Simple Analytics

What Is Simple Analytics?

The web analytics industry operates on a premise that most businesses have never questioned: you need to know everything about everyone who visits your website. Where they came from, what they clicked, how long they hovered, which page made them leave, what cohort they belong to, how they compare to visitors from last Tuesday. Google Analytics, the industry standard, tracks over 200 data points per session. Most businesses look at five of them.

Simple Analytics, founded in 2018 in Amsterdam by Adriaan van Rossum, makes a contrarian bet: what if you tracked less, not more? What if the data you actually use — pageviews, referrers, top content, geographic distribution, campaign performance — could be collected without cookies, without personal data, and without the consent banners that have become the web's most ubiquitous annoyance?

The result is a web analytics tool that is radically minimal by design. Simple Analytics collects no personal data. It uses no cookies. It does not fingerprint visitors. It does not track individual user journeys. And because of these design choices, it requires no cookie consent banner under GDPR or the ePrivacy Directive. Your website loads faster, your legal exposure shrinks, and your analytics dashboard shows you exactly what you need to make informed decisions about your content and traffic — nothing more.

This is not analytics for data scientists. This is analytics for founders, marketers, and product teams who want to know whether their blog post performed well, where their traffic comes from, and which pages get the most attention — without building a surveillance infrastructure to get those answers.

Simple Analytics is a bootstrapped Dutch company with a small team operating from Amsterdam. All data is hosted in the Netherlands. The business model is refreshingly straightforward: you pay a monthly fee, you get analytics. There is no free tier subsidised by data monetisation, because there is no data to monetise.

Key Features

Dashboard and Core Metrics

The Simple Analytics dashboard is a single page. There is no multi-tab navigation, no nested menus, no configuration required. You see pageviews, visitors (estimated), referrers, top pages, countries, devices, browsers, and operating systems. The time range is adjustable. That is it.

This simplicity is simultaneously the product's greatest strength and its most common criticism. For teams that have grown accustomed to the depth (and complexity) of Google Analytics, the dashboard feels sparse. For teams that were drowning in GA4's interface and never customising reports anyway, Simple Analytics is a relief. The dashboard loads instantly, the data is immediately comprehensible, and there are no configuration decisions to make.

Event Tracking

Simple Analytics supports custom event tracking through data attributes in your HTML or a lightweight JavaScript API. You can track button clicks, form submissions, downloads, and other interactions without writing complex tracking code. Events appear in the dashboard alongside pageview data.

The event tracking is functional but basic compared to Google Tag Manager or Segment. You cannot build funnels, create event sequences, or trigger events based on complex conditions. For tracking whether people click your call-to-action button, it works. For modelling a multi-step checkout flow, it does not.

Goals and Conversions

Goals can be defined based on pageviews or events, with conversion tracking showing how many visitors completed a desired action. This bridges the gap between pure traffic reporting and basic performance measurement. You can track newsletter signups, product page visits, or download completions without needing a separate conversion tool.

Tweet Tracking

A distinctive feature: Simple Analytics can track tweets that link to your website, showing you social media attribution that most analytics tools miss entirely. When someone tweets a link to your content, it appears in your referral data with the specific tweet identified. For content-driven businesses where social sharing drives traffic, this is genuinely useful.

Automated Reports and Public Dashboards

Automated email reports can be scheduled weekly or monthly, delivering key metrics to your inbox without logging in. Public dashboards allow you to share your analytics with anyone via a public URL — a feature used by open-source projects and transparent startups that want to share their traffic data publicly.

Lightweight Script

The Simple Analytics tracking script is under 5KB — a fraction of the size of Google Analytics (45KB+) or Segment (70KB+). On performance-sensitive websites, this difference is measurable. The script loads asynchronously and does not block page rendering.

Pricing

Simple Analytics does not offer a free tier, and the reasoning is explicit: free analytics tools monetise your data; paid analytics tools serve you. The Starter plan at EUR 9 per month (EUR 7/month annually) covers up to 100,000 pageviews per month with a single user account and email reports.

