Simplytics vs Cloudflare Web Analytics
Cloudflare Web Analytics is free, sets no cookies, and installs with one script tag — for a lot of sites that is simply the right answer, and we will not pretend otherwise. The difference is what the number means. Cloudflare reports visits rather than visitors, keeps its data unsampled for only the first 7 days, and shows you the previous six months. Simplytics counts unique visitors, never samples anything, and keeps held daily totals without a scheduled expiry — for $12 a year.
| Simplytics | Cloudflare Web Analytics | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $12/year | Free, on every Cloudflare plan |
| Cookies | None | None — no client-side state at all |
| Consent assessment | Site-specific | Site-specific |
| Script size (compressed) | ~1.8 KB | ~9.9 KB (measured September 2026) |
| Unique visitors | Yes — short-lived keyed daily hash | No — a “visit” is a page view whose referrer is another host |
| Sampling | Never — every pageview is counted | Yes — unsampled for 7 days, then aggregated to ~10%; queries sample between 0.0001% and 100% |
| Stats retention | No scheduled expiry while held | The previous six months |
| Core Web Vitals & page load time | No | Yes — LCP, INP, CLS and a load-time breakdown |
| Custom events & goals | Yes — JS API + click attribute, with conversion rate | No — the FAQ says “not yet” |
| UTM campaigns | Yes | No — query strings are deliberately not logged |
| Funnels | Yes | No |
| Bounce rate & session duration | Yes | No — not among the reported metrics |
| Live visitor count | Yes | No |
| Websites | Up to 12 | Ten per account (soft limit); no limit when proxied through Cloudflare |
| Email reports | Weekly digest + automatic traffic spike alerts | Weekly summary — its only notification type |
| View-counter badge (site & per-page) | Yes — live SVG | No |
| Public dashboards | Yes | No |
| Global Privacy Control | Honoured by default | Not honoured |
| Analytics data location | Primary DB: EU (Warsaw); India access | Not committed — “may be processed in a different country or region from where it originated” |
Prices and features verified from official Cloudflare Web Analytics pages, September 2026. Script sizes are compressed transfer sizes.
Where Cloudflare Web Analytics is better
- It is free, at any traffic volume, on every Cloudflare plan — Simplytics has no free tier beyond the trial.
- Core Web Vitals — LCP, INP and CLS — plus a DNS/TCP/request/response page-load breakdown. Simplytics measures none of that, and that is a real gap, not a positioning choice.
- If your site is already proxied through Cloudflare, the numbers are collected at the edge, where an ad-blocker cannot remove them. Both our script and their beacon can be blocked; only they have the server-side fallback.
- No site limit at all when proxied, against our twelve.
- Nothing new to sign up for if you already use Cloudflare for DNS or the CDN.
Where Simplytics is better
- Unique visitors, not just visits. Cloudflare counts a “visit” as a page view whose referrer is a different host, which is a different number from how many people came.
- Nothing is ever sampled. Cloudflare keeps unsampled beacon data for 7 days and then aggregates it down to around 10%, and dashboard queries pick a sampling level between 0.0001% and 100% depending on how much data matches.
- Held daily totals have no scheduled expiry, unlike Cloudflare’s six-month display window.
- Custom events with conversion rates, funnels and UTM campaigns — Cloudflare has none of these today and its own FAQ answers “not yet” to both custom events and UTM parameters.
- Bounce rate, session duration and a live visitor count, none of which Cloudflare reports.
- A ~1.8 KB script instead of ~9.9 KB.
- Global Privacy Control is honoured by default: a visitor whose browser sends it is not counted unless the site owner switches that check off. Cloudflare Web Analytics does not honour it.
- A public dashboard you can share and a live view-counter badge you can embed on the page itself.
Which should you pick?
If the requirement is “free”, take Cloudflare Web Analytics — it is a fast, genuinely private pageview counter with the best performance metrics of anything on this page, and no comparison that told you otherwise would be honest. Choose Simplytics when the number has to be exact rather than sampled, has to go back further than six months, has to be per visitor rather than per visit, or has to carry events, funnels and campaigns — and when a shareable dashboard or an embeddable view counter is part of what you want.
Frequently asked questions
Cloudflare Web Analytics is free. Why pay $12 a year?
Because what is free is a sampled, six-month, visit-based count. Cloudflare keeps unsampled data for 7 days and then aggregates it to around 10%, shows the previous six months, and reports visits rather than unique visitors. Simplytics never samples, keeps held daily totals without a scheduled expiry, counts unique visitors, and adds events, funnels, campaigns, a public dashboard and an embeddable view counter. If none of that matters for your site, Cloudflare really is the better deal.
Do I have to move my DNS to Cloudflare to use it?
No — it works on any site with a script tag, though you do need a free Cloudflare account to get the site token. Proxying your DNS through Cloudflare is what unlocks the edge-collected numbers an ad-blocker cannot strip, and removes the ten-site soft limit that applies to sites that are not proxied.
Does Cloudflare Web Analytics use cookies?
No. Cloudflare states that it “does not use any client-side state, such as cookies or localStorage”, and that the visitor IP is discarded at the nearest data centre. Simplytics sets no cookies and stores nothing in the browser either; its script only reads one optional flag a site can offer as a “don’t count my visits” switch. The difference is on the server: Simplytics keeps a short-lived keyed daily hash to count unique visitors, which Cloudflare Web Analytics does not. Whether either needs a banner or notice on your site is your own assessment.
Why does Cloudflare sample my data?
Volume. Cloudflare serves analytics for sites ranging from a handful of requests a day to billions, so beyond the first 7 days it stores roughly a 10% sample and estimates from it. For a large site the estimate is very good. For a small one, sampling is the difference between a real count and an approximation — which is why Simplytics, sized for small sites, simply counts.
Compare Simplytics with others: vs Google Analytics · vs Plausible · vs Fathom · vs Simple Analytics · vs Matomo