Adjust vs Matomo

Adjust is a mobile measurement partner (MMP) founded in Berlin in 2012 and acquired by AppLovin in 2021 in a deal valued at about $1 billion. It tells app marketers which ad networks, campaigns and creatives drove installs, in-app events and revenue, so budget can move to the channels that actually pay back. Its SDK runs inside iOS, Android and Unity apps.

The platform covers attribution and deep linking, Datascape dashboards and cohort reporting, a Fraud Prevention Suite that blocks click spam and fake installs, and support for Apple's SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit privacy frameworks. Add-on modules include InSight for incrementality testing with synthetic control groups, Audience Builder, CTV AdVision for connected-TV campaigns and SpendWorks for ad-spend mapping. The free Base plan covers up to 1,500 attributions per month; Core and Enterprise are custom-priced annual contracts.

Adjust suits app publishers, games studios and fintech or ecommerce apps with real paid user-acquisition budgets. AppsFlyer is its biggest rival with a larger partner ecosystem, while Singular leans harder into cost aggregation. Northbeam and Rockerbox, also in our catalog, solve web and DTC attribution rather than app installs, so they are not like-for-like replacements.

In May 2025 Adjust launched Growth Copilot in beta, an AI assistant that answers reporting questions in plain language and, with Pulse, can publish scheduled AI reports. When negotiating, ask for fraud prevention to be bundled, since it is often quoted as a separate add-on.

Matomo, known as Piwik until 2018, is the longest-running open-source alternative to Google Analytics. Started in 2007 and developed by the New Zealand-based company InnoCraft, it is used by governments, universities, healthcare organizations and privacy-conscious companies that want full ownership of their analytics data.

Matomo provides full web analytics: visitors, acquisition channels, campaigns, goals, ecommerce tracking, custom dimensions, segments and custom reports. Premium features add heatmaps, session recordings, funnels, form analytics, A/B testing, media analytics and user flows, and a built-in tag manager handles tracking code. It can be configured for cookieless tracking, IP anonymization and consent management to support GDPR and similar regulations. The on-premise edition is free under the GPL with paid premium plugins; Matomo Cloud is priced by monthly hits and includes many premium features. The interface is available in dozens of languages.

Matomo is the right choice when you need Google Analytics-level depth with data kept on your own servers or in the EU. The interface feels dated compared with Plausible or Fathom, self-hosting at high traffic requires database tuning, and premium plugins add cost on-premise. Plausible, Fathom and Umami are simpler and lighter for marketing sites, while Piwik PRO, a separate company that grew from the same roots, targets enterprises with a stronger consent and CDP offering.

For most small sites Matomo is more than necessary; for regulated organizations it is often the default.