Website analytics tools help businesses track and measure their online performance. Google Analytics remains the most used tracking tool, yet many companies consider Matomo a strong alternative. The main reasons are data control and privacy. Businesses want more ownership of their website statistics and often aren’t happy to give it up to behemoth corporations like Google. So, which is better, Matomo vs Google Analytics?
Google Analytics and Matomo each offer distinct benefits. Google Analytics gives users many tracking features. Matomo focuses on data privacy and puts you in charge of your analytics information. The key advantage of Matomo lies in server control. You can install it on your own VPS or dedicated server and keep full ownership of your data.
This guide compares Matomo vs Google Analytics, examining both platforms in detail. You’ll see how essential features, privacy settings, and setup requirements differ. The details cover data collection methods, report types, and visitor tracking capabilities. These facts will guide your choice based on what your business needs.
Table of Contents
Understanding Your Web Analytics Options
As both analytics tools are built for the same purpose, Matomo and Google Analytics have many similarities. However, they do offer different ways to track website and visitor data. The most significant difference is that Google Analytics uses cookie-based client-side tracking, while Matomo utilizes server-side tracking. Both have their respective pros and cons.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics tracks website visitors and their actions. Founded in 2005, it now runs on millions of websites worldwide. The platform shows you who visits your site, where they come from, and what they do on each page. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the fourth iteration of the Google Analytics platform, offering features like tracking users across different devices.
Due to the freemium nature of the product and its running on Google servers, several critical downsides exist. The biggest one is that your data realistically belongs to Google. They not only use it for advertising purposes but package and resell it as they see fit. Moreover, over the years, they’ve started “sampling” your data to cut costs. This means they’ll analyze a subset of data to “guestimate” the entire data set. Simply speaking, this allows them only to track every tenth visit or so and use that information to give you an approximation of your website traffic. Needless to say, you lose out on accuracy as all the data provided is extrapolated.
What is Matomo?
Matomo started in 2007 as Piwik. Today, millions of websites in over 190 countries use this open-source platform. Matomo puts data privacy first and lets you own all your analytics data. When you run Matomo on your server, you get some crucial features you don’t get with Google Analytics:
| Feature | How it benefits you |
|---|---|
| Data Control | You own 100% of your data with no third-party access |
| Privacy Compliance | Built-in GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA compliance features |
| Accuracy | No data sampling, ensuring 100% accurate reporting |
| Advanced Tools | Track forms, view heatmaps, click maps, and user session recordings |
Matomo works well because you can install and optimize it yourself. Slap it on your server and retain total control while using all your desired features. The software tracks any visit that makes a server request and shows complete and accurate search data. This makes it perfect for any business website that wants to own its analytics data, adhere to privacy standards, and have accurate reports.
Both tools track website data well, but Matomo gives you total control over your setup and far superior accuracy.
Core Analytics Features
Matomo and Google Analytics offer detailed analytics but track website data differently. Let’s look at their main features.
Traffic Analysis Tools
Both analytics tools have the same core features, which are crucial to understanding how your website is performing. These are mandatory features for any analytics software:
- Page views and unique visitors
- Traffic sources and referrers
- Geographic location data
- Device and browser information
- Conversion tracking
- Reporting functions and date comparisons
User Behavior Tracking
As website owners need to know how visitors use their sites, user behavior tracking becomes crucial. Regarding behavioral analytics, Matomo shows much more details than Google Analytics when you run it on your server. Here’s what each platform offers:
| Feature | Matomo | Google Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Page Scroll Depth | Yes | Yes |
| Click Tracking | Advanced | Basic |
| Form Interactions | Detailed | Limited |
| Custom Events | Unlimited | Limited |
Campaign Monitoring
Both tools track marketing campaigns, but Matomo again gives you more control. Running Matomo on a private server allows you to monitor:
- UTM codes in links
- Custom campaign tracking codes
- Social media results
- Online store sales
Data handling makes the most significant difference – Matomo processes everything on your server. You own and control all the data. This matters especially when you have multiple marketing campaigns where accuracy and privacy count. Self-hosted Matomo on a VPS lets you track unlimited campaigns without extra costs, making it the quickest way to scale for growing businesses.
Advanced Features
So, how do Matomo vs Google Analytics compare when it comes to extra tools to track website visitors? The core features are much the same, with the main differences in methodology. However, advanced features between the two platforms, while similar in what’s on offer, have vastly different approaches. Many Matomo advanced features are paid extensions, though at fairly reasonable prices. Google Analytics can implement most of the same features, though they either require their ridiculously overpriced Google Analytics 360 version or third-party integration. Typically, these third-party applications are more expensive than Matomo extensions and harm site performance. Due to the ever-changing Google interfaces, setting up even the included advanced features has become more complicated.
