Should you build your own Plausible?
Simple privacy-friendly website analytics
Basic pageview/event analytics are easy, and Plausible's own code is open source; the paid value is hosted reliability, maintenance, and support.
ENOriginal research content in English. Original prompt preserved in English.
Build me a privacy-first web analytics tool like Plausible (personal scale).
Requirements:
- A <2KB tracking snippet (vanilla JS, no cookies): sends pageview beacons with
path, referrer, screen class, and a daily-rotating visitor hash computed
server-side from IP + user-agent + a salt (never store raw IPs).
- An ingest endpoint that filters obvious bots by user-agent and writes to
SQLite. One row per event; index on (site, date).
- A /dashboard (basic-auth from .env): unique visitors, pageviews, top pages,
top referrers, and countries for today/7d/30d, with a visitors-per-day bar
chart as inline SVG. Fast and clean, dark mode.
- Sessionization: a visit ends after 30 idle minutes; compute bounce rate.
- Multi-site support via a site id in the snippet.
- Node or Python, one process. Honest note in the README: at serious traffic,
self-host the real Plausible instead · this is for personal sites.The prompt opens pre-filled in your agent. Review it before running.
What would building your own look like?
Add a small JS tracker, collect pageviews/events, aggregate by path/referrer/country/device, and show a dashboard.
What you will need
- hosted server
- database
- tracker script
- domain/SSL
- bot filtering
- backups
They pay because analytics must be boring, fast, and legally safer without ops.
xbattle-tested bot filtering
xfast queries at millions of pageviews
xemail reports, funnels, goal tracking
xGDPR homework done for you
Prefer something ready-made?
UmamiThe closest broad substitute: simple traffic analytics, events and goals with your data attached.Open source↗
Plausible Community EditionPlausible without the hosted bill; you keep the core dashboard and inherit the Compose stack.Open source↗
RybbitPlausible's core plus replay and funnels, in exchange for a busier dashboard.Open source↗View all 4 alternatives to Plausible →· Licença, instalação e limitações em cada alternativa.
How much does Plausible cost?
- Monthly billing
- $9/mo$9/mo
- Per year
- $108/yr$108/yr
- Annual billing
- $90/yr17% cheaper than paying monthly
- On a Brazilian card, with 3.5% IOF
- R$47.03/moR$470/yr
Saved to My list. You will see a notice on this site when the price changes.
You complete the purchase on Plausible’s site. Vibe Radar does not handle payments.
| Plan | Monthly | Annual (per month) | What is included |
|---|---|---|---|
| community edition (self-hosted) | $0/workspace | $0/workspace | Free software with no vendor-set site or traffic cap; hosting/database/operations are user-supplied. |
| starter (up to 10k monthly pageviews/events) | $9/workspace≈ $9 | $7.50/workspace≈ $7.50 | 1 website, 3 years of data retention and up to 10,000 combined pageviews/custom events per month. |
| growth (up to 10k monthly pageviews/events) | $14/workspace≈ $14 | $11.67/workspace≈ $11.67 | 3 websites, 3 team members, 3 years of retention and up to 10,000 combined pageviews/custom events per month. |
| business (up to 10k monthly pageviews/events) | $19/workspace≈ $19 | $15.83/workspace≈ $15.83 | 10 websites, 10 team members, 5 years of retention, 600 Stats API requests/hour and up to 10,000 combined pageviews/custom events per month. |
| enterprise | custom | - | Custom traffic; 10+ sites, 10+ team members, 600+ API requests/hour and 5+ years retention. |
Free tierno free hosted plan; 30-day no-card trial; Community Edition is free to self-host
Billing termsmonthly + annual (2 months free); hosted price scales by combined pageviews and custom events across all sites
Additional costsTraffic brackets jump from 10,000 to 100,000 monthly events/pageviews. Separate Plausible teams are billed separately. After 2 consecutive over-limit months, Plausible asks for an upgrade and can lock dashboard access after a further week while collection continues; it does not publish an immediate per-event overage fee.
verified 2026-08-11 · source ↗
Is it cheaper to build or buy Plausible?
Adjust the numbers: hours to build, your hourly rate, running costs and the subscription price.
Over 24 months, subscribing is cheaper.
Starting hours estimated from the analysis (weekend). Does not price what you give up (support, integrations, security).
Is Plausible free?
No free plan, just a 30-day trial; the open source version is free to self-host. The paid plan is Starter at $9/mo (checked 10/20/2026).
Can I rebuild Plausible?
Yes. A competent AI coding agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor) can build a usable personal Plausible replacement in one session with the prompt on this page. It runs on your own machine or server with no subscription.
How much does Plausible cost?
Plausible costs about $9/mo (Starter, checked 10/20/2026), which is $90 per year. That’s what you save by replacing it with one prompt.
What do I lose by replacing Plausible?
Honestly: battle-tested bot filtering; fast queries at millions of pageviews; email reports, funnels, goal tracking; GDPR homework done for you. If any of those are load-bearing for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to Plausible?
Yes: Umami (The closest broad substitute: simple traffic analytics, events and goals with your data attached.) Plausible Community Edition (Plausible without the hosted bill; you keep the core dashboard and inherit the Compose stack.) Rybbit (Plausible's core plus replay and funnels, in exchange for a busier dashboard.) All 4 curated free alternatives are at https://viberadar.si/plausible/alternatives. The prompt is for when you want it exactly your way.