Simple Analytics
Simple Analytics is a privacy-first web analytics tool from Amsterdam that measures traffic without cookies, IP addresses or visitor identifiers, so no consent banner is needed. Data stays in the EU, and results feed dashboards, APIs and BI tools.
What is Simple Analytics?
Simple Analytics is a web analytics service built on a deliberate constraint: it measures websites without ever identifying the people who visit them. There are no cookies, no local or session storage, no visitor IDs, no fingerprinting and no cross-site or cross-device tracking. IP addresses are dropped from every request rather than stored or hashed, and a visitor's country is inferred from the browser time zone instead of the IP. Because nothing personal is processed, the vendor argues that no consent banner is required at all.
That constraint is also the commercial argument. Consent-based tools only see the visitors who accept tracking; the homepage puts that at roughly 55% and claims that 20-60% of traffic goes missing in most setups, resurfacing as Direct, Unassigned or not set. Simple Analytics positions itself either as a replacement for Google Analytics or, increasingly, as a cookieless layer running alongside GA4 so teams can compare what was reported against what actually reached the site.
What it records is deliberately narrow: page views, unique visits derived from the referrer rather than a cookie, referrers, UTM parameters, screen and viewport dimensions, device language, time on page, scroll depth and an anonymised user agent with version numbers truncated. Query strings and URL fragments are stripped, and utm_term is dropped because it can carry user data. The trade-off is stated plainly by the vendor itself: less depth than GA4, and geography limited to country level.
Around the one-page dashboard sit filters, event tracking, goals and multi-step funnels, email reports, embeddable charts, annotations, bot filtering and referral-spam removal. An AI assistant answers plain-English questions about your traffic and returns charts. Three APIs (Stats, Export/Raw Data and Management) with API-key authentication feed Looker Studio, Power BI, CloudQuery and data warehouses, with CSV and JSON exports and no size limit.
The tracking script is under 5 KB and installs through a tag, a CMS, a framework plugin or Google Tag Manager. The publisher is Simple Analytics B.V., a three-person, self-funded company in Amsterdam; analytics data is processed in the Netherlands and every named subprocessor is EU-based.
What it does
- Measure page views, events, referrers and campaigns without cookies or consent banners
- Recover the 20-60% of traffic that consent banners and ad-blockers hide from consent-based tools
- Run a cookieless layer beside GA4 and compare reported traffic with observed traffic
- Track goals and build multi-step funnels to see where visitors drop off
- Query your own traffic in plain English through the built-in AI assistant
- Export raw data to a warehouse, Looker Studio or Power BI through the APIs
- Filter by country, referrer, UTM, device and browser, with wildcard support
When to use Simple Analytics / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Simple Analytics is the right fit.
When to use Simple Analytics
- European teams under GDPR and ePrivacy rules that want real measurement without a consent banner
- Analysts who need a cookieless baseline running next to GA4 to see the traffic consent tools miss
- Agencies, enterprise teams and white-label partners reporting on client or multi-brand websites
- Data and engineering teams piping traffic into a warehouse, Looker Studio or Power BI via the APIs
- Indie makers and hobby site owners, who get a permanent free tier for one user and five websites
When not to use Simple Analytics
- Anyone needing individual-level tracking: there are no visitor profiles, user IDs or cross-device journeys
- Teams that require city or region granularity, since geography stops at country and is derived from time zone
- Marketers dependent on deep GA4-style attribution and audience modelling, which the vendor openly does not match
- Sites needing long history on a zero budget, as the free plan keeps only 30 days and mandates a visible badge
- Buyers who require a vendor-published DPA or a completed SOC 2 report today, rather than one still in progress
How to use Simple Analytics
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create an account from the signup page; a 14-day trial starts with no credit card required
- Add the tracking script to your site, or install through your platform of choice
