11 Best Web Analytics Tools For 2024 (Comparison)

Looking for the best web analytics tools? I’ve got you covered.

I’ve tried and tested all the most popular web analytics tools on the market so you don’t have to. In this post, I’ll be revealing my top picks. 

I’ll tell you what each web analytics tool is best for and what kind of data they can help you to analyze. Plus, I’ll also discuss their key features, pros and cons, pricing, and everything else you need to know.

The best web analytics software compared

#1 – Fathom Analytics

Fathom Analytics is my top pick for the overall best web analytics tool on the market this year. It’s much more ethical than other platforms and takes a privacy-first approach to analytics.

My favorite thing about Fathom Analytics is that it doesn’t rely on cookies, which means you don’t need to use a cookie consent banner on your site.

That’s a big deal for a couple of reasons. First off, cookie consent banners slow down your site loading times, which is bad for SEO. They’re also annoying to visitors (nobody likes having to deal with intrusive pop-ups), which can hurt your conversions and bounce rate.

And regardless, even without cookies, Fathom Analytics is still able to track all the important metrics, like traffic sources (referrers), bounce rate, time on site, visitor country, event completions, etc. It anonymizes the IP addresses of your visitors to protect their privacy too, so it’s fully compliant with data privacy regulations like GDPR, CCPR, ePrivacy, and PECTR. 

What’s more, you own all your data, permanently. Fathom won’t sell it to advertising companies or data brokers like a lot of its competitors, and it won’t delete it after a couple of years either.

The flip side of this is, of course, that it isn’t free. The platform has to make a profit somehow, and seeing as they don’t sell your data, they rely on subscription revenues instead. But if you care about privacy, it’s worth the cost.

Another thing I like about Fathom is how easy it is to use. Setup is a breeze—just copy-paste a single line of code to your CMS. The script is just 2kB, so it doesn’t take forever to load and won’t slow down your site like other tools (Google Analytics, I’m looking at you).

The analytics dashboard is simple and clean. You can see all the key metrics at a glance, with tables and graphs to help you visualize data, and filters to let you drill down. I also like that you can toggle different metrics on and off to reduce clutter on the page.

Key features

• Web analytics dashboard. See real-time data about your top pages, referrers, visitor devices, browsers, countries, events, UTMs, and more in an easy-to-understand dashboard.
• Event conversions. Set up custom events to track visitor conversion actions like form submissions, button clicks, and purchases.
• Traffic filtering. Fathom filters out bots, site crawlers, and other fake traffic so all your analytics data only includes real humans.
• Live visitor analytics. See who’s on your website at any given moment, what they’re looking at, and where they came from.
• Data retention. Keep access to your historical web analytics data forever, even decades down the line.
• Cookieless tracking. Fathom tracks your website traffic anonymously with no need for cookies or cookie consent banners.
• Integrations. Use Fathom anywhere with a lightweight code snippet, or install it through native integrations including a WordPress plugin.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Plans start from $15/month, save 17% if you pay yearly. Get started with a 30-day free trial.

#2 – Clicky Analytics

Clicky Analytics is the best web analytics tool if you’re on a budget. It’s free for up to 3k daily page views, and paid plans are super affordable. The user interface isn’t as well-designed as other tools, but if you can look past that, the functionality is excellent.

Like Fathom, Clicky is privacy-friendly and cookieless. It tracks visitors and pulls data in real time, which is great because a lot of other tools don’t give you data until the next day.

You can see all the important KPIs in Clicky’s general summary traffic report, like visitors, actions, time spent on site, bounce rate, etc. But that’s just the start. 

If you want to dig deeper, can also view things like heatmaps by page, visitor, or segment; traffic flow (entrance and exit pages), and complete visitor action logs.

One neat thing about Clicky is that it’s one of the few web analytics tools that uses cookies to automatically ignore your own visits to your website. A lot of other trackers don’t do this, which leads to inflated stats.

It also differs from other trackers in the way it calculates bounce rate. Most trackers count a visit as a bounce if the visitor only views one page, but Clicky only counts it as a bounce if they only view a single page and they’re on your site for under 30 seconds. I prefer this method as if visitors are on your site for over 30 seconds, they’re engaged.