Form Analytics and Conversion Tracking
Matomo’s form analytics shows you how users interact with your forms. Google Analytics can also offer similar functionalities, but it’s no longer the out-of-the-box solution it once used to be and is severely limited. Both options will allow you to track:
- How many people leave forms unfilled
- How long do users take on each field
- Where users make mistakes
- How many people finish forms
Heatmap and Session Recording
Both platforms show visitor actions differently, and while these features are always paid extensions, Google Analytics requires third-party extensions for heatmap and session recordings. This requires yet another third party to access your data, is typically significantly more expensive, and, in each case, drastically slows down your site. This is great from an analytics point of view but horrible for your SEO page load times. Matomo, despite requiring a paid extension subscription, is significantly cheaper and has no slow-down limitations.
| Feature | Matomo | Google Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Heatmaps | Included (paid) | Requires third-party tools (paid) |
| Session Recording | Shows all visits | Shows sampled visits |
| Click Tracking | Shows all clicks | Shows sampled clicks |
| Scroll Maps | Updates instantly | Shows old data |
Custom Reports
While both analytics tools can be used to create custom reports, you can never get the raw data from Google Analytics as it uses data samples. This significantly limits your reporting and insight capabilities, especially for avid spreadsheet fanatics.
Running Matomo on your server lets you do so much more. You can track all form entries, make any report, and save visitor recordings based on your server space. You own all this data and get tools usually reserved for big companies on prohibitively expensive premium Google Analytics 360 plans.
Small and medium businesses with websites that utilize a dedicated server or even a VPS can save money with Matomo. Simply put it on the same server as your website and get advanced tracking without any additional costs or privacy worries. Many inbuilt Matomo features come free out-of-the-box, allowing you to cancel other software subscriptions.
Data Collection and Privacy
This is the part where the two analytics diverge massively. They genuinely are opposites regarding privacy and data collection practices. Matomo is open-source, doesn’t use or view your data, and offers total privacy with unfiltered data collection. As it’s hosted on your server, it uses server-side analytics. Any request that hits your website is recorded and counted as a visit. From there, bot and other irrelevant traffic is filtered out, leaving you with a clean and complete dataset.
Google Analytics, on the other hand, owns your website data. They not only access and view it, but their entire ecosystem is built around using your data for their advertising network. Moreover, they also repackage and resell your data to third parties because you do not own it. Privacy is not available when it comes to the free version of Google Analytics. Moreover, they use cookie-based client-side data collection, which has numerous flaws. On top of that, this flawed analytics data is then sampled and further extrapolated, giving you the best-guess estimate, which can sometimes be far from accurate. This is especially true for sites with niche industries, lower visits, or low conversion sites.
Cookieless Tracking
Google Analytics relies on cookies and Javascript loading on each page. Users can easily block or delete cookies, messing with GA collection methods. Additionally, the session will not be counted if the tracking JavaScript code doesn’t load fully on the page. Trying to resolve this problem by loading the JavaScript ahead of the rest of the content slows your page load time. The irony is that Google wants your pages to load quickly for optimal SEO, yet don’t collect traffic accurately unless you slow it down.
Matomo, on the other hand, tracks visitors without cookies or cookieless tracking. The software uses a unique config_id system that works better than regular cookies. Your tracking stays accurate while protecting user privacy. This was a problem back in the Urchin days, which Google eventually bought out, when bot traffic was also counted, massively inflating website stats. However, this issue has mostly been ironed out in past years and is easily the preferred method to track data.
Data Sampling and Accuracy
Google Analytics shows estimates when you have lots of data. It is initially used to sample data only after reaching a certain number of rows. This worked very well as smaller sites with low traffic would count every visit, while gigantic sites could typically afford the premium price of GA360 or other more expensive alternatives. However, in recent years, more and more data elements have started to become sampled and extrapolated.
This is devastating for any website with low traffic or low conversions. A small site can take a lot of time to gather sufficient data, which can be used to make an informed decision. This is especially prominent when the business has a sudden surge in traffic due to seasonality like Christmas or a successful campaign. Coupling this with cookie-based traffic that can miss entire visits, data sampling that flat-out ignores the majority of the visits you get, and a little bad luck, you could hit 20-30% of your data being sampled with a horrible conversion rate. In reality, the conversion rate of that campaign may have been significantly better, but it would simply not show up in your reports, leading you to make some bad business decisions.
Matomo shows every single visitor and every single visitor’s action. It processes all your data without sampling and gives you accurate reports. There is no data sampling, and the accuracy is as close to 100% as it can be.
