Matomo vs Plausible is the first fork most teams hit when they leave Google Analytics for something privacy-first, and Piwik PRO usually joins the shortlist once legal or compliance gets involved. All three keep data in the EU, all three sell on privacy, and all three cost more than GA4’s free tier. Past that, they are built for very different buyers.
We read each vendor’s pricing page, product pages and data policy on November 1, 2026, ran Plausible’s pricing slider at every traffic band, and pulled Matomo Cloud’s full price ladder from its pricing page. Below: what each tool really costs, what you get for the money, and which one fits your team. If you are still comparing the wider market, our GA4 alternatives guide covers more options.
TLDR
- Cheapest and simplest: Plausible starts at $9 a month for 10K pageviews, uses no cookies and needs no consent banner (Plausible pricing).
- Most features per dollar at low traffic: Matomo Cloud starts at $26 (EUR 22) a month for 50K hits with heatmaps, session recording, A/B testing and funnels included (Matomo pricing).
- Only free option: Matomo On-Premise is free to self-host. You pay for servers and upkeep instead.
- Compliance-heavy teams: Piwik PRO Business starts at EUR 36 a month for up to 2M actions, bundles a consent manager and tag manager, and Enterprise (from EUR 366 a month) adds US HIPAA hosting and a BAA (Piwik PRO pricing).
- Watch the meter. Plausible counts pageviews, Matomo counts hits and Piwik PRO counts actions. Compare the unit before you compare the price.
In this guide
Matomo vs Plausible vs Piwik PRO at a glance
All prices are list prices from each vendor’s own page, billed monthly unless noted, read on November 1, 2026. Matomo publishes euro and US dollar prices; Piwik PRO lists euros.
| Plausible | Matomo | Piwik PRO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Content sites, SaaS marketing sites, small teams that want simple, consent-free stats | Teams that want GA-style depth plus heatmaps and A/B tests, or a free self-hosted option | Regulated industries that need consent management, tag management and enterprise hosting |
| Entry price | $9 a month (10K pageviews, 1 site) | $26 (EUR 22) a month (50K hits) or free self-hosted | EUR 36 a month (Business, up to 2M actions) |
| Billing unit | Pageviews | Hits | Actions |
| Free plan | No (30-day free trial) | Yes, On-Premise | No (30-day free trial on Business) |
| Hosting | EU, European-owned infrastructure | Cloud in Frankfurt, or your own servers | Sweden on Business; EU, US HIPAA Azure, public or private cloud on Enterprise |
| Cookies and consent | No cookies, no personal data, no banner needed | Configurable, including cookieless tracking | Built-in consent manager; anonymous tracking when users decline |
| Data retention | No retention limit | 24 months raw data, reports kept forever (Cloud) | 25 months, more on Enterprise |
| Heatmaps, A/B tests | No | Yes, included in Cloud | Not listed on the Business plan |
| Tag manager | No | Yes (Matomo Tag Manager) | Yes |
Pricing compared: what you pay at each traffic level
This is where the three tools split most clearly. Plausible publishes every tier. Matomo publishes every Cloud tier up to 100 million hits. Piwik PRO publishes a floor for each plan and quotes the rest.
Plausible pricing
Plausible has three self-serve plans, Starter, Growth and Business, priced by monthly pageviews. Yearly billing gives two months free. Every plan has a 30-day free trial with no credit card (Plausible pricing).
| Monthly pageviews | Starter (1 site) | Growth (3 sites, 3 members) | Business (10 sites, 10 members) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10K | $9 | $14 | $19 |
| 100K | $19 | $29 | $39 |
| 200K | $29 | $44 | $59 |
| 500K | $49 | $74 | $99 |
| 1M | $69 | $104 | $139 |
| 2M | $89 | $134 | $179 |
| 5M | $129 | $194 | $259 |
| 10M | $169 | $254 | $339 |
| 10M+ | Custom | Custom | Custom |
The plan decides features, not just limits. Starter covers goals, custom events, Google Analytics import, saved segments and email or Slack reports. Growth adds team management, shared links and embedded dashboards. Business is the tier most marketing teams end up on, because it adds funnels and user journeys, ecommerce revenue attribution, custom properties, a Looker Studio (Data Studio) connector and the Stats API at 600 requests an hour. Enterprise is quote-only and adds single sign-on, a managed proxy and scheduled raw event data exports.
Matomo pricing
Matomo sells two ways. Matomo On-Premise is free open-source software you install on your own servers. Matomo Cloud is the hosted version, priced by monthly hits, with a free trial and no credit card (Matomo pricing).
| Monthly hits | Matomo Cloud (USD) | Matomo Cloud (EUR) |
|---|---|---|
| 50K | $26 | EUR 22 |
| 100K | $42 | EUR 38 |
| 300K | $85 | EUR 75 |
| 600K | $139 | EUR 118 |
| 1M | $204 | EUR 172 |
| 2M | $399 | EUR 334 |
| 5M | $975 | EUR 822 |
| 10M | $1,900 | EUR 1,600 |
| Above 10M | Up to $17,900 at 100M, then custom | Up to EUR 14,850 at 100M, then custom |
Matomo Cloud plans include up to 30 websites, 24 months of raw data, reports kept forever, funnels, users flow, heatmaps and session recording (1,500 heatmap pageviews a month at the 50K tier), A/B testing and an all-websites dashboard. Annual billing gives two months free. Data is stored in Frankfurt, Germany.