Key features

• General web analytics. Provides real-time insights about your website visitors, actions, bounces, time per visit, content, etc.
• Advanced analytics. Heat mapping, funnel/map analysis, backlink monitoring, complete action logs, live view, and more
• Bot detection. Avoid inflated statistics by filtering out bots and crawlers, so you only see data from real human visitors.
• Visitor action logs. See exactly what every visitor gets up to on your site with complete action logs.
• IP address logging. Optionally log visitor IP addresses for anti-fraud purposes
• Uptime monitoring. Get alerts when your site is down with round-the-clock uptime monitoring from 7 different locations around the world.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $9.99/month, and save 33% when you pay yearly.

#3 – Mouseflow

Mouseflow is the best choice if you’re mostly interested in user behavior analytics. It helps you to understand how visitors interact with your website so you can optimize the UX to provide better experiences and boost conversions.

Mouseflow has a lot of features, but my favorite is Session Replay. It lets you view a play-by-play recording of real users who visit your website, so you can see exactly what they do from the moment they land on your domain until they exit.

Why is this useful? Because once you know what a typical visitor’s journey looks like—including how they navigate around, where they run into problems, and what leads them to eventually convert—you can use that knowledge to optimize your website design and UX.

And what’s really cool is each Session Replay is also given a ‘Friction Score’ from 1-10, which quantifies the level of frustration each visitor experienced on your website based on 7 friction events. This can help you to see at a glance who’s having the most trouble, so you can start your analysis there.

On top of Session Replays, you can also use Mouseflow’s Heatmaps to visualize your website engagement patterns. They show you where on each page users click, scroll, move their cursor, and pay attention. Again, these are super valuable insights to know when it comes to web design.

If you want to gather qualitative insights, you can use the User Feedback tool to set up custom-triggered surveys and ask your website visitors about their experience. Plus, dig deep into form analytics, build conversion funnels, and more.

Another thing I like about Mouseflow is that it’s one of the few web analytics tools that offers unlimited page views on all plans, even the free plan. However, the number of recordings you can make per month is limited.

Key features

• Session Replay. Watch real users use your website to better understand their journey and identify friction points.
• Heatmaps. Visualize engagement patterns with heatmaps that show you where users click, scroll, move their cursor, pay attention, etc.
• Conversion Funnels. Build custom funnels to measure where your visitors convert or drop off.
• Form Analytics. Find out how well your forms perform and where users struggle to complete them.
• Friction Score. Quantify each website user’s level of frustration with a weighted friction score, based on events like click-errors, click-rage, bounce, mouse-out, etc.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $39/month, and save up to 20% with yearly billing. Get started with a 14-day free trial.

#4 – Semrush Traffic Analytics

Semrush Traffic Analytics is the best web analytics tool for competitive analysis. It’s my go-to whenever I want to estimate the traffic of someone else’s website.

If you want to see your internal traffic stats, you need to verify that you own the domain in Google Analytics first. That’s fine if you’re analyzing your own website, but what if you’re trying to analyze your competitors? You won’t be able to.

In that case, Semrush’s Traffic Analytics is the next best thing. It uses clickstream data to estimate the traffic of any website. It’s not an exact science, but if you just want to get a rough idea of traffic numbers, it’s usually pretty accurate.

All you have to do is enter the competitor domain you want to check in Semrush’s Traffic Analytics tool, then hit analyze. If you want, you can also analyze multiple competitors in bulk so you can benchmark their performance side-by-side.

In the overview report, you’ll be able to see estimations for the website’s total visits in any given period, as well as engagement metrics like unique visitor numbers, bounce rate, average pages per visit, average visit duration, etc.

And that’s just the start. There are also a bunch of other reports with deeper insights.

For example, Semrush can tell you what percentage of the website’s traffic comes from searches, paid ads, social media, etc. It can also tell you what the top audience demographics and geo-locations are, and what devices website visitors are using. 

Personally, I like to tab over to the Top Pages report so I can see which of my competitors’ blog posts get the most traffic. I then use this to help come up with new content ideas and inform my SEO strategy.

