head to head · open source
Plausible vs Countly
Plausible has 29,151 GitHub stars, 1,868 forks, 60 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Countly has 5,905 stars, 981 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Plausible leads on adoption by 394% (29,151 vs 5,905 stars). Plausible is written in Elixir under AGPL-3.0; Countly is written in JavaScript under a custom or non-standard licence. Plausible has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, Countly 17%. Countly was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (analytics), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Plausible | Countly | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Elixir | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 981 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Plausible if
- You weight community size — 29K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Elixir
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Countly if
- You want the Countly feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and Countly fits your workflow better
About Plausible
Plausible Analytics is an open source, privacy first web analytics tool — a lightweight, cookie free alternative to Google Analytics — for teams that want traffic and conversion insights without collecting personal data, available as a managed cloud service or a self hosted community edition under the AGPL 3.0 licence.
read the full Plausible overview →
About Countly
Countly is a privacy first, AI ready analytics and customer engagement platform that organizations deploy themselves rather than consume only as a hosted service. The server side component lives in this repository and is written in JavaScript, sitting in the JavaScript and Node.js ecosystem alongside the client SDKs that ship separately for iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, NodeJS, Unity, Java and JavaScript. The platform is built around the idea that customer data should stay under the operator's control: Countly runs on premises or in a private cloud, and the project describes full data ownership, deployment…
read the full Countly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Plausible or Countly more popular?
Plausible has 29,151 GitHub stars and Countly has 5,905. Plausible has the larger community by that measure.
Are Plausible and Countly free?
Both are open source. Plausible is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and Countly has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Plausible and Countly?
Plausible is written in Elixir and Countly in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Plausible or Countly?
Choose Plausible if you want the larger community (29,151 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Countly if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.