Rybbit vs Plausible

Rybbit and Plausible are the two picks in this hub that most people will shortlist together: both are cookieless, both are AGPL-3.0, both run on ClickHouse + PostgreSQL and both put 2 GB of RAM on the box before you store a pageview. The difference is what the dashboard is for. Plausible is the proven privacy-first report that replaced Google Analytics for a generation of self-hosters; Rybbit is the newer project that keeps the same privacy posture and adds the layer GA's free tier never had — sessions, funnels, retention, user journeys and session replays.

Same privacy posture, different depth

Plausible is a single, deliberately simple dashboard: visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, referrers, top pages, countries, devices, goals. That restraint is the product. It has been the default answer to "cookieless GA replacement" for years. Its Community Edition is the self-hostable build, and it is narrower than the cloud service: funnels, user journeys and revenue goals are Cloud features that CE does not include.

Rybbit describes itself as "the modern open source and privacy friendly alternative to Google Analytics", and its README lists what that means: sessions, unique users, pageviews, bounce rate and session duration; session replays; customizable goals, retention, user journeys and funnels; filtering across 15+ dimensions; custom events with JSON properties; country → region → city location with map visualizations; a real-time dashboard; organizations with an unlimited number of sites. That is a product-analytics feature set on a web-analytics footprint.

Setup: a domain is not optional for Rybbit

Both rate a modest difficulty, but the shapes differ.

• Plausible CE is the classic clone-the-compose-file install: generate a SECRET_KEY_BASE, set BASE_URL, docker compose up -d, reach it on port 8000. Its README documents BASE_URL=http://localhost:8000 for evaluating locally, and says production needs an actual domain with a DNS entry for Let's Encrypt — so the domain comes later, not first.
• Rybbit ships a setup.sh that takes your domain name, writes .env (including a generated BETTER_AUTH_SECRET), and starts Caddy, ClickHouse, PostgreSQL, Redis, the backend and the client. The docs are explicit: "You'll need a domain or subdomain … pointed to your VPS's IP address. HTTPS is required because browsers block tracking scripts served over insecure HTTP." Caddy obtains the certificate for you. If ports 80/443 already belong to your own proxy, --no-webserver exposes the backend on 3001 and the client on 3002 instead.

Rybbit's docs also note the install was tested on Ubuntu 24 LTS and that an ARM server must be at least ARMv8.2-A for ClickHouse.

Footprint

Both are 2 GB machines: Rybbit's docs say "try to get one with at least 2GB of RAM", and Plausible's stack (Elixir app, ClickHouse, PostgreSQL) lands on the same figure on our page. Rybbit adds Redis and Caddy to the container count, so it is the slightly busier box, but on an entry-tier VPS the two cost the same to run.

Maturity

Plausible has years of production use behind it and a company whose business depends on the software staying boring. Rybbit is the newer, faster-moving project — a real consideration if you want a dashboard you never think about again. One detail to know: Web Vitals is cloud-only in practice. Rybbit's README marks it "Only available on paid tiers", and the self-hosted build hides the Performance page and its toggle, even though the docs' self-hosted-vs-cloud table still ticks it.

Pick Rybbit if…

• You want funnels, retention, user journeys or session replays from your analytics, not just the traffic report.
• You have a sub-domain to point at the server and are happy for Caddy to handle HTTPS — or already run a proxy and will use --no-webserver.
• Custom events with properties and 15+ filter dimensions matter to how you use analytics.

Pick Plausible if…

• You want the simplest possible dashboard and would rather not have features you will not use.
• You value a long production track record over a faster roadmap.
• You want to evaluate on localhost before committing a domain.

The honest trade-off

Rybbit wins this comparison for most self-hosters because it gives the same cookieless, AGPL-3.0, 2 GB deal as Plausible and adds the sessions, funnels and replays people otherwise reach for a second tool to get — for the price of needing a real domain on day one. Plausible remains the better pick if simplicity is the feature: it is the proven, minimal report, and nothing in Rybbit's extra depth helps a site that only wants to know how it is doing.