
- Prices rise with monthly pageviews, and sites above 10M pageviews a month need a custom Enterprise quote.
Key features
Counterscale
- Live traffic stats
- Shows pageviews, referrers, user engagement and similar web analytics essentials in a dashboard, with a public demo to browse.
- No cookies or fingerprinting
- The site says it uses no cookies and no browser fingerprinting, and that you control the data end to end.
- Five-minute CLI install
- A command-line wizard deploys the server to Cloudflare, after which a lightweight JavaScript reporter goes on your site.
- Runs on Cloudflare's free tier
- Records up to 50k pageviews a day on Cloudflare's free Workers plan, and scales to millions of views for a small cost.
- 90-day data retention
- Data is retained for only 90 days, which limits how far back you can look.
Plausible
- No cookies or personal data
- Counts visits without cookies, persistent identifiers or cross-site tracking, so the vendor says no cookie banner or GDPR consent is needed.
- One-page dashboard
- Visitors, sources, pages, locations and devices on a single page, with a real-time view that updates every 30 seconds and a consolidated view of all sites.
- Goals, revenue and funnels
- Codeless goals for pages, file downloads, form completions and outbound links; revenue tracking, funnels and user journeys come with Business.
- Search and campaign data
- Connects to Google Search Console for search queries, groups UTM campaigns into channels, and shows traffic arriving from AI tools such as ChatGPT.
- Lightweight script
- The tracking script is much smaller than Google Analytics', with automatic scroll depth tracking and built-in bot and referrer spam filtering.
- Google Analytics import
- Brings in historical Google Analytics stats so older data sits beside new Plausible numbers.
Plans
Counterscale
Self-hosted$0
Free open-source code; you bring your own Cloudflare account and host it yourself.
Plausible
Starter$7.50
per month for up to 10k pageviews, billed yearly ($9 billed monthly)
One site, 3 years of data, email and Slack reports, goals and custom events. Rises with traffic: $19 a month at 100k pageviews and $69 at 1M, billed monthly.
Growth$11.67
per month for up to 10k pageviews, billed yearly ($14 billed monthly)
Up to 3 sites and 3 team members, shared links, embedded dashboards and shared segments. $104 a month at 1M pageviews, billed monthly.
Business$15.83
per month for up to 10k pageviews, billed yearly ($19 billed monthly)
Up to 10 sites and members, 5 years of data, funnels, ecommerce revenue, custom properties, Stats API. $139 a month at 1M pageviews, monthly.
EnterpriseCustom
More than 10 sites or 10M pageviews: SSO, sites API, managed proxy, scheduled raw data exports and priority support.
Community Edition$0
Free AGPL release you host yourself, updated twice a year. No funnels, ecommerce revenue, SSO or sites API; community support only.
Ways to pay less
Counterscale
No public discounts listed.
Plausible
- Annual discount
2 months free with yearly billing
Yearly billing costs 10 times the monthly price: Starter is $90 a year instead of $108, or $7.50 a month instead of $9.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Counterscale or Plausible?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Counterscale is cheaper to start with: it is free, against $7.50 a month for Plausible. Counterscale is free, and Plausible starts at $7.50 per month for up to 10k pageviews, billed yearly ($9 billed monthly).
Which has a free plan, Counterscale or Plausible?
As of Nov 13, 2026, both Counterscale and Plausible have a free plan.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.