The Traffic Journey report is really neat too. It tells you where visitors are before and after they land on your competitor’s website. This is great for discovering promising ad placement opportunities.

Key features

• Website traffic analytics. Get accurate traffic estimations for any site based on clickstream data from multiple proprietary and third-party sources.
• Traffic by geolocation. Check traffic globally or in specific countries and subcontinents around the world
• Top Pages report. Find out how many visitors and pageviews each page gets on any website and how they attract web traffic.
• Traffic Journey report. Find out where a given website’s visitors come from, and where they go when they exit the site.
• Other tools. Semrush also comes with 40+ other SEO and marketing analytics tools including keyword research, link building, and auditing tools.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $139.95/month, and save up to 17% when you pay yearly.

Read our Semrush Review.

#5 – Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a completely free web analytics tool by Google. It has a couple of drawbacks compared to paid tools, but it provides a lot of useful information for free, so it’s a good choice for casual users who don’t want to pay a monthly subscription fee.

Google Analytics works by adding a small tracking code to your website. Once you’ve done that, it can pull data from your website visitors and present a wealth of insights to you in your GA dashboard.

On the overview page, you’ll see all the important stuff like total sessions, bounce rate, session duration, referrals/traffic channels, etc. 

There are also a bunch of graphs and charts that highlight trends over time and display things like your top visiting times, audience demographics, user retention, etc. Plus, a real-time report that shows you who’s active on your website at that very moment.

If you want to dig a little deeper, you can open up some of the other reports to view things like event-based data, behavior flow, conversions, and more.

My main gripe with Google Analytics is that it’s harder to use than other tools. It takes a while to set up, and navigating through the reports can be a challenge. 

Another issue is that the old version of Google Analytics isn’t as privacy-compliant as some paid tools. However, you can migrate over to Google Analytics 4, which is the newer, cookieless version of Google Analytics, designed to comply with more recent privacy laws.

There are a few other big drawbacks (see the cons below) besides that. But it’s nonetheless an important tool to have in your analytics stack.

Key features

• On-site analytics. Gather a wealth of analytics data from your own website by installing a small tracking code.
• Behavior reports. Find out how users interact with your website, which pages they visit, how long they stay engaged, how they navigate around, and more.
• Acquisition reports. Explore the channels your website traffic comes from
• Audience reports. Find out who your top audience demographics are
• Real-time data. See which visitors are on your website in real time with live updates
• Integrations. Integrate Google Analytics with other Google properties like Search Console and Adwords.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Google Analytics is free forever.

#6 – Matomo

Matomo is another popular web analytics tool that’s marketed as a more ethical alternative to Google Analytics. It’s open-source, so it gets top marks for transparency. And it’s one of the only web analytics tools that gives you 100% data ownership.

Most web analytics platforms store your data on their servers, but the problem with that is that you have no control over your data security. So, you’re at risk of things like data leaks and data being sold to third-party brokers.

However, Matomo is different. It lets you keep all of your customer data on your own servers, giving you full control over privacy and security.

You have three options. Option one is to sign up for Matomo On-Premise, which is totally free with zero monthly subscription costs. It lets you self-host data on your own premises, which is great—and there are zero data storage limits. However, it’s tricky to set up and manage, and you’ll have to rely on free community support if anything goes wrong.

Option two is to use Matomo Analytics for WordPress. It has all the same benefits as on-premise but without the technical headaches. Just install the WordPress plugin and you’ll be set up in a jiffy.

And the final option is to use Matomo Cloud. This is the paid subscription service, in which your data is stored on Matomo’s cloud servers. It’s much easier to set up, comes with email support and other features/benefits, and your data ownership rights are still protected by the terms and conditions of your plan. However, it costs money, and there are limits to how much data you can store.

In terms of the data you get, Matomo gives you a 360-degree view of everything. You get traditional analytics data like visits over time, top keywords, visitor demographics, etc. Plus, funnel analytics, user acquisition data, behavior tracking, heatmaps, A/B testing tools, and more.

You can even view complete Session Recordings of each visit to see exactly how people interact with your website and apply what you learn to optimize your website.

Just keep in mind that you have to pay extra for some of the more advanced analytics features like heatmaps and session recordings. 

