Counter

Counter is a free, open-source web analytics service at counter.dev that focuses on the essentials: page views, unique visits, referrers, countries, devices, browsers, screen sizes and time-of-day patterns. It runs from a single lightweight script, does not use cookies and does not track individual users across sites, which keeps pages fast and avoids most of the privacy problems that come with traditional analytics.

There are no paid tiers in the usual sense. The service is free to use and funded by voluntary pay-what-you-want contributions, and the source code is public so technically minded users can inspect how data is collected. Setup takes a minute: create an account, paste the snippet and the dashboard starts filling in. The dashboard shows a short set of charts on one page rather than dozens of reports.

Counter is a good fit for personal blogs, portfolios, documentation sites and side projects where the owner only wants to know whether people visit and where they come from. It is not built for businesses: there are no custom events, goals, funnels, conversion tracking, segments or team features, and support is community level. GoatCounter is a similar free and minimal option, Cloudflare Web Analytics is free for sites on Cloudflare, and Plausible, Fathom or Umami are the next step when you need events and goals with a privacy-first approach.

Because it is so minimal, Counter works well alongside other tools rather than as a long-term analytics stack for a growing company.