“Open source” and “you get all of it” are different promises.
Most analytics tools are open core. The repo is public, and the build you can run is missing the parts you would actually pay for. Here is what each project's own docs say, including the two places we are not your best answer.
| Tool | License | Self-hosting | Held back from self-host | What it needs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| smolanalytics | MIT | supported, same binary we run | nothing | no database · 256MB |
| Umami | MIT | supported | nothing | Postgres or MySQL |
| PostHog | MIT (repo) | “officially unsupported”, no support | “all paid-plan features are Cloud-only” | Kafka + ClickHouse + Redis + PG · 4 vCPU, 16GB |
| Plausible CE | AGPLv3 | supported | funnels, user journeys, ecommerce goals, SSO, Sites API | ClickHouse + Postgres |
| Matomo | GPL-3.0 | supported | core is free; many marketplace plugins are paid | PHP + MySQL |
Sources: PostHog's self-hosting docs · Plausible's self-hosting docs · Umami and Matomo licenses from their repos. Checked 29 Jul 2026. If any of this has gone out of date, tell me and I will correct it.
Where we are not the answer
A page like this is worthless if it only argues one way, so:
- Umami is a genuinely good answer. It is MIT, it gates nothing, and it is more mature than we are. If you already run a Postgres and web analytics is what you need, there is no reason to move. We are the better fit when you do not want a database at all, or when you need funnels, retention, cohorts, flags and experiments in the same process.
- If you need pixel-perfect session replay, keep PostHog. We ship an event-based session inspector, not video-style DOM recording. That needs a recorder and a blob store, which is exactly the thing that would end the single-binary promise, so we deliberately do not do it.
- Plausible is not being sneaky about this. Their docs say plainly that they publish the code “on principle, not because it is good business”, and Community Edition is a real, free, AGPL product. It just does not include funnels, which matters if funnels are why you came.
What MIT end to end means here
There is no paid build. The binary you download is the binary we run for cloud customers, and every feature is in it: funnels, retention, paths, cohorts, feature flags, A/B experiments, click heatmaps, in-product surveys, the session inspector, deploy impact and the full MCP server. There is no license key, no phone-home, and no enterprise tier holding something back.
docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/arjun0606/smolanalytics demo
Dashboard on localhost:8080. No database to install, no compose file, no cluster.
The cloud exists for people who would rather not run a server at all. It is the same software with a free tier of 1M events a month, which is the same allowance PostHog gives you.
One Go binary, one data file, 256MB. Our own public demo runs on exactly that.