On-Premise is free at its core, but Matomo now sells paid On-Premise bundles for teams that want premium plugins and support: Team from EUR 230 a month, Business from EUR 1,209 a month and Enterprise from EUR 2,834 a month, with a custom VIP tier above that. If you self-host for free, budget for the server, database tuning, updates and security patching yourself. Matomo’s homepage was carrying a PHP security advisory for self-hosted users on the day we checked, which is a fair reminder of that upkeep.
Piwik PRO pricing
Piwik PRO has two plans. Business starts at EUR 36 a month and covers up to 2M monthly actions across up to 20 domains, with 25 months of data retention, EU-operated hosting in Sweden and a 30-day free trial with no credit card. Enterprise starts at EUR 366 a month billed annually and comes in three tiers: Data Fundamentals, Trusted Insights and Secure Intelligence (Piwik PRO pricing).
| Business | Data Fundamentals | Trusted Insights | Secure Intelligence | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly actions | Up to 2M | 1M to 100M | 1M to 500M | From 2M, no upper limit |
| Data Activation profiles | 300 a month | 1,000 a month | 4,000 a month | Unlimited |
| Custom reports per website | 50 | 75 | 150 | Unlimited |
| Real-time lookback | 30 minutes | 2 hours | 12 hours | 24 hours |
| Retention | 25 months | 25 months or more | 25 months or more | 25 months or more |
Every Piwik PRO plan includes four modules: Analytics, Tag Manager, Data Activation and a consent management platform. Raw data is available through the API only. Enterprise adds dedicated support, global hosting options including US HIPAA-compliant Azure, and a business associate agreement (BAA) for healthcare. Piwik PRO’s pricing FAQ says subscriptions are billed annually in advance and that prices rise 4% a year at renewal, so model year two and three before you sign.
One correction to older comparisons: several ranking pages still describe a free Piwik PRO “Core” plan. The current pricing page lists no free plan, only the Business trial and Enterprise.
At 100K a month, Plausible Business and Matomo Cloud cost almost the same ($39 vs $42). The gap opens fast after that: at 10M, Plausible Business is $339 a month and Matomo Cloud is $1,900. Two caveats keep that from being a clean win for Plausible. Matomo counts hits, which include events and other tracked actions, while Plausible’s meter is pageviews, and Matomo’s price includes heatmaps, session recording and A/B testing that Plausible does not offer at all.
Plausible: the lightweight, consent-free option
Plausible is built around one idea: collect only what you need, without cookies or personal data, so you do not need a consent banner. Its data policy says it does not use cookies, never stores raw IP addresses and does not track visitors across sites or devices (Plausible data policy). Data is processed on servers owned by European companies.
The script is small. Plausible says it is 54 times smaller than the Google Analytics script, which matters for Core Web Vitals on content-heavy sites. The dashboard is one page, readable by anyone on the team without training.
Where it fits: marketing sites, blogs, documentation and SaaS sites that need traffic, sources, goals and conversions, not user-level analysis. Plausible’s code is open source (GitHub), so you can self-host if you outgrow the cloud plans.
Where it falls short: no heatmaps, no session recording, no A/B testing and no user-level journeys. Funnels and revenue attribution are Business-only. If product or growth teams need cohort and retention analysis, pair it with a tool from our product analytics tools list.
Matomo: the closest thing to Google Analytics you can own
Matomo, formerly Piwik, is the most complete of the three. Reports will feel familiar to GA users: acquisition, behaviour, goals, ecommerce, custom dimensions and segments. Matomo says it is used by over one million organisations, and its homepage claims that common analytics tools can miss up to 40% of traffic, which is the case it makes for consent-light tracking (Matomo).
The Cloud plans fold in tools other vendors sell separately: heatmaps, session recording, A/B testing, funnels, users flow and a tag manager. You keep 100% data ownership in both versions, and On-Premise lets you pick the country your data lives in.
Where it fits: teams leaving GA4 that want similar depth without Google, agencies managing many sites (30 websites on Cloud) and organisations that must self-host for policy reasons.
Where it falls short: the interface is busier than Plausible’s, cookieless tracking needs configuration, and Cloud gets expensive above a few million hits a month. Self-hosting at scale needs real engineering time. If you mostly need executive reporting across channels, a marketing dashboard tool on top may serve leadership better than more analytics seats.
Piwik PRO: compliance first, enterprise ready
Piwik PRO split from the Piwik project years ago and now targets regulated sectors: healthcare, banking, government and energy. Its pitch is full-fidelity data inside strict compliance. Analytics, Tag Manager, Data Activation and a consent manager share one data model, and anonymous tracking keeps collecting visit data when users decline cookies. Piwik PRO quotes one agency consultant who saw four times more traffic after switching on anonymous tracking (Piwik PRO pricing).
