Simple, honest analytics for WordPress.
Cookieless analytics that lives inside WordPress. See your visitors, your pages and your trends in the dashboard you already use, without wrestling with GA4 and without sending anything to another company.
I built Honest Analytics for sites I actually look after. I wanted proper reports without asking visitors to accept tracking they didn't need, and without sending everything to another company.
The choices were either too invasive, too complicated, or too limited. This is the version I wanted to install.
Tim Coysh - Coysh Digital
Questions it answers
- How many people are visiting?
- Which pages are actually being read?
- Where did visitors arrive from?
- When during the week are they actually turning up?
- Which campaigns, goals and funnels are working?
- How much of that traffic was a crawler rather than a person?
Lite
FREEThe everyday reports. If this covers what you need, keep using it.
- Pageviews and daily unique visitors
- Sessions and bounce rate
- Real-time visitors
- Content performance
- Sources and devices
Pro
ONE-OFF LICENCEThe reports that need more context.
- Campaigns and locations
- Events, goals and funnels
- Crawlers, including AI bots
- Data export
- Integrations
Two things worth knowing before you install
See it working
FREEA new analytics plugin always starts empty, which makes it hard to tell whether it is working or whether nobody came.
- Install it, then open your site in another tab
- Watch the visit appear on the Real-time screen
- No wondering whether you set it up correctly
Switch without starting from zero
FREEBring your history with you. Importing is in the free edition, not held back for a paid tier.
- Google Analytics 4, WP Statistics, Independent Analytics
- Running an import twice is safe: whole days are replaced
- Straight about why the totals will not match your old tool
What it stores, and what it doesn't
No analytics cookie in the default configuration, no stored IP addresses, and an anonymous identity salt that rotates and is destroyed every 24 hours. That's why unique visitors are daily estimates rather than people. Optional features you switch on with consent change this - the documentation says which ones and how.
KEEPS
- Page paths
- Aggregate counts
- Referring hostnames
- Device categories
DOESN'T KEEP
- IP addresses
- Full referrer URLs
- Permanent visitor profiles
- Anything in an external account
Questions people ask first
Does it use cookies?
Not in the default configuration. Anonymous tracking works without an analytics cookie. Some optional features you can turn on do set one, and they say so before you enable them.
Do I need a cookie banner?
The default anonymous mode is designed so that Honest Analytics itself doesn't require an analytics consent banner. Whether your site needs one overall depends on everything else it runs and where your visitors are, so this isn't legal advice and we won't pretend otherwise. The cookieless page goes into more detail.
Where is the data stored?
In your own WordPress database, on your own hosting. Nothing is sent to us or to a third-party analytics service.
Will it slow my site down?
The counting happens after the page has already been sent to the browser, so your visitors are not waiting on it. The front end loads one small first-party script and nothing else, and pages served straight from a cache still get counted.
Does it work with caching plugins and CDNs?
Yes. Pageviews are recorded outside the cached HTML, so a cached page still counts. The caching notes cover the specific setups that need a tweak.
Does it need JavaScript?
It works without it, in a reduced form. The server counts the requests it sees and the script confirms the rest, so a visitor blocking scripts is still counted, just with less detail.
How are unique visitors counted?
As a daily estimate. The anonymous identifier is derived from a salt that's replaced every 24 hours and the old one is destroyed, so someone who visits on Monday and Thursday counts once on each day. It's a deliberate trade: less precision, no permanent profile.
Does it respect Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control?
A request carrying Sec-GPC: 1 is not counted at all. Not counted and then discarded - never counted in the first place.
Can I move my history over from Google Analytics?
Yes, and it is in the free edition. Honest Analytics imports from Google Analytics 4, WP Statistics and Independent Analytics, so switching does not mean starting from zero. Moving from Google Analytics covers what changes, and the import guide explains why the totals will not match exactly.
How much database space does it use?
Far less than you would expect, because it stores one row per hour per dimension rather than one row per visit. A site with a hundred thousand views a day and one with a hundred use roughly the same disk. Around 110,000 events fit in about 15 MB.
Does it work on multisite?
Yes. Network activation installs it on every existing site and on every site created afterwards. Each site keeps its own tables, settings and reports, and the licence is stored once for the network.
Is it open source?
Yes, both editions. You can read every line, and there is no obfuscated or encrypted code anywhere in it. The licence page explains what that means for you, and the self-hosted page covers what running it yourself involves.
What happens to my data if I uninstall it?
Nothing, by default. Deactivating keeps everything, and deleting the plugin keeps your data too unless you explicitly turn that off first. The uninstall notes cover how to check.
What happens to Pro if I don't renew?
Nothing. The plugin keeps working, with every feature, for as long as you want to run it. A licence has no expiry and nothing switches off. What lapses is new versions and email support, and a renewal picks both back up whenever you like. Security fixes reach everyone either way.
Can I upgrade without losing data?
Yes. Pro reads the same tables Lite has been writing to, so the history you already have stays where it is.
What are the requirements?
WordPress 6.4 or later, PHP 8.1 or later, and MySQL 5.7 or MariaDB 10.4 or later. The installation notes have the full list.