An honest comparison — why teams switch to pulse
pulse vs Google Analytics, Plausible, Fathom, Matomo and Umami
Web analytics in 2026 is no longer about pageviews. It's about understanding why visitors behave the way they do — without compromising on privacy, speed or legality. We built pulse to fill the gap between heavy enterprise tools (GA4) and pure counters (Plausible, Fathom). Here's how we stack up.
Feature by feature
| Feature | pulse | GA4 | Plausible | Fathom | Matomo | Umami |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cookieless & GDPR without banner | ||||||
| Script size | ~1 KB | ~45 KB | ~1 KB | ~2 KB | ~22 KB | ~2 KB |
| AI-generated insights | ||||||
| Goals & funnels | ||||||
| Core Web Vitals | ||||||
| Live session stream | ||||||
| ML-based bot scoring | ||||||
| Public shared dashboards | ||||||
| Webhook/email alerts | ||||||
| Self-hosting possible | ||||||
| Price (10k visits/mo) | Free | Free* | €9 / mo | $15 / mo | €19 / mo | Free (self-host) |
* GA4 is "free" but requires a consent banner, samples data at high volume, and shares your data with Google for ad targeting.
Three reasons to choose pulse
Depth without complexity
Plausible and Fathom are beautiful but shallow — they show what happens, not why. GA4 shows everything but requires a certification to understand. pulse gives you heatmaps, goals, funnels, live sessions and AI insights in an interface a whole team can actually use.
Real privacy, not marketing
We set no cookies, store no IP addresses, and use daily-rotating hashes that can't be linked back to a person. No consent banner. No DPA negotiations. No legal grey zones — under GDPR, CCPA or the EU Data Act.
1 KB that won't slow anything down
GA4 adds ~45 KB of JavaScript and hundreds of milliseconds of TTI. Matomo is heavier still. Our script is ~1 KB gzipped, loads async, and doesn't impact Core Web Vitals — which we also measure for you at the same time.
Verdict
Pick GA4 if you love BigQuery and have a full-time analyst. Pick Plausible or Fathom if all you want is pageview counts. Pick Matomo if you must self-host. Pick pulse if you want enterprise-grade depth, indie-grade privacy and AI insights none of the others offer — in one product.
Try pulse for free