Plausible Analytics is a privacy focused, open source web analytics service presented as a lighter alternative to Google Analytics. Uku Taht started it in December 2018 and launched it in 2019 together with Marko Saric. It is self funded and supported by subscriptions.
What it is
The product counts visits without cookies and without collecting personal data such as IP addresses. The software is open source under the AGPLv3 license and written in Elixir, and it can be used as a paid cloud service or self hosted. The company describes itself as developed and hosted in the European Union.
History
Taht built the first version alone over a couple of months in early 2019 and shared the process publicly. Saric, who had been writing about ethical alternatives to Google’s tools, joined to run marketing and community. In an October 2020 interview with Failory, Saric gave the figures of that moment as 4,105 dollars in monthly recurring revenue, 657 paying subscribers and 3,638 websites. He said growth came from content marketing and community, with no paid advertising.
TechCrunch called it the fastest growing open source startup in October 2020. In June 2022 Saric published a post on reaching one million dollars in annual recurring revenue. According to Wikipedia, in June 2025 it reportedly tracked more than 173 billion pageviews across about 503,000 websites.
Why it matters to founders
Plausible is a clear example of a small, bootstrapped team competing with a giant by taking a principled position and publishing its progress. See Bootstrapping and Build in public.
Related entries
See Marko Saric, Plausible Analytics, Umami and Bootstrapping.
Plausible Analytics is part of Tools and stack.
Sources
Wikipedia entry for Plausible Analytics and Failory interview with Marko Saric, October 2020. The 2020 figures were stated by Saric. Reviewed October 2026.
