Independent Analytics – WordPress Analytics Plugin
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About
A simple, yet powerful WordPress analytics plugin that gives you privacy-friendly stats to grow your website. A Google Analytics alternative.
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What It Does
Independent Analytics is a self-hosted WordPress analytics plugin that records visitor data directly in your WordPress database rather than sending it to a third-party service. It provides standard metrics such as pageviews, sessions, referrers, and device breakdowns through a dashboard inside the wp-admin area. The plugin is designed as a Google Analytics alternative for site owners who want insights without a Google account or external tracking script.
Who It's For
This plugin is a strong fit for privacy-conscious site owners, GDPR-sensitive businesses, and small publishers who want analytics that stay on their own server. It works well for bloggers, local businesses, membership sites, and agencies managing multiple client WordPress installs that need simple traffic stats without setting up a Google Analytics property. Content creators who want a lightweight, cookie-light solution will also find it useful.
Who Should Skip It
If you run a high-traffic publication needing advanced funnel analysis, custom event tracking, or integration with Google's advertising and Search Console tools, this plugin will feel limited compared to Site Kit or Matomo. Enterprise teams that need multi-user dashboards, BigQuery exports, or heatmaps should look elsewhere.
The Bottom Line
Independent Analytics delivers exactly what it promises: simple, privacy-friendly analytics stored inside WordPress with a clean dashboard and excellent support. It is not as feature-rich as Matomo or as widely deployed as Site Kit, but for small to medium sites that just need honest traffic numbers without third-party scripts, it is a trustworthy choice. Score of 91.79 out of 100 places it firmly in the recommended tier.
Related Plugins
Pick Site Kit if you want first-party Google Analytics, Search Console, AdSense, and PageSpeed data in one dashboard and do not mind Google's tracking.
Choose Matomo when you need more advanced features like heatmaps, A/B testing, or custom event tracking and are willing to configure a heavier setup.
Go with WP Statistics if you want a similarly self-hosted solution but with a much larger install base of 600,000 and more granular data filtering.
Pick Burst Statistics for a comparable lightweight, cookieless approach if you want a faster, newer alternative with a similar feature set.
Choose MonsterInsights if you specifically want Google Analytics data presented inside WordPress and need ecommerce and form tracking out of the box.