# GoatCounter

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/analytics/goatcounter/

Open-source web analytics offered as a free, donation-supported hosted service or a self-hosted app, with a roughly 3.5 KB script and no cookies.

## Who it suits

A personal site or a small business that wants real analytics and no bill. The hosted service is free for what GoatCounter calls reasonable public usage, the script is around 3.5 KB, and there is a JavaScript-free tracking-pixel option.

Consider something else if The traffic is serious or the dependency is. There is no paid tier to escalate to and no commitment behind the hosted service — GoatCounter's own answer to heavy use is to self-host, which is a different job from paying someone.

## What the documentation says

### Pricing

- Free tier: Yes ([source](https://www.goatcounter.com/), read 2026-09-15)
- What the free plan includes: Reasonable public usage, defined by example rather than by number: a personal site or a small-to-medium business is fine, millions of pageviews a day is not. ([source](https://www.goatcounter.com/), read 2026-09-15)
- Entry paid plan: None. The hosted service is free for what GoatCounter calls reasonable public usage and funded by donations; beyond that the answer is to self-host rather than to pay. ([source](https://www.goatcounter.com/), read 2026-09-15)

### Limits

- Sites or apps included: Not stated as a number. The hosted service is bounded by what GoatCounter calls reasonable public usage rather than by a site count, and the self-hosted app has no such limit at all. ([source](https://www.goatcounter.com/), read 2026-09-15)

### Observability

- Self-hostable: Supported ([source](https://www.goatcounter.com/), read 2026-09-15)

### Compliance

- Works without cookies: Supported ([source](https://www.goatcounter.com/), read 2026-09-15)

## Compared with

- [GoatCounter vs Plausible Analytics](https://inetgeek.com/compare/plausible-vs-goatcounter/)