Plausible vs Umami

Plausible and Umami are the two names that come up first when you decide to drop Google Analytics for something you host yourself. Both give you clean, cookie-free, privacy-friendly stats from a single lightweight script tag, and both are a joy compared to the GA dashboard. The choice between them is not really about privacy — they are equally good there — it is about how much product you need and how much infrastructure you are willing to run to get it.

The same promise, a different weight class

Umami is the featherweight. It is a Next.js app backed by a single PostgreSQL database, and that is the entire stack. It installs in minutes, runs happily on a 1 GB box, and rates a friendly 2 out of 5 to deploy. The dashboard long since outgrew the essentials — page views, unique visitors, referrers, top pages and devices, but also funnels, retention, journeys and heatmaps — in a fast, clean single-page UI. It is MIT-licensed, which makes it about as unencumbered as self-hosted software gets.

Plausible is the more substantial product. Its Community Edition is an Elixir application that stores events in ClickHouse (with PostgreSQL alongside for app data). ClickHouse is a serious analytics database, and it is what lets Plausible stay fast as your event volume grows. The trade-off is obvious the moment you deploy: this is a multi-container stack with a 2 GB realistic floor and a 3 out of 5 difficulty, and it is AGPL-3.0 licensed.

Reports: the gap ran the other way

This section used to say Plausible bought you depth for its heavier footprint. That is no longer true of the software you can actually self-host, and the correction runs in both directions.

• Plausible Community Edition does not include funnels. Plausible's own self-hosting docs are explicit: "Marketing funnels, user journeys, ecommerce revenue goals, SSO and sites API are not available" in CE — they are Cloud features that fund the project. Running ClickHouse yourself does not unlock them; a subscription does. What CE does give you is the core report set, custom-event goals, UTM and campaign tracking, and genuinely excellent segmentation, backed by a database that stays fast at volume.
• Umami has funnels, and rather more besides. Its funnel report has shipped since v2.3.0, and the MIT build now also carries user journeys, retention, cohorts, goals, revenue, attribution, Web Vitals, custom dashboards, session replay, and — as of v3.2.0 in June 2026 — click and scroll heatmaps, with self-hosted recording and storage supported.

So if funnel analysis is the reason you are choosing, the self-hostable Umami build is the one that has it. Plausible CE remains the better answer when you want a smaller, more opinionated dashboard that everyone on the team can read, and a storage engine sized for real event volume.

Resources and operational cost

The stacks map directly to the spec rows. Umami is app plus one database — one extra service to babysit, one thing to back up, and a memory footprint small enough for the cheapest tier of VPS. Plausible is multi-container by nature: the Elixir app, ClickHouse, and Postgres, each with its own resource appetite and its own data to preserve. ClickHouse in particular likes RAM, and it is the main reason Plausible's floor sits at roughly double Umami's.

Neither is fragile, and both ship official Docker Compose setups. But if your goal is "stand it up, point a script tag at it, and forget it exists," Umami is the one with dramatically less to keep healthy over time.

Which should you self-host?

Pick Umami if…

• You want the lightest possible self-hosted analytics — a single database, a 1 GB box, and a setup you finish in minutes.
• You want funnels, retention, journeys or heatmaps from a self-hosted build — in Plausible those are Cloud-only.
• A permissive MIT license and minimal operational surface matter to you.

Pick Plausible if…

• You want the more opinionated, more polished dashboard, and a ClickHouse backing store that keeps reports fast as event volume grows.
• You are comfortable running ClickHouse alongside Postgres and giving the stack a couple of gigabytes of RAM.
• You do not mind the AGPL license and a multi-container deployment.

Running either on a VPS

Both run fine on a single small server, but the headroom difference is real: Umami is content on a modest box, while Plausible wants roughly double the RAM to keep ClickHouse happy, and it is the one to size up for as your traffic grows. Whichever you pick, back up the database — that is where all your history lives — and expect Plausible to need a bit more attention over time thanks to the extra services. The step-by-step setups are linked below, and any of the VPS options here has plenty of room for the app plus its database.