honest comparison · July 2026
Pulse vs Plausible: privacy-first analytics, one less subscription
Plausible is excellent — open source, mature, and the tool that proved analytics doesn't need cookies. Pulse plays the same privacy-first game for a different customer: makers with small sites who want clean numbers without adding another monthly bill. Here's the honest breakdown.
Pulse · shippies
$19 once
Shippies Pro is a lifetime deal: unlimited sites, plus our testimonial, popup, and invoice tools in the same $19. Free tier: 1 site.
Plausible
$9–19/mo
Growth starts at $9/mo for 10k pageviews; Business at $19/mo adds funnels and ecommerce. Scales up with traffic. Open source and self-hostable.
one year of Plausible ≥ $108 · Pulse Pro forever = $19 · both are cookie-free
| Feature | Pulse | Plausible |
|---|---|---|
| One-line snippet | ✓ <1kb, no cookies | ✓ <1kb, no cookies |
| Pageviews, referrers, pages | ✓ | ✓ |
| Devices & countries | ✓ | ✓ |
| Live visitor counter | ✓ | ✓ |
| SPA route tracking | ✓ Automatic | ✓ Automatic |
| Goals, funnels, custom events | ✗ Not yet | ✓ (funnels on Business) |
| Google Analytics import | ✗ | ✓ |
| Open source / self-hostable | ✗ | ✓ |
| Built for high-traffic sites | Best under ~100k views/mo | ✓ Scales to millions |
| Also includes 3 other tools | ✓ Kudos, PopKit, Inkvoice | — |
| Pricing model | One-time, forever | Monthly, usage-based |
Where Plausible wins
Maturity and depth. Plausible is open source, independently audited by the community, handles millions of pageviews, imports your Google Analytics history, and has goals, funnels, custom events, and a real API. If analytics is a core input to your business decisions — or you want to self-host — Plausible is the right call.
Where Pulse wins
The subscription math for small sites. If your site does a few thousand views a month, you're paying $108+/year for charts you glance at weekly. Pulse gives you the numbers that actually change behavior — visitors, sources, top pages, live count — for $19 once, bundled with three other tools you'd otherwise also subscribe to.
Fair questions
Is Pulse really private?
Yes: no cookies, no fingerprinting, no cross-site tracking. We store a pageview event with path, referrer domain, device class, and country — never anything that identifies a person. It's the same philosophy Plausible pioneered.
What if my site gets big?
Pulse is honest about its lane: it's built for maker-scale sites. If you outgrow it, your dashboard makes that obvious and moving to Plausible is a one-line snippet swap. Until then, you've spent $19, not $500.
Do you eat your own dog food?
Completely — our open page shows shippies.ai's live traffic, tracked by Pulse itself, in public.
Can I track more than one site?
Free includes 1 site. Pro ($19 once) is unlimited sites, each with its own snippet and dashboard.
Competitor pricing and features as of July 2026— always verify on their site. We keep this page honest; tell us if something's outdated.