Honest Analytics vs Plausible
Pick Plausible if: you run several sites that are not all WordPress, or you want somebody else responsible for the uptime, the bot filtering and the backups.
Plausible and Honest Analytics agree on most of the philosophy. Both are cookieless. Both refuse to build advertising profiles. Both think a traffic report should fit on one screen. If you are choosing between them, you have already decided the important thing.
What is left is an architecture question, and it is a real one.
Where the analytics lives
Plausible is a hosted service. You add a script to your site, the data goes to Plausible’s servers, and you read it on plausible.io. There is a WordPress plugin, but it is a convenience wrapper around that arrangement rather than a change to it.
Honest Analytics is a WordPress plugin. It creates tables in the database you already have, counts in the PHP you already run, and renders reports in the admin you already log into. There is no second service and no second login.
Plausible can be self-hosted, and it is worth being precise about what that means. It is not a plugin. In Plausible’s own words you “need to get a server and you need to manage your infrastructure”, and you are responsible for “installation, maintenance, upgrades, server capacity, uptime, backup, security”. That is a reasonable thing to take on. It is not the same kind of thing as installing a plugin.
Side by side
| Honest Analytics | Plausible | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the data lives | Your WordPress database | Plausible’s servers, or a server you run |
| What you install | A WordPress plugin | A script, or a separate application |
| Reports appear in | The WordPress admin | A separate dashboard |
| Works on non-WordPress sites | No | Yes |
| One dashboard across many sites | No, per site | Yes |
| Data-centre bot filtering | Crawler detection by user agent | Around 32,000 IP ranges, maintained |
| Cost model | Free, or a one-off Pro licence | Subscription |
| Who keeps it running | You | Them |
What each arrangement gets you
Running inside WordPress means the numbers are next to the posts they describe, there is nothing extra to pay for or patch, and your data is in a database you already back up. It also means the counting uses your server’s resources, and that keeping it working is your job.
A hosted service means somebody else runs it. That is genuinely valuable, and the part people undervalue is bot filtering: Plausible excludes something like thirty-two thousand data-centre IP ranges, maintained continuously. Matching that on your own server is not a weekend project.
Where Plausible is the better choice
- Your sites are not all WordPress. Plausible measures anything that can load a script. A WordPress plugin cannot help with a Next.js marketing site or a Shopify store.
- You want one dashboard across many properties. Plausible rolls sites up. Honest Analytics reports per site, because it lives in each one.
- You do not want to be responsible for it. No backups, no PHP versions, no cron.
- Your traffic is very large. At that point somebody else’s infrastructure is the right answer and the resource cost on your own server stops being trivial.
Where this is the better choice
- Everything you run is WordPress, and a separate account for each site is a chore rather than a feature.
- You would rather pay once. Plausible is a subscription. Pro here is a one-off licence with an optional renewal, and the free edition is a real analytics tool rather than a trial.
- You want the data in your own database, queryable with SQL, backed up with everything else, and not subject to anybody’s retention policy but yours.
- You want the reports where you already work: a views column in the posts list, figures in the editor sidebar, a widget on the WordPress dashboard.
The honest summary
If you are choosing on privacy, this is a coin toss and either answer is defensible. Choose on where you want the data to live and who you want responsible for it. Plausible is a service you rent. This is a plugin you install.