Privacy Protection
Your Google account is technically locked behind your email and password. It requires site ownership verification and allows you to share access with whomever you choose. However, the fact that they own your data means they can change the rules at any time. They could make your data publically available if they so choose. It wouldn’t benefit their current bottom line, but that could become the case down the line. Furthermore, they can delete your historical data, which they have done in the past.
Matomo, on the other hand, not only lets you host your analytics on a VPS, but the software itself takes privacy seriously with the following features:
- IP address anonymization
- First-party cookies implementation
- Respect for DoNotTrack settings
- Short-lived cookies
The French Data Protection Agency (CNIL) says Matomo works without asking users for tracking permission. This built-in privacy benefits everyone, especially for privacy-centric industries such as government, healthcare, education, and finance.
Data Storage Rules
Google Analytics does not offer you any choice regarding your data. This includes storage. Google stores your data on their servers for as long as they want to. Worst still, they give access to their advertising platforms and whomever else they choose. It’s out of your control. Running an instance of Matomo analytics on your own VPS or dedicated server gives you control over:
| What You Control | How Much Control |
|---|---|
| Storage Location | Complete control |
| Retention Period | Complete control |
| Data Access | Complete control |
| Server Security | Server managed |
Data Backups and Exports
Matomo lets you handle data your way. Save your numbers in CSV, JSON, or XML files. You can:
- Save full databases
- Export raw data to CSV
- Schedule automatic backups
- Connect through API
Your VPS keeps all backups and exports safe. You choose how to save and protect your analytics data. Again, Google Analytics only gives you sample data with limited export and backup capabilities.
Performance and Scalability
While performance is not something we think about regarding analytics, insufficient resources can significantly limit your analytics. Performance isn’t an issue for Google Analytics as it’s hosted directly on Google servers with ample backup, though they also sample and limit data, which keeps their requirements minimal. Similarly, Matomo works well on most servers when traffic stays moderate. Websites with 10,000 monthly visits need very little server power. Your setup should have the following:
- A high-quality dedicated server or VPS hosting plan
- Proper page caching implementation
- CDN integration for media files
After years of data collection, performance can become a requirement for Matomo for large sites or multiple-site servers. As none of the data is sampled, with heatmaps and video recordings, storage may get full, and loading that much data at once might take a while. This isn’t something most of us would do regularly, though, or ever for that matter, so it isn’t a major issue.
Traffic Handling
Another crucial difference between Matomo vs Google Analytics is how they handle website traffic. The largest of which is data sampling. Here is how the two platforms compare:
| What They Do | Matomo | Google Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Data Processing | Real-time, no sampling | Samples data above 500,000 sessions |
| Storage Space | Unlimited on your server | Limited |
| Speed | Server-dependent | Uses Google servers |
Speed Improvements
Regardless of Matomo vs Google Analytics, to maintain peak performance in your analytics setup, you should optimize your site speed:
- Optimize Your Images: Compressed and optimized media files reduce server load. Use files like .webp and .svg when possible.
- Implement Lazy Loading: Lazy loading tracking scripts and media content can improve page performance significantly.
- Use a good CDN: Content Delivery Networks help distribute the load across multiple servers worldwide, which is crucial for fast-loading sites.
Additionally, businesses running Matomo on their VPS can optimize their performance. You can control server resources, implement custom caching, and manage database speed.
Your website’s conversion rates depend heavily on the first five seconds of page load time. Hosting Matomo on your website’s VPS gives you complete control over optimization while keeping costs down. Small businesses benefit from this setup because they get full data ownership without sacrificing performance.
Cost and Ease of Use of Your Analytics Platform
While both analytics tools have the same baseline regarding ease of use, Matomo is an open-source platform with a significantly smaller market share. As such, it gets incremental upgrades over time, receiving minor quality of life, security, and stability tweaks but retaining core functionality and layout. Google Analytics, on the other hand, has gone through multiple interactions and significant design changes over the decades. This includes major ones, including entire replacements where you had to run two iterations of GA side-by-side until the older one got phased out.
The Downfall of Google Analytics
Google Analytics used to be the poster child for ease of use. It was free and easy, which made using your data a much easier pill to swallow. Over time, however, the platform removed core useful features and underwent significant and often unnecessary redesigns. This has brought the most recent version to a point where any custom data analysis requires a high degree of technical expertise specific to this platform.
More importantly, they have removed crucial components such as the visibility of organic keywords and introduced their infamous (not provided). This effectively made one of their previously most valuable features worthless. Worse still, it was under the guise of “user privacy,” which they’ve shown to not care about, as both Google Ads and their paid GA360 product still offer this feature.
