Alternatives to Matomo

What changes when you move off Matomo

Matomo comes in two editions, and leaving them is not the same job. Matomo Cloud is a subscription: the vendor runs the servers, keeps the data in Frankfurt and sizes each plan by hits. Matomo On-Premise is the same software under the GPL-3.0 license, on your own web server with PHP and a MySQL or MariaDB database. A subscription ends on a date; an installation ends when you stop it, so its database can hold the history while a new tool starts counting.

The report set changes too. The Reporting API returns any report as CSV, JSON or XML, and the Live API returns visit-level detail that many lighter tools do not keep at all. Funnels, heatmaps, session recordings, A/B testing and form analytics are premium features: part of the Business plan in the cloud, paid plugins on your own server. Check which of them you open in a normal month before the price columns decide anything.

What to check before you switch

1. What you can take out. Reports leave through the API; a self-hosted installation holds the database itself. To move data between the cloud and your own server, the pricing page asks you to write to the vendor.
2. The unit on the bill. A Matomo Cloud hit is any tracked interaction: a pageview, event, download, outlink, site search, content tracking request or crash, and the help centre adds requests from AI assistants. A plan sold by pageviews counts something narrower.
3. Retention on the first paid plan, the period this directory records. Matomo Cloud’s Business plan keeps raw data for 24 months and reports with no end date, so the row covers two periods: how long you can segment, and how long you can read totals.
4. What happens to the history. Where the new tool has no importer, keep the old instance up with its tracking code removed and run both scripts for a few weeks.
5. Who holds the data. The Data in EU column describes a vendor’s hosted service; on your own server the location is yours, and subprocessors sit on the vendor’s privacy page.

Which of these can import your data

One tool here documents a path out of Matomo. PostHog’s migration guide has you pull visits from the Live API with an API token, convert them to PostHog’s event schema and send them in; it states that historical imports are not charged, while the features behind them need a paid plan.

The others document different sources. Plausible, Fathom Analytics, Simple Analytics and Swetrix connect a Google account and pull Google Analytics 4 history, each with limits their cards spell out; Swetrix also reads exported files from Umami, Plausible, Fathom and Simple Analytics. Umami Cloud imports for Pro customers from a PostgreSQL export of a self-hosted Umami or from a CSV file, run by its own team. Matomo is not among those named sources, and an importer written for one does not read another.

Questions and answers

Can I take my Matomo history with me?

Yes, as files: reports through the API, and the raw data in your database if you self-host. What the next tool accepts decides the rest: most here import from Google Analytics 4 or named file exports.

Is leaving Matomo Cloud the same as leaving an installation I run?

No. Cancelling a subscription puts a date on data held by the vendor, and the pricing page asks you to write in for an export. Your own installation stops when you stop it, so old reports stay readable while the server runs.

Will the new tool show the same numbers?

No. Matomo’s standard code sets first-party cookies and recognises returning visitors by them, while many tools in the table keep no identifier in the browser, and bot filtering differs by vendor. Expect a step in the charts on the day of the switch; the cookieless page goes through the counting methods.