Matomo vs FullStory

From $29 per month (Cloud, 50k hits; annual billing gives 2 months free)

Quote on request

Self-hosting is free but plugins such as heatmaps and A/B testing are paid add-ons. Cloud scales with hits.

Quote-based annual contracts priced by session volume. Among the more expensive tools in the category.

Self-hosted Community edition is free forever with unlimited users and hits; premium plugins are paid.

Free plan with limited monthly sessions.

Widely used

InnoCraft · since 2007

Widely used

FullStory · since 2014

• Complete data ownership with no third-party processing — the strongest GDPR position available.
• No sampling, unlike free tiers of hosted analytics.
• Can be configured to run without cookies or consent banners.

• Retroactive analysis is a genuine capability difference, not a marketing angle.
• Excellent search: find the eleven sessions where a specific error occurred in checkout.
• Strong privacy controls with element-level exclusion rules.

• Self-hosting requires PHP and MySQL operations, including performance tuning at scale.
• The interface is less refined than modern product analytics tools.
• Advanced features are paid plugins even on the free self-hosted edition.

• Expensive, with opaque quote-based pricing.
• Capturing everything raises data-governance questions that need answering up front.
• Meaningful learning curve to use the search language well.

Public sector, healthcare and European organisations with strict data-residency requirements.

Product and support organisations that need to investigate specific user problems in depth.