The Business plan at EUR 49 per month (EUR 39/month annually) extends to 1,000,000 pageviews, 10 users, and priority support. The Enterprise plan at EUR 99 per month (EUR 79/month annually) provides unlimited pageviews, unlimited users, and custom data retention.

For a small business or blog with moderate traffic, EUR 9/month is modest — less than many cookie consent management platforms charge. The value proposition is clearest for businesses where the elimination of consent banners, the reduction in legal complexity, and the performance improvement from a lightweight script collectively outweigh the cost.

For high-traffic sites, the per-pageview pricing scales reasonably. A million-pageview site pays EUR 49/month, which compares favourably to privacy-focused competitors like Fathom Analytics (USD 25/month for 100K pageviews) at higher traffic tiers.

EU Compliance & Privacy

Simple Analytics represents the gold standard for GDPR-compliant web analytics. It collects no personal data, uses no cookies, does not fingerprint visitors, and stores no identifying information. Under GDPR, personal data is defined as any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person — Simple Analytics structurally cannot identify anyone, so there is no personal data to regulate.

The company is registered in Amsterdam, Netherlands, with all data hosted on Dutch servers within the EU. There is no transatlantic data transfer, no third-party data sharing, and no data processing agreement required (because no personal data is processed). Multiple European Data Protection Authorities have confirmed that analytics tools that do not collect personal data do not require consent — making Simple Analytics compliant without any action from the website owner.

For businesses that have struggled with Google Analytics' GDPR compliance (particularly following the Austrian, French, and Italian DPA rulings against GA), Simple Analytics is the simplest path to compliant analytics.

Who It's Best For

Privacy-conscious businesses that want clean, compliant analytics without cookie consent banners or legal complexity.

Content-driven websites — blogs, media sites, documentation sites — where aggregate traffic data is sufficient and individual user tracking is unnecessary.

Developers and technical teams who value a lightweight, fast-loading script and clean API over complex configuration interfaces.

European businesses under regulatory scrutiny that need analytics they can defend to any Data Protection Authority without qualification.

The Verdict

Simple Analytics is not for everyone. If you need conversion funnels, cohort analysis, user-level tracking, or e-commerce attribution, you need a different tool. But Simple Analytics was never designed to compete with Google Analytics on features. It was designed to compete on philosophy: that you can understand your website's performance without surveilling your visitors. For the growing number of businesses that find this proposition compelling — and for any business that has spent time and money managing cookie consent banners — Simple Analytics delivers exactly what it promises, from a European company, with European hosting, under European law. The dashboard may be simple. The compliance advantage is anything but.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Simple Analytics require a cookie consent banner?

No. Simple Analytics does not use cookies and collects no personal data, so no cookie consent banner is required under GDPR or the ePrivacy Directive. This is one of its primary advantages — your website remains clean and legally compliant without consent pop-ups.

How does it work without cookies or tracking?

Simple Analytics counts pageviews without identifying or tracking individual visitors. It does not use cookies, fingerprinting, or any persistent identifier. Visitor counts are estimated using referrer data and time-based heuristics. The trade-off is that individual user journeys cannot be tracked, but aggregate metrics remain accurate.

Can Simple Analytics fully replace Google Analytics?

For basic traffic metrics — pageviews, referrers, top pages, geographic distribution, and campaign tracking — yes. For user-level analysis, conversion funnels, cohort analysis, e-commerce tracking, or audience segmentation, no. Many teams use Simple Analytics as their primary tool and supplement with server-side analytics when deeper analysis is occasionally needed.

Is there a free trial?

Simple Analytics offers a 14-day free trial on all plans without requiring a credit card. This is sufficient to install the script, verify it captures the data you need, and assess whether the minimal dashboard meets your reporting requirements.

How accurate are the visitor counts without cookies?

Visitor counts are estimates rather than precise counts, since Simple Analytics cannot identify unique visitors across sessions. In practice, the counts are directionally accurate and sufficient for trend analysis, content performance comparison, and traffic source evaluation. They should not be compared directly to Google Analytics unique user counts, which use a fundamentally different (cookie-based) methodology.