Question
Which open-source, self-hostable analytics tool best replaces GA4 for a 5-person team, with cookieless tracking, friendly dashboards, and low ops overhead?
Candidates
| Tool | License | Lang | Storage | Repo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plausible CE | AGPL | Elixir | Postgres + ClickHouse | plausible/analytics ↗ |
| Umami | MIT | Node | Postgres or MySQL | umami-software/umami ↗ |
| PostHog OSS | MIT (core) | Python + TS | Postgres + ClickHouse + Kafka | PostHog/posthog ↗ |
Quadrant
quadrantChart
title Simplicity vs Capability
x-axis "Heavy ops" --> "Light ops"
y-axis "Basic features" --> "Advanced features"
quadrant-1 "Sweet spot"
quadrant-2 "Powerful but heavy"
quadrant-3 "Skip"
quadrant-4 "Light but limited"
Plausible CE: [0.75, 0.55]
Umami: [0.88, 0.40]
PostHog OSS: [0.20, 0.92]
Findings
- Plausible CE ranks best for "just analytics, no fuss." Single binary deploy, ClickHouse is the only non-trivial dep. Cookieless. Pretty defaults.
- Umami is the lightest. Single Node process + Postgres. UI is minimal but covers 80% of common questions. Best fit for a team that wants zero ops.
- PostHog OSS is the most powerful — funnels, session replay, feature flags, AB tests — but the docker-compose stack pulls Kafka and ClickHouse. Overkill at 5 people.
Recommendation: Umami. If product analytics depth later becomes a need, layer PostHog Cloud on top — don't try to self-host its OSS stack at this team size.
References
- Plausible team. Self-hosting docs. plausible.io/docs/self-hosting
- Umami project. Installation guide. umami.is/docs/install
- PostHog team. Self-hosting considerations. posthog.com/docs/self-host
- Web Analytics for the privacy era — Mozilla. blog.mozilla.org
- OWASP cookie best practices. owasp.org