Key features

• General web analytics. Get a complete view of your website performance with dozens of website analytics metrics.
• Advanced features. Gather deeper insights about your website and visitors with heat mapping, A/B testing, session recordings, funnel analytics, and more.
• On-premise storage. Store all your data on your own premises with Matomo’s free plan
• Privacy-first tracking. Securely track visitors and store their data in accordance with relevant privacy laws, like GDPR and CCPA.
• Google Analytics importer. Import your data from Google Analytics directly to Matomo.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $26/month. Get started with a free trial.

#7 – Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics is one of the best behavioral analytics solutions on the market, particularly for ecommerce websites.

The thing I like most about Kissmetrics is that it ties every action your website visitors make to a real human. So you don’t just get a ton of anonymous data like you do with other tools—you know who the actual customers are behind the clicks, and how they behave on your site. 

And if the same person visits your site on multiple devices, Kissmetrics will connect all those visits to one person, so you don’t get over-inflated data.

Of course, to be able to do all that, Kissmetrics relies on cookies. So, the tradeoff is that it’s not as privacy-first as other tools. You’ll need a cookie consent banner and privacy policy to be compliant.

In terms of the data itself, you get all the usual visitor metrics. Plus, lots of e-commerce-specific metrics like revenue, revenue per person, lifetime value, total churn, customers/week, conversion rate, etc.

Kissmetrics funnel analytics are second to none too. It makes it easy to uncover dropoff and friction points that may be losing your sales.

I also like that Kissmetric offers scalable pricing. You can pay-as-you-go per tracked event or build your monthly plan.

Key features

• Sophisticated website analytics. Track user behavior on your website and tie every action to a real human.
• Multi-channel analysis. Track visitors across all your sites and products and combine their data in one place.
• Revenue metrics. Gather insights into your business growth and find out how much you’re earning.
• Custom dashboards. Create your own personalized dashboards that only show the KPIs you’re interested in.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Plans start at $25.99/month, save 25% with yearly billing. Get started with a free trial.

#8 – Mixpanel

Mixpanel is a flexible, developer-friendly analytics solution. It’s designed to help you track user behavior on your website or mobile app, so you can optimize for user engagement.

One thing I like about Mixpanel is how flexible it is. You can customize your dashboard with the KPIs you want to track and share context through the versatile canvas.

It gives you a ton of insights that tell you how your product is being used and provides endless ways for you to slice and dice the data. For example, you can break metrics down by audience demographics, website/app behavior, account type, etc.

Key features

• Product analytics. View detailed analytics for your website, mobile app, or other digital product.
• SDK. Stream data directly from your digital product using the Mixpanel SDK and robust developer documentation
• Canvas. Add text, images, and more to share context alongside your analytics data in the versatile canvas.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $24/month.

#9 – Hotjar

Hotjar is another web analytics tool that’s focused mainly on the user behavior side of things. It’s a good choice for product designers and managers who are serious about improving the user experience.

With Hotjar, you have everything you need to understand exactly how visitors engage with your website or use your app in one place.

Detailed heatmaps show you which parts of each page get the most attention, which parts get ignored, and which elements drive conversions. You can switch between click, move, and scroll heatmaps, and segment them by device to see how screen size impacts user interaction

Then, you can use Hotjar’s session Recordings to gather extra context. They let you see first-hand how users journey across your website in real time, from start to finish.

There are also Survey and Feedback tools to help you gather even more first-hand data from your visitors. And an Interviews feature that lets you connect 1-to-1 with users over live video streams to iterate on your ideas.

Key features

• Heatmaps. Visualize user behavior on your website with detailed heatmaps.
• Recordings. Look over your visitors’ shoulders and see what they see as they browse your site.
• Feedback & Surveys. Find out first-hand how users feel about your website, and ask them questions to inform your strategy.
• Interviews. Connect with users 1 on 1 to get their thoughts on changes before you make them.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $39/month, save 20% if you pay yearly. Get started with a 15-day free trial.

#10 – Countly

Countly is a feature-rich, privacy-centric website analytics tool that provides detailed insights into how users interact with your website, mobile app, or other digital products. 