- Use the official WordPress plugin, the Netlify extension, or code injection on Webflow, Squarespace, Wix or Ghost
- Developers can use the framework guides for Next.js, Nuxt.js, React, Vue, Gatsby, Hugo, Astro or Django
- Alternatively deploy the script through a Google Tag Manager container
- Import your historical Google Analytics data so reporting does not restart from zero
- Open the one-page dashboard, which needs no configuration, and start filtering
- Define events, goals and funnels for the actions that matter to your business
- Optionally serve the script from your own subdomain to bypass ad-blockers, and install the browser extension to exclude your own visits
- Connect the APIs or scheduled exports to your BI stack, warehouse or email reports
Pros & Cons
Pros
- No consent banner needed, so measurement covers visitors that consent-based tools lose
- EU jurisdiction throughout: Dutch publisher, analytics data in the Netherlands, EU-only named subprocessors
- Very light footprint, with a tracking script under 5 KB
- Fast installation across a wide range of CMSs, frameworks and Google Tag Manager
- Complete APIs with unlimited raw export, plus Looker Studio, Power BI and warehouse connectors
- A genuinely permanent free plan alongside a 14-day full-feature trial with no credit card
- Publicly dated subprocessor list and clear, itemised documentation of what is and is not collected
Cons
- Less analytical depth than GA4, which the vendor itself concedes
- Geography stops at country level and is derived from time zone, so some visitors can be misattributed
- The free plan keeps only 30 days of history and requires a visible badge on your site
- Pricing scales with page views, and each additional user adds €20 per month
- SOC 2 Type II is described as in progress, not achieved
- No contact email address is published anywhere; support runs through a form only
- Legal documents date from January 2021 and the privacy policy still describes a sole proprietorship in Bussum rather than the Amsterdam B.V. named in the terms
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free plan is available, covering one user, five websites and 30 days of history in exchange for displaying a badge. The lowest paid entry point is €20 per month for 100,000 page views on monthly billing, with the price scaling as traffic grows up to 2.5 million page views. Annual billing grants two months free, and each additional user costs a further €20 per month. A 14-day free trial with no credit card precedes any paid plan. Enterprise pricing is not published and is arranged on request.
- €0
- one user
- five websites
- 30 days of history
- Simple Analytics badge required
- from €20 per month for 100
- 000 page views
- one user included
- additional users €20 per month
- two months free on annual billing
- price on request
- adding single sign-on
- role-based access
- an SLA
- SOC 2 support
- contract reviews
- priority support
- a data proxy and manual invoicing
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Simple Analytics handles your data.
GDPR overview
Simple Analytics claims full GDPR compliance and builds its whole product around avoiding personal data, which it argues removes most obligations around consent, lawful basis and data subject requests. It cites the GDPR, the ePrivacy Directive, the UK GDPR and PECR, and invokes privacy by design and by default under Article 25. It takes the position that customers are not controllers and it is not a processor of personal data, so controller-processor agreements are generally unnecessary. The publisher is a Dutch company under Dutch and EU law, supervised by the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens. Its privacy policy, version 2, is dated 21 January 2021 and lists access, rectification, objection, portability, automated-decision and withdrawal rights. No Article 27 representative is designated, which is consistent with an EU-established publisher.
Who owns the data?
The customer owns the data. The terms state that the client's data remains the client's property at all times, and the security page repeats that you retain full ownership. Simple Analytics commits to not selling or sharing analytics data with third parties, and says even its infrastructure providers cannot read it in plain form, since data is encrypted and only Simple Analytics holds the decryption keys. Access on the vendor side is restricted to a small number of core team members. Data may still be passed to the subprocessors needed to run the service, each of them named publicly and covered by a processing agreement. Intellectual property in the platform itself stays with Simple Analytics.
