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Plausible vs Matomo - Comparison 2025

Plausible vs. Matomo

Last updated on

Reviewed by Camin McCluskey

Stackfix Co-Founder & CTO

CM

Matomo and Plausible represent two distinct approaches to web analytics. Matomo is better suited for larger organizations needing comprehensive analytics features, customization options, and integration capabilities, despite its dated interface and steeper learning curve.

Plausible, with its modern design and ease of use, is ideal for small businesses and teams requiring basic web analytics without complexity. The choice between them largely depends on whether you prioritize feature richness (Matomo) or simplicity and user experience (Plausible).

Plausible Product Logo

Advantages of Plausible

Plausible has a significantly better user interface than Matomo
While Matomo's interface is dated and confusing, Plausible offers a clean, modern design with snappy performance. This makes it much easier for non-technical users to quickly access and understand their analytics data.
Plausible is much easier to use than Matomo
Unlike Matomo which takes hours to master, Plausible can be learned in under 20 minutes. This makes it ideal for small businesses and teams who need quick access to analytics without a steep learning curve.
Plausible offers better customer support documentation than Matomo
Compared to Matomo's poorly laid out documentation, Plausible provides well-organized, easily searchable developer resources. This makes it easier for teams to troubleshoot issues and implement the tool effectively.
Matomo Product Logo

Advantages of Matomo

Matomo is significantly more feature-rich than Plausible
While Plausible offers basic web analytics, Matomo provides advanced features like heatmaps, session replays, and scroll depth tracking. This makes it valuable for teams needing deeper insights into user behavior beyond basic traffic metrics.
Matomo offers superior customization options compared to Plausible
Unlike Plausible's fixed dashboard, Matomo allows extensive customization of reports, A/B tests, and visualization options. This flexibility is particularly beneficial for teams requiring tailored analytics views for different stakeholders.
Matomo has better data integration capabilities than Plausible
Matomo provides more robust integration options including BigQuery support and extensive API functionality, while Plausible offers limited integration options. This makes Matomo more suitable for organizations needing to connect analytics data with other business systems.

Plausible is best for

  • Businesses with privacy concerns seeking a lightweight, EU-based alternative to Google Analytics
  • Who need essential web metrics like pageviews, traffic sources and basic visitor segmentation
  • And/or who need GDPR-compliant analytics with the option for self-hosting

Matomo is best for

  • Businesses with moderate traffic seeking a privacy-focused web analytics tool with bonus features
  • Who need core web analytics plus advanced features like heatmaps and session replays
  • And/or who need the flexibility to self-host their analytics platform

Plausible is less good for

  • Businesses with complex product analytics requirements needing heatmaps, session replays, or advanced user behavior tracking
  • Who need extensive dashboard customization and reporting flexibility for different stakeholders
  • And/or who need advanced data warehouse integrations and extensive third-party tool connectivity

Matomo is less good for

  • Businesses with teams who need a modern, intuitive analytics interface for quick insights
  • Who need automatic event capture capabilities without manual setup
  • And/or who need enterprise-grade security certifications like SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001

Gallery

Plausible logoPlausible
Plausible screenshot
Matomo logoMatomo
Matomo screenshot

Pricing, features & ratings

Plausible logo

Plausible

Starting at

$9

Billed monthly

Pricing calculatorVisit Website
Matomo logo

Matomo

Starting at

$26

Billed monthly

Pricing calculatorVisit Website
Stackfix Verdict
Functionality
3

Functionality

3/10

<p>Plausible is a lightweight web analytics tool. It covers all the essentials for this time of product including real time page view and visitor data, referral source tracking and basic traffic segmentation. However, you'll not find any powerful product analytics functionality like heatmaps or session recordings.</p>
7

Functionality

7/10

<p>For a web analytics tool, we were pleasantly surprised by the depth of functionality that Matomo offers. Features such as heatmaps, session replays and scroll depth tracking are all unique when looking at Matomo's competitors. We also appreciate that the tool is open source and can be self-hosted should you wish.</p>
Ease of Use
8

Ease of Use

8/10

<p>Given its limited feature set and beautiful design, Plausible is particularly easy to use. It would take an average SMB employee less than 20 minutes to master its use.</p>
3

Ease of Use

3/10

<p>Given the sheer breadth of functionality and dated design, we found Matomo frustrating and confusing to use. Most of its interfaces are non-standard when compared with modern web analytics products and its more powerful features take a lot of effort to fully configure. It would take an average SMB employee several hours to master the platforms use.</p>
Look and feel
8

Look and feel

8/10

<p>Plausible is a very well design analytics tool. Its aesthetic is clean and modern. Additionally, when tested we found page load time to be snappy and responsive (&lt;1s).</p>
2

Look and feel

2/10

<p>Matomo's design is very dated. Most interfaces are extremely overwhelming, confusing or clunky. Given the sheer breadth of functionality on offer this isn't exactly surprising. Additionally, we found many pages to be sluggish to load (taking &gt;3 seconds).</p>
Customisability
3

Customisability

3/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Beyond custom events, Plausible offers limited scope for customization. We would like to have seen more options to tweak the dashboard itself and change how data is visualized.</span></p>
7

Customisability

7/10

<p>Matomo offers a lot of scope for customization. From custom reports to A/B tests there are a number of fine tweaks, visualization changes or experiment details which can be fine tuned to get the most out of your analytics experience. Additionally the product is open-source meaning you can self-host it if you wish to.</p>
Ease of Setup
7

Ease of Setup

7/10

<p>Like most web analytics products, Plausible was also very simple to implement - requiring only a simple script. Additionally, it offers a self-serve free trial. Given the lack of complex functionality, there's little to set up in terms of additional customization either.</p>
5

Ease of Setup

5/10

<p>Matomo offers a self-serve free trial like most of the tools in this sector. In terms of setup, most websites will only need to install a simple code snippet to access full functionality. That being said, if you want to take advantage of the more powerful features such as heatmaps, there is a fair amount of additional customization and setup required in the dashboard itself which can take several days.</p>
Customer Support
7

Customer Support

7/10

<p>Plausibles developer documentation is well laid out, easy to digest and detailed. It also offers very strong search functionality too.</p>
3

Customer Support

3/10

<p>Like with most analytics tools, developer documentation and knowledge bases are the primary avenue for support. Unfortunately we found Matomos to be poorly laid out and hard to navigate. Beyond that, they offer a ticket system for help queries which take a few days to get responses from.</p>
Integratability
3

Integratability

3/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Plausible offers a fairly robust API through which you can interact with data programatically. However, it offers little to no integrations beyond this.</span></p>
7

Integratability

7/10

<p>Matomo offers an extensive API that goes beyond just gathering stats - it also allows you to access live data and make changes to goal/website configuration. Additionally, we were pleased to see easy set up with Google tag manager and BigQuery.</p>
Ease of Migration
6

Ease of Migration

6/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Plausible offers self-serve export functionality for key datapoints via its web app. Additionally, its API is robust and allows business to access datapoints programatically.</span></p>
8

Ease of Migration

8/10

<p>Matomo offers self-serve export of key data directly from its web app. Additionally, it also offers a strong API through which you can pull data programatically.</p>
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