Matomo vs Heap
Feature checklists rarely decide anything. What decides it is the pricing metric, who has to write the tests, and which limitation you can live with.
Entry price
From $29 per month (Cloud, 50k hits; annual billing gives 2 months free)
Free tierFree tier available
Free tierWhat drives the bill
The metric that actually scales your invoice.
Self-hosting is free but plugins such as heatmaps and A/B testing are paid add-ons. Cloud scales with hits.
Paid tiers are quote-based by session volume.
Free tier
Self-hosted Community edition is free forever with unlimited users and hits; premium plugins are paid.
Free plan with a monthly session limit.
Open source
GPL-3.0
Self-hostable
No-code authoring
Languages
Platforms
Fits teams
Adoption
Widely used
InnoCraft · since 2007
Widely used
Contentsquare · since 2013
Strengths
- 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 event definition eliminates 'we didn't track that' entirely.
- Very fast time to first insight — no instrumentation project required.
- Warehouse sync for teams that want the raw data.
Limitations
- 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.
- Autocaptured data needs governance or the event list becomes unusable noise.
- Session-based pricing on high-traffic products.
- Acquisition means overlap with Contentsquare's own products.
Best for
Public sector, healthcare and European organisations with strict data-residency requirements.
Product teams that want analytics without an instrumentation backlog.
Pricing last reviewed August 2026 and is indicative only — confirm on each vendor’s own page.