It’s more expensive than most of the other web analytics tools in this list, but it’s also built for enterprises. So if you’re a big brand with a big budget, it could be the way to go.

It’s designed to be an all-in-one analytics solution, so it offers 70+ features in one place. That includes user analytics, a/b testing, heat mapping, performance monitoring, email reporting, funnel analytics, surveys, and lots more. 

And if that wasn’t enough, Countly is also extensible by plugins. So, you can customize it to fit your needs. You can even create your own custom dashboards and if you want, build your own plugins.

Countly offers both self- and cloud-hosted plans, with pricing depending on the number of monthly active users (MAUs) you serve. If you opt for the self-hosted plan, you can deploy Countly on-premises and retain 100% ownership of your data.

Key features

• User behavior analytics. Gather insights into individual customer experiences across all your sites and apps.
• Custom dashboards. Design your own dashboard by adding, removing, and rearranging analytics widgets.
• User profiles. Store and view detailed user profiles for all of your site/app visitors.
• Funnels. Build custom funnels and track conversions and drop-offs at each step.
• Other features. 70+ more features including A/B testing, real-time traffic analytics, etc.
• SDK integration. Deploy the JavaScript-based SDK on your website or app to get data sent to you automatically.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $80/month. Get started with a free trial.

#11 – HubSpot Marketing Analytics

HubSpot Marketing Analytics is a comprehensive suite of web analytics tools designed to help businesses track, analyze, and optimize their marketing efforts. 

HubSpot provides marketers with actionable insights, streamlines reporting processes, and helps them optimize marketing strategies based on data-driven decisions.

Aside from tracking your website traffic, you can create various dashboards and reports. The number you can create is limited on the free version but paid plans can unlock more. There’s a lower priced starter plan and more expensive tiers depending on your needs.

The most significant benefit of a platform like HubSpot is that they offer an entire eco-system. Web analytics is just a small part of that. But everything works together in harmony.

That eco-system is definitely not going to be for everyone and paid plans can get expensive. But if the idea of using “one platform to rule them all” sounds appealing and you have the budget, I’d highly recommend testing out the platform to see if it aligns with your needs.

Key features

• Dashboard Customization: Users can create personalized dashboards that display key metrics and performance indicators relevant to their marketing campaigns. This boosts marketing ROI massively.
• Performance Tracking: HubSpot Web Analytics enables tracking of various marketing channels such as email campaigns, social media, website traffic, and paid advertising. This tracking helps businesses understand which channels are driving the most engagement and conversions for them.
• Campaign Reporting: Users can analyze the performance of individual marketing campaigns in detail. This includes metrics such as leads generated, conversion rates, cost per lead, and more, helping marketers easily assess the success of their campaigns.
• Data Visualization: HubSpot offers visual representations of data through graphs, charts, and tables, making it easier to interpret and communicate insights to stakeholders.
• Integration with CRM: As part of the HubSpot ecosystem, Marketing Analytics integrates seamlessly with HubSpot CRM and Sales tools. This integration allows for closed-loop reporting, where marketers can track how marketing activities influence sales and revenue.
• Real-Time Reporting: with HubSpot’s free web analytics tool you’ll be able to access real-time data and updates. This will allow you to have the latest information to make informed decisions and improve your campaigns even further.
• Goal Setting and Monitoring: with HubSpot you can set specific goals for their marketing campaigns and monitor progress towards those goals within the analytics dashboard. This will help you align marketing efforts with your business objectives.

Pros and cons

Pricing

HubSpot’s marketing analytics and dashboard software is free, and you don’t need a credit card to get started.

Final thoughts

There you have it—the best website analytics tools on the market.

The best choice for you will depend on what kind of metrics you want to track and analyze—i.e. user behavior, user experience, traffic, conversions, competitors, SEO, content, and so on.

You’ll also need to factor in things like features, price, ease of use, and integrations when weighing up your options.

Want to analyze your socials as well as your website? Check out our roundup of the best social media reporting tools here. Or to analyze your performance on specific platforms, see these Facebook analytics tools and Instagram analytics tools.

You might also want to read our roundup of the latest website statistics to see how your site stacks up against industry benchmarks, and use these website optimization tools to improve it. 

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