Additionally, they’ve changed their data collection methodology for basic metrics and conversions. In fact, there was a mismatch between Google Analytics and Google Ads conversion tracking for over a decade, causing an inevitable correction. This made any historical conversion data from within Google an estimate at best. During their latest jump from Universal Analytics to GA4, they’ve effectively deleted historical data and forced users to move to the newer version.
With no ability to export crucial data into a CSV, Google hung their users out to dry.
The Cost of Matomo
While Matomo is open-source, there are several costs associated with this software. First and foremost, you will require a server. Matomo offers their servers as an option, though they are typically overpriced, as all Cloud solutions are. Their on-premise open-source solution, however, is free and has no limits. It also offers the ultimate in data privacy. You do lose out on the support element, but this can be managed internally by your IT team or your fully managed hosting provider. Regardless, you will need a VPS or dedicated server on which you can also install Matomo. Considering that you require a server to host your website in the first place, this is a cost that you’ve already covered.
The additional cost comes through the Matomo Marketplace, where their plugins offer significant functionality improvements. They offer many free plugins but include some useful premium options, ranging in price from $29 per year to several hundred. Almost all of the plugins cost below $300 per year. The more expensive ones are far more useful and replace other paid alternatives. For example, ‘The Heatmap and Session Recording’ costs $259 / year, which is more expensive. However, your alternatives are even more expensive third-party solutions that significantly slow down your site. As with other Matomo costs, they exist but are typically mitigated by offsetting alternatives. You won’t spend more than you otherwise would if you required such features, but it might come as a shock when expecting free software.
Matomo vs Google Analytics Full Feature Comparison
Understanding key differences and similarities between analytics platforms helps you pick the right one. This comparison will help you assess which platform suits your business needs:
| What You Get | Matomo (Your Server) | Google Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free (open-source) + paid components | Free with $50,000+ premium version |
| Who Owns Your Data | You do – 100% ownership with total control | Data owned by Google |
| Privacy Compliance | Built-in GDPR and CCPA compliance | Basic compliance |
| Data Sampling | No sampling, 100% accurate reporting | Samples data above 500,000 sessions |
| Cookieless Tracking | Built-in cookieless tracking accessible | Not available |
| Core Features | ||
| – Page Views/Visitors | Yes | Yes |
| – Traffic Sources | Yes | Yes |
| – Visitor Locations | Yes | Yes |
| Extra Features (paid) | ||
| – Heat Maps | Built-in | Requires third-party tools |
| – Session Recording | Full recordings included | Not available |
| – Form Tracking | Detailed tracking | Limited |
| – Custom Tracking | Unlimited | Limited |
| Setup | Technical setup required* | Technical setup required |
| Data Storage | Self-hosted on own server | Google servers |
| Support Options | Community + paid support* | Documentation only |
| Reporting | Unlimited custom reports | Limited |
| Server Control | Full control over infrastructure | No control |
| Integration Options | API access and custom integrations | Limited |
*With fully managed VPS hosting, optimizations and support will be handled for you. This is also true for your analytics tools, website, and any additional software you might be hosting.
Key Benefits of Self-Hosted Matomo:
- You own and control all of your data
- Data comes without sampling or limitations – see every visitor and action
- Costs stay low as you grow
- Works with your existing server setup
- Optimized backup process
- Unmatched data security
Summary: Matomo vs Google Analytics
When comparing Matomo vs Google Analytics, the former is the more accurate platform, making it superior at its core job. Additionally, Matomo offers more flexibility, no limitations, and complete data privacy and control. This alone makes it the obvious choice, right?
Well, yes, and no.
Google Analytics 4 is a far cry from the incredible tool earlier versions of the platform used to be. Matomo is also the better analytics tool for its core purpose, primarily because it doesn’t sample data. However, the question shouldn’t be Matomo vs Google Analytics, but can you use Matomo and Google Analytics together? And the answer to that question is a resounding yes.
Matomo and Google Analytics
Running both platforms together actually gives you the best of both worlds. You can use Google Analytics for the most basic features as the backup and use Matomo for everything else. The raw numbers between the two will differ, but patterns should remain similar. In the rare cases that Google has an issue, you can verify this via Matomo. Similarly, if a user error stops data collection on either platform, you can use the other to confirm that your site hasn’t gone down over that period. This doubling-up approach lets you:
- Check data accuracy across platforms.
- Keep a backup analytics system.
- Get complete insights from different tracking methods
- Choose from multiple reporting options
While Matomo has more features and unsampled data, Google Analytics does provide certain features from its suite of tools that your analytics won’t be able to capture. While they may not be accurate, GA4 can give you insights into your visitor demographics, such as age and gender. This information is worthless to some businesses and a goldmine to others. It just depends on what you feel you need.
What side of the Matomo vs Google Analytics fence are you on? Let us know in the comments below.