Umami's open-source, cookieless model is genuinely good. Running the Node app and the database yourself is the part nobody mentions in the "best analytics" lists. Here's what that actually costs, and six alternatives to weigh against it.
Umami is legitimately solid: MIT-licensed open source, cookieless, custom events, multiple sites, a clean dashboard. The catch isn't the software — it's that self-hosting means you're running a Node.js app and a PostgreSQL or MySQL database, on your own server, indefinitely.
If you're migrating off self-hosted Umami, skip to the six-step how-to below — export first, run both tools in parallel for a week, then decommission.
It's worth being specific here, because a lot of "alternatives" pages quietly trash the thing they're trying to replace. Umami doesn't deserve that. It's MIT-licensed, open source, and actively maintained — you can read every line of the tracker and the dashboard, fork it, and audit exactly what it does with visitor data.
Self-hosted, Umami is a Node.js application backed by PostgreSQL or MySQL. You deploy it on your own infrastructure, point your sites at your own tracking endpoint, and the data never leaves a server you control. That's a genuinely strong pitch for anyone who needs data residency or just doesn't want a third party holding their analytics.
It's also cookieless by design, supports custom events alongside standard pageviews, handles multiple websites under one account, and the dashboard itself is clean — visitors, referrers, top pages, events, without the sprawl of a GA-style tool. For teams who compared cookieless analytics tools and landed on Umami specifically for the open-source angle, that reasoning holds up. And if self-hosting isn't your thing, Umami itself offers Umami Cloud, a hosted version of the same product — so "I like Umami but don't want a server" doesn't necessarily mean leaving the product, just the self-hosted deployment. Check current pricing for what Umami Cloud's plans and limits look like today.
Here's the part that "free and open source" doesn't capture. Self-hosting Umami means you now own an ops job, not just an analytics dashboard. None of the following is a knock on Umami's code — it's just what self-hosting any database-backed app entails.
A server, indefinitely. Umami needs somewhere to run: a VPS or container host, sized for your traffic, that you pay for and manage every month for as long as the site exists.
Upgrades. New Umami releases, Node.js version bumps, and security patches to the underlying OS and database don't apply themselves. Skip them long enough and you're running unpatched software facing the public internet.
Database backups. Your entire pageview and event history lives in one PostgreSQL or MySQL instance. A bad migration, a full disk, or a botched restore can erase months of data — unless you've built and tested a backup routine yourself.
Uptime. If the server goes down, the tracking script's requests fail silently. Visitors keep browsing your site; you just stop seeing them. Nothing alerts you unless you've wired up your own monitoring.
Being the on-call. When any of the above breaks at an inconvenient hour, there's no support ticket to file — you're the one who fixes it. That's the real trade you're making for MIT-licensed, self-owned code: control in exchange for ongoing labor.
Every row below is a well-established fact about how each tool is built and sold, not a guess. Where pricing specifics vary by plan or change over time, we say "check current pricing" rather than invent a number.
| Tool | Open source | Self-host / hosted | Cookieless | Custom events | Raw export | Pricing model |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Umami | Yes (MIT) | Both — self-host, or Umami Cloud | Yes | Yes | Full DB access if self-hosted; check current Umami Cloud details | Free to self-host (infra cost only); Umami Cloud paid — check current pricing |
| GhostMetrics | No | Hosted only | Yes | Yes | Yes, every plan (CSV or API) | Free (1 site); Pro $9.99/mo flat |
| Plausible | Yes | Both — self-host, or hosted | Yes | Yes | Check current plan details | Paid hosted plans; free if self-hosted (infra cost only) — check current pricing |
| Fathom | No | Hosted only | Yes | Yes | Check current plan details | Paid, no free tier — check current pricing |
| Matomo | Yes | Both — self-host, or hosted | Configurable | Yes | Yes (long-standing API/export) | Free to self-host (infra cost only); paid hosted plans — check current pricing |
| Simple Analytics | No | Hosted only | Yes | Yes | Yes (CSV/API) | Paid subscription — check current pricing |
| Cloudflare Web Analytics | No | Hosted only | Yes | No | No / limited | Free |
A few notes worth reading before you pick a row. Plausible is the closest philosophical match to Umami — open source, cookieless, with the same self-host-or-hosted choice — we cover it in more depth in our Plausible alternatives piece if you're weighing that route too. Matomo trades simplicity for GA-style depth and is the most configurable of the group, at the cost of a heavier install. Fathom and Simple Analytics are both hosted-only, no self-host option at all, which is the opposite trade-off from Umami. Cloudflare Web Analytics is free but the most limited — no custom events, minimal export — fine as a backstop, not a replacement for a real dashboard. And GhostMetrics — ours, full disclosure — is built specifically for the "I don't want to think about infrastructure" end of this table: one script, no server, no database, ever.
If you've decided the ops burden isn't worth it, don't just rip Umami out. Run the switch as a controlled parallel test so you never lose historical continuity or discover a tracking gap after the fact.
<head> without removing Umami's tracker yet. Both should be live and firing at the same time.The whole point of running both in parallel is that you're never flying blind for even a day — you always have Umami's numbers as a sanity check until you trust the replacement.
None of this is an argument that everyone should abandon self-hosted Umami. Some requirements only Umami — or another open-source, self-hostable tool — can satisfy.
Data residency and infrastructure control. If your organization's policy requires analytics data to live on infrastructure you own or a specific jurisdiction you control directly, self-hosting is the only way to guarantee that. A hosted vendor, however privacy-conscious, is still a third party holding the data.
Open-source as a non-negotiable. If your team or your compliance process requires auditable, license-inspectable software with no closed-source components, Umami's MIT license is a real answer that no hosted, closed-source product — including GhostMetrics — can match. Plausible and Matomo qualify on the same grounds if Umami specifically isn't the fit. For a broader look at privacy-first options across both self-hosted and hosted categories, our privacy-friendly analytics roundup lays out the full field.
You already have the ops capacity. If your team already runs other self-hosted services with established patching, backup, and monitoring routines, adding one more Node.js app to that rotation is a marginal cost, not a new burden. In that case, the "honest cost" section above is a cost you've already paid for other tools.
GhostMetrics is cookieless web analytics with no server, no database, and no upgrades to run — we dogfood it on this site. Install one script tag and you're live; there's no plugin, no tag manager, no build step. The free plan is free forever: one site, unlimited pageviews, real-time dashboard, every view, full history.
Need more than one site or a public shareable dashboard? Pro is $9.99/mo flat, unlimited pageviews, unlimited websites, with a 30-day free trial — a card starts the trial, nothing is charged for 30 days, and you can cancel anytime. Raw event export as CSV or JSON is available on every plan, including free — you're never locked out of your own data. Custom events work two ways: add data-gm-event="signup-click" to any element, or call window.ghostmetrics.track('name', { section: 'pricing' }) from code.
Disclosure: GhostMetrics is built by Null Agency and we use it on this site, so we're not a neutral party about our own product — we've kept the claims to what the free and paid plans actually do, and pointed to Umami and other open-source, self-hostable tools where they genuinely fit better. Pricing for third-party products can change; always check the vendor's current pricing page before deciding.