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Self-host Plausible Analytics on a no-KYC VPS
Drop Google Analytics for a cookieless, GDPR-compliant alternative you fully control. Anonymous signup, no email required, no KYC. Pay with crypto or card, full root, no logs.
Quick start: Plausible Community Edition
Tested on Ubuntu 24. Pick a 2 GB+ plan, deploy, SSH in.
# 1. Install Docker
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
# 2. Clone Plausible CE
git clone https://github.com/plausible/community-edition /opt/plausible
cd /opt/plausible
# 3. Generate a secret and set BASE_URL in plausible-conf.env
SECRET_KEY_BASE=$(openssl rand -base64 64 | tr -d '\n')
cat > plausible-conf.env <<EOF
BASE_URL=https://stats.yourdomain.com
SECRET_KEY_BASE=$SECRET_KEY_BASE
EOF
# 4. Start the stack (Postgres + ClickHouse + Plausible)
docker compose up -d
# 5. Open https://stats.yourdomain.com behind Caddy/nginx, register first user
# 6. Add the snippet to your sites:
# <script defer data-domain="example.com" src="https://stats.yourdomain.com/js/script.js"></script>
Why self-host Plausible instead of GA4 or paid Plausible
Plausible uses no cookies and no personal data. GDPR, CCPA, PECR compliant out of the box. Ship without a cookie banner.
GA4 ships ~50 KB of JS. Plausible's script is under 1 KB. Faster page loads, better Core Web Vitals.
Plausible Cloud charges per pageview. Self-hosted = unlimited sites, unlimited pageviews, fixed VPS cost.
All visitor data lives in your ClickHouse instance. Export anywhere, never shared with Google or any third party.
GA is blocked by ~30% of users. Plausible's script is rarely blocked, especially when you proxy it from your own domain.
Top pages, top sources, countries, devices, custom events, goal tracking, funnels. Everything that matters, no PhD in GA4 required.
Frequently asked questions
How much VPS do I need?
Minimum 2 GB RAM (ClickHouse and Postgres both want some memory). 4 GB is more comfortable once you have several sites or millions of monthly events. Storage grows slowly: ClickHouse compresses analytics data hard, usually under 5 GB even after years.
Will it scale to millions of pageviews?
Yes. ClickHouse is designed for analytics workloads. A 4 GB VPS comfortably handles 10M+ pageviews/month. The bottleneck is usually network bandwidth, not compute.
Can I import historical Google Analytics data?
Plausible has a Google Analytics import tool that pulls historic data via the GA API. Works with Universal Analytics and GA4.
Is it really cookieless?
Yes. Plausible uses a hash of (daily salt + IP + user-agent + domain) as a fingerprint that resets daily. Nothing is stored client-side, no cross-site tracking is possible.
Will my ad-blockers block it?
A vanilla install on /js/script.js is sometimes blocked. Solution: proxy it from your own domain (e.g. /a/event). Plausible documents this trick in their docs.
Can I track custom events / conversions?
Yes. Custom events, goals, funnels, revenue attribution, all built in. The script has a small JS API for sending events.
What if I want the cloud-only features?
Plausible CE (community edition) is fully open source. Some advanced features (funnels, ecommerce revenue, full team management) historically lived in the cloud version. Check the latest CE feature parity in their docs.
Does Servury log my traffic?
No. No application-level logging on customer servers. Anonymous signup, crypto/card payment, no logs.