Reuse rights
Customers can reuse their own analytics data freely, without asking permission. Export is available at any time from the dashboard as CSV, or programmatically through the Stats, Export and Management APIs in JSON or CSV, with real-time streaming straight from the database and no cap on export size. Public websites can even be queried without authentication. That data is routinely pushed into Looker Studio, Power BI, Chartbrew, CloudQuery and data warehouses, or embedded as live charts on the customer's own site. The material being reused is aggregated and non-personal by design, which is precisely what makes redistributing it straightforward. What customers may not do is copy or republish Simple Analytics' own platform, documentation or materials, and logins are personal and may not be shared.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Analytics data is processed and stored in the Netherlands, within the European Union, and Simple Analytics states there are no transfers to the United States or other third countries. The company is Dutch and operates under Dutch and EU law, with the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens as supervisory authority. Its subprocessor list, last updated on 1 May 2026, is EU-only: Worldstream and Leaseweb for infrastructure hosting in the Netherlands, Hetzner for infrastructure hosting in Germany, Intention for domain services, Bunny for CDN and DNS in Slovenia, and Hyperping for uptime monitoring in France. Where those providers touch IP addresses, it is only to deliver infrastructure services such as DDoS protection. Cloudflare is used for CDN and DDoS protection alone, with no analytics data stored outside the EU. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, backups are encrypted, and the resolved server IP sits with WorldStream in the Netherlands. Note one tension worth checking: the pricing FAQ says data never leaves the Netherlands, while the subprocessor list includes infrastructure hosting in Germany.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Simple Analytics.
- The free plan requires a visible badge on your site and caps history at 30 days, after which older data is deleted for good
- Exceeding your plan's limits moves you automatically to a more expensive tier, based on a three-month average
- Cancelling during a first committed term still means paying for the whole agreed period, and enterprise renewals cannot be ended early
- Bank transfers add a 10% fee, and paying in Bitcoin adds 10% and forces annual billing
- Country data is inferred from the browser time zone, so a minority of visitors can be counted under the wrong country
- The privacy policy and terms both date from January 2021 and disagree on the publisher's legal form and Chamber of Commerce number
- No email address is published: if you need an auditable paper trail with the vendor, everything starts from a web form
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low. In most cases setup is a single lightweight script tag and the vendor claims most installations take under five minutes. There is an official WordPress plugin and a Netlify extension, code-injection guides for Webflow, Squarespace, Wix and Ghost, and framework guides for Next.js, Nuxt.js, React, Vue, Gatsby, Hugo, Astro and Django. Google Tag Manager works too. The dashboard needs no configuration. Only the advanced options ask for real technical work: a first-party proxy or custom subdomain to bypass ad-blockers, server-side event tracking, and wiring the APIs into a warehouse or BI stack.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Simple Analytics
Fundraising
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Simple Analytics.
Frequently asked questions
Do I still need a cookie consent banner?
Where is my data stored?
Is there a free plan, and what does it cost after that?
Can I try the paid features first?
Does Simple Analytics have an API?
Can I run it alongside Google Analytics?
Will I get a Data Processing Agreement?
How long is my data kept?
Should you pick Simple Analytics?
Simple Analytics is an unusually coherent product: every design decision follows from the choice not to identify visitors. No cookies, no stored IP addresses, no fingerprinting and country derived from time zone are not features bolted onto an analytics tool, they are the reason the tool can claim that no consent banner is needed. For a European team weighing the compliance cost of consent-based tracking, that is a substantial and verifiable argument, reinforced by a Dutch publisher, analytics data held in the Netherlands and a dated, EU-only subprocessor list.
The honest limitation is depth, and the vendor says so itself: less data than GA4, geography capped at country level, and an explicit warning that a handful of visitors may be attributed to the wrong country. That makes the dual-tool positioning persuasive. Running it as a cookieless layer beside GA4 buys visibility into the traffic consent tools never see, without giving up existing attribution workflows.
Practically, it is easy to adopt: a sub-5 KB script, wide CMS and framework coverage, GA4 import, a permanent free tier and a 14-day trial with no credit card. The APIs are a real strength, with unlimited raw export into warehouses and BI tools rather than a closed dashboard.
Two caveats deserve attention before signing. SOC 2 Type II is in progress rather than achieved, which matters for procurement, and no DPA of the vendor's own is published, only a willingness to sign the customer's. The legal documents also lag the business: dated January 2021, the privacy policy still describes a sole proprietorship in Bussum while the terms and the about page name Simple Analytics B.V. in Amsterdam. Worth a question to the vendor rather than a reason to walk away.
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