Umami

Umami is a modern, privacy-focused web analytics platform and the leading open-source alternative to Google Analytics. We rate it 88/100 — the best choice for founders, indie hackers, and small teams who want real dashboards on their own VPS without cookies, consent banners, or a monthly bill, though power users chasing funnels, session replay, and deep product analytics will still want PostHog or Matomo.

What is Umami?

Umami is an open-source web analytics platform released under the MIT license by Mike Cao and the Umami Software team. The project went public on GitHub in 2020, crossed the 15,000-star mark in 2022, and as of the April 16, 2026 v3.1.0 release sits at 36.2k GitHub stars — more than any other self-hostable analytics project. Umami Software, the company behind it, runs a managed version called Umami Cloud with a free tier and paid plans that start around $20/month for 1 million events.

The product sits in the same lane as Plausible Analytics, Fathom, and Matomo: a lightweight dashboard that answers "who visited my site, from where, on what device, and what did they do" — without the cookie consent bureaucracy of Google Analytics 4. What sets Umami apart is that it is genuinely free (MIT, no commercial restrictions, white-label allowed), runs on a single Node process with PostgreSQL or MySQL, and ships a tracker that is roughly 22× smaller than the GA4 script — 2KB versus 45KB — which is a measurable Core Web Vitals win.

Key Features of Umami

• 2KB tracker script: The client-side snippet is under 2KB gzipped versus 45KB for Google Analytics 4. On a typical site this is a measurable LCP and INP improvement — several Reddit benchmarks show 100–300ms savings.
• Cookieless by design: Umami uses an in-memory hash of IP + user-agent + daily salt to generate session IDs, which means no cookies, no consent banner, and GDPR/CCPA compliance out of the box.
• PostgreSQL or MySQL, Node 18+: Clone the repo, point it at a database, pnpm build && pnpm start, and you have analytics running. Official Docker image and compose file are maintained at docker.umami.is/umami-software/umami.
• Unlimited websites and events (self-hosted): The MIT license means there is no per-site or per-event cap — teams routinely run 50+ properties from a single $5/month VPS.
• Custom events and UTM tracking: umami.track('event-name', {}) captures anything — button clicks, form submits, A/B variants — with arbitrary JSON payloads for later querying.
• Real-time view, sharable dashboards, team accounts: v2 introduced multi-user teams with role-based access; public dashboards can be shared via a URL without an account.
• v3 reports and cohort/funnel analysis: The 3.x line added insights, retention, journeys, funnels, goals, and UTM source reports — closing most of the feature gap with Plausible.
• Session replay (Cloud, beta): Announced for Umami Cloud in 2025 and currently rolling out to self-hosted users as an optional module.

What Users Say About Umami

Umami has one of the most consistently positive reputations of any self-hosted tool we've reviewed — Product Hunt shows a clean 5.0/5 with 8 reviews, and recurring praise across Reddit's r/selfhosted and r/webdev centres on three things: "it just works on a $5 VPS", "the script is tiny", and "I replaced GA4 in an afternoon." Hacker News threads consistently call out the clean TypeScript codebase and the fact that the company has not pushed aggressive upsells into the self-hosted build.

The honest criticism is equally consistent. On r/selfhosted and the GitHub discussions tab, the most upvoted complaints are: no session replay in the open-source build (Cloud-only today), CSV-only export with no scheduled reports, no built-in heatmaps or funnels at PostHog's depth, and MySQL support that is noticeably less polished than PostgreSQL — several issues about slow queries at >1M events/day on MySQL remain open at the time of writing.

Umami Pricing

Self-hosted Umami is free forever under the MIT license — the only cost is the VPS you run it on. Umami Cloud layers a managed tier on top with a generous free plan and simple, usage-based paid tiers. Exact numbers are refreshed periodically on the official pricing page; the current structure is:

Plan	Price	Key Limits
Self-hosted	$0 forever	Unlimited websites, events, team members. You pay only for infrastructure.
Hobby (Cloud)	$0/month	Up to 3 websites, ~10K events/month, 6-month data retention.
Pro (Cloud)	From ~$20/month	1M events included, unlimited websites, extended retention, team seats.
Enterprise	Custom	Higher event volumes, custom retention, SSO, dedicated support.

Who Should Use Umami?

Best for: indie hackers, bootstrapped SaaS founders, agencies running client sites, privacy-conscious teams in the EU, and anyone who has ever been scared by their GA4 data-retention dialog. If you can run Docker Compose, you can run Umami.

Not ideal for: product teams that live in funnels, session replays, and cohort retention curves — PostHog is still the better tool there. Also not ideal for non-technical marketers who need scheduled PDF reports or deep attribution out of the box.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Truly free and MIT-licensed — you can fork, self-host, and even white-label it commercially.
• Docker Compose install takes under 5 minutes on a $5 VPS per dozens of published walkthroughs.
• 2KB tracker is measurably lighter than GA4 and Matomo.
• Cookieless, GDPR/CCPA-compliant by default — no consent banner required.
• Clean, modern Next.js + TypeScript codebase that is easy to fork and extend.

Cons:

• No funnels/heatmaps/session replay at PostHog's depth in the self-hosted build.
• Reports export only to CSV; no scheduled email digests.
• MySQL performance lags PostgreSQL noticeably above 1M events/day.
• Community support only — no official SLA unless you pay for Cloud Enterprise.

Alternatives to Umami

The nearest competitors are Plausible (AGPL, more polished cloud UX, paid-only for self-hosters in commercial settings), PostHog (heavier but far more powerful — funnels, replays, feature flags), and Matomo (GA4-feature-parity but slower and much heavier). For most self-hosters, Umami wins on simplicity; for paid SaaS users, Plausible often wins on polish; for product teams, PostHog wins on depth.

Verdict: Is Umami Worth It?

Yes — for the right use case, emphatically. Umami is the clearest example of a side project that grew into an industry standard without selling out its open-source roots. If you want privacy-first web analytics on your own infrastructure, there is no better starting point in 2026. Our 88/100 rating reflects that near-perfect fit for the self-hosted use case, with a small deduction for the feature gap against PostHog on session replay and funnels. Marketers who need scheduled reports and advanced attribution should look elsewhere; everyone else should install it this afternoon.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Umami free?

Yes. Self-hosted Umami is MIT-licensed and free forever with unlimited websites, events, and users. Umami Cloud adds a free Hobby tier (≈10K events/month, 3 websites) and paid plans from around $20/month.

Is Umami open source?

Yes — Umami is released under the permissive MIT license on GitHub, which allows commercial use, modification, and white-labeling without restriction.

What platforms does Umami support?

Umami is a self-hostable web application. It runs on any host that supports Node.js 18.18+ and PostgreSQL 12+ (or MySQL 8+) — Linux VPS, macOS, Windows Server, Docker, Kubernetes, Railway, Render, and Vercel have community-documented setups.

How does Umami compare to Plausible?

Both are lightweight, privacy-first alternatives to Google Analytics. Umami is MIT-licensed (Plausible is AGPL, which is more restrictive for commercial self-hosting), has a larger feature set in the self-hosted build, and a cheaper cloud free tier. Plausible has a more polished managed UX and better out-of-the-box scheduled reporting.

Is Umami GDPR compliant?

Yes. Because Umami does not use cookies and does not collect any personally identifiable information by default, it is compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and PECR without requiring a cookie consent banner.

Does Umami have session replay?

Session replay is available in Umami Cloud (beta in 2025, rolling out broadly in 2026) and is being added to the self-hosted build as an optional module. For production-grade replay today, PostHog is more mature.