Built as a direct rejection of the adtech model, Plausible is the best-known privacy-first web analytics tool - lightweight, cookie-free, and open-source. It sets no cookies and stores no personal data: unique visitors are counted via a hash of IP plus User-Agent that rotates every 24 hours and is never stored raw, so no consent banner is required and GDPR compliance is structural rather than contractual. The tracking script is under 1 KB - orders of magnitude lighter than GA - and the dashboard is a deliberate contrast to GA4's sprawl: one fast-loading page with visitors, sources, top pages, countries, devices, and UTM breakdowns, filterable by any dimension. Custom events and goals track signups and clicks, Google Search Console integration pulls in search queries, scheduled email reports keep stakeholders updated, and the Stats API (v2) plus CSV export feed data anywhere. This is the AGPL-licensed Community Edition, the same Elixir codebase that powers Plausible's cloud service, running as three containers: the web app, PostgreSQL for accounts, and ClickHouse for event storage - which means self-hosters get direct SQL access to raw analytics data the cloud version never exposes. Traffic data stays entirely on your server, with no visitor caps or per-pageview pricing.