Plausible vs Trace: both cookieless. Trace goes one level deeper.
We share the same values: no cookies, open source, nothing personal, hosted in the EU. Plausible tells you how many came and where from. Trace looks at what happens next: the clicks that fail, the errors that break pages and the fixes that help. Many teams will run both.
Keep Plausible if you need
- A simple traffic dashboard: visitors, sources, top pages
- Marketing attribution: campaigns, referrers, UTM tags
- The lightest possible script, and nothing more
Choose Trace if you want
- Dead clicks, rage clicks and errors, not only pageviews
- Funnels and goals that point at a specific element to fix, also when self-hosted
- A coding agent that turns the worst problem into a change, and a verdict after
Side by side
| Plausible | Trace | |
|---|---|---|
| Privacy | No cookies, no personal data, open source | The same. Trace collects more per page, so it scrubs more. |
| Counting visitors | Daily-salted hash | Daily-salted hash, the same method |
| What it measures | Visits, sources, pages, goals | Clicks, scrolls, forms and errors on each page |
| Funnels | Cloud Business plan only, not in Community Edition | Every edition, self-hosted too |
| Frustration and errors | No | Yes, per element and page |
| Traffic sources and campaigns | Yes, its strength | Referring site only |
| Script size | About 2.5 KB | 8.4 KB |
| Self-host | Community Edition | Community edition, no limits |
Plausible details from its public documentation, checked 29 October 2026. Spot something out of date? Tell us.
Moving from Plausible: what maps to what
Keep Plausible for traffic. Trace adds the layer beneath it.
| In Plausible | In Trace |
|---|---|
| Goals | Goals with targets, in trace.json |
| Funnels (Cloud Business) | Funnels in every edition |
Custom events (plausible()) | trace.track() |
| Top pages | Pages with exit rate, scroll, time and problems |
Run them side by side for a month
Add the Trace tag next to Plausible. It adds 8.4 KB and does its work when the browser is idle.
Keep Plausible for traffic. Use Trace's ranked list to fix the page with the worst drop-off.
Read the verdict on what you shipped. Keep what still earns its place. Both scripts can stay for good.
Questions from Plausible users
Should I replace Plausible?
Not necessarily. Plausible is excellent for traffic. Add Trace for what happens after people arrive.
Is Trace as private as Plausible?
Both are cookieless and keep no personal data. Trace also records element labels and error messages, so it scrubs them twice. Patterns can't catch a name in a label, so mask those elements with data-trace-mask.
Does a busy site use up events faster?
Yes. Every click is an event, so 100,000 Trace events go further on a small site than on a busy one. Self-hosting has no limit.
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