Where it fits: healthcare marketers who need a BAA and US HIPAA hosting, banks and public bodies with strict data residency rules, and teams that want consent and analytics from one vendor instead of stitching a separate consent management platform onto their analytics.
Where it falls short: pricing above the Business floor is quote-only, raw data is API-only, and real-time lookback on Business is 30 minutes. Business has no published A/B testing or heatmaps, so expect to add tools for those.
Feature comparison
| Capability | Plausible | Matomo | Piwik PRO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cookieless by default | Yes | Optional setting | Anonymous mode when consent is declined |
| Consent manager included | Not needed | No | Yes |
| Tag manager | No | Yes | Yes |
| Funnels | Business plan | Yes | Yes |
| Ecommerce and revenue | Business plan | Yes | Yes |
| Heatmaps and session recording | No | Yes, on Cloud | Not listed on Business |
| A/B testing | No | Yes, on Cloud | Not listed on Business |
| Google Analytics import | Yes | Yes | Not listed on pricing page |
| API access | Stats API, 600 requests an hour (Business) | Full reporting API | Raw data via API |
| Self-hosting | Yes, open source | Yes, free On-Premise | Private cloud on Enterprise |
| HIPAA and BAA | No | Self-host to control it | Yes, Enterprise |
Read “No” as “not offered on the plan pages we checked”, not as a permanent gap. All three ship updates often, so confirm anything critical in a trial.
Which one should you choose?
- Choose Plausible if you want accurate traffic and conversion data on marketing sites, no cookie banner, and a bill under $100 a month for most sites under 500K pageviews.
- Choose Matomo Cloud if you need GA-level reporting plus heatmaps, session recording and A/B testing in one tool, and your traffic sits under roughly 2M hits a month where Cloud stays affordable.
- Choose Matomo On-Premise if policy requires self-hosting, or if you have the engineering capacity and traffic high enough that Cloud pricing hurts.
- Choose Piwik PRO if you are in healthcare, finance or the public sector, need a consent manager and tag manager from the same vendor, or need US HIPAA hosting with a BAA.
A common pattern on B2B SaaS sites is Plausible for the marketing site and a product analytics tool inside the app. Another is Matomo for teams that want one system for marketing and UX research. Piwik PRO tends to win when procurement and legal sign off on the shortlist.
Frequently asked questions about Matomo vs Plausible vs Piwik PRO
Is Matomo or Plausible better?
Plausible is better for simple, consent-free traffic and conversion tracking with almost no setup. Matomo is better if you need Google Analytics-style depth, heatmaps, session recording, A/B testing or self-hosting. At 100K monthly traffic they cost about the same: $39 for Plausible Business and $42 for Matomo Cloud.
How much does Plausible cost?
Plausible starts at $9 a month for 10K pageviews on the Starter plan. Growth starts at $14 and Business at $19. At 1M pageviews the plans cost $69, $104 and $139 a month. Yearly billing gives two months free, and above 10M pageviews pricing is custom.
How much does Matomo cost?
Matomo On-Premise is free to self-host. Matomo Cloud starts at $26 (EUR 22) a month for 50K hits, $42 for 100K, $204 for 1M and $1,900 for 10M hits, with two months free on annual billing. Paid On-Premise bundles start at EUR 230 a month.
How much does Piwik PRO cost?
Piwik PRO Business starts at EUR 36 a month for up to 2M monthly actions across 20 domains, with a 30-day free trial. Enterprise starts at EUR 366 a month billed annually and is quoted by tier: Data Fundamentals, Trusted Insights or Secure Intelligence.
Does Piwik PRO still have a free plan?
No. Piwik PRO’s current pricing page lists only the Business plan, with a 30-day free trial, and Enterprise. Older articles that mention a free Core plan are out of date.
Do I need a cookie banner with Plausible, Matomo or Piwik PRO?
Plausible uses no cookies and collects no personal data, so it says no consent banner is needed. Matomo can run without cookies if you configure it that way. Piwik PRO includes its own consent manager and can track anonymously when visitors decline cookies. Confirm your setup with your legal team.
Which is the most HIPAA-friendly option?
Piwik PRO Enterprise is the only one of the three that offers US HIPAA-compliant Azure hosting and will sign a business associate agreement. Self-hosted Matomo can also work for healthcare because you control the servers, but compliance is then your responsibility.
Can I import Google Analytics data into these tools?
Plausible lists Google Analytics import on every plan. Matomo offers a Google Analytics importer as well. Piwik PRO does not list an import on its pricing page, so ask during the trial if historical data matters.
The verdict
Plausible wins on simplicity and price: no cookies, no banner, one-page reports and $19 to $139 a month for most mid-sized sites on Business. Matomo wins on depth: the only one of the three with heatmaps, session recording and A/B testing included, plus a genuinely free self-hosted version. Piwik PRO wins on compliance: consent, tags and analytics from one vendor, with HIPAA hosting and a BAA on Enterprise.
Start a trial of the two that fit your team, run them side by side for two weeks, and compare the numbers against your current setup before you sign. For more options beyond these three, see our full GA4 alternatives comparison.
