Google Analytics vs Matomo
Google Analytics and Matomo are both web analytics software. Google Analytics is a commercial product from Google. Matomo is open source under GPL-3.0, with 22k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick Google Analytics when
- You run Google Ads or need free, widely understood traffic reporting and can accept Google processing your visitor data.
- Pick Matomo when
- An organisation needs detailed analytics under its own control, for example for privacy rules in the public sector or EU.
Side by side
Tracks website and app visits, traffic sources, conversions and user behaviour, and feeds Google Ads audiences.
A full web analytics platform comparable to Google Analytics, with goals, e-commerce, segments and reports, self-hosted or cloud.
GA4's interface and data model are hard for casual users, it needs cookie consent in the EU, and data sampling and thresholds hide detail.
Heavy on MySQL at high traffic, and many features such as heatmaps and funnels are paid plugins.
Production-ready (both)
Cloud service
Self-hosted server and cloud service
Not published
PHP, MySQL and Vue
Closed source, sold by Google
Open source, GPL-3.0 (strong copyleft)
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
Use inside your business is unrestricted, but anything you distribute that includes it must be released under the same license.
652 Wikipedia readers a month on phones
22k GitHub stars
Not known
Established: started 15 years ago, latest release 5.14.2.
Other comparisons
More web and product analytics tools
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.