Matomo cloud or your own server
What we can check for each
| What we check | In the vendor’s cloud | On your own server |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $26 to start, $42 at 100,000 hits a month | The software, plus whatever your server, database and backups cost |
| Where the data sits | EU | Wherever you run it |
| Data retention | 2 years on the cheapest paid plan | As long as you keep the database |
| Open source | Yes, the code is published | |
| Updates and uptime | The vendor’s job | Yours |
Prices are monthly, without VAT, as listed by the vendor. We do not publish an estimate of what a server costs, because that depends on your traffic, your provider and how much you do yourself. Seehow we check every value.
What the cloud costs as traffic grows
Every published step of the vendor’s price list, from 50k to 5M hits a month.
What the two editions share
It is one product. The same tracking code, the same reports, the same tag manager and the same tracking and reporting APIs appear in both, and the code is published under the GPL-3.0 license either way. The Google Analytics importer works on both sides: a free plugin for an installation you run and for Matomo for WordPress, and a screen under Administration in the hosted version.
The privacy controls are the same screen too. Administration, Privacy, Anonymize data holds IP masking, which is on by default with two bytes removed, the opt-out form you paste into a page, the DoNotTrack setting and the schedule that deletes old raw visitor logs.
What changes in the cloud
The vendor runs the servers, and its pricing page answers the location question for you: cloud data is stored in Frankfurt, Germany. The plan is sized in hits, and a hit is any interaction sent for reporting, among them pageviews, events, downloads, outlinks, site searches and crashes. Requests from AI assistants count against the quota, while heartbeat pings, which only correct the recorded visit duration, do not. On the plan this directory records, the allowances cover 30 websites, 30 team members, 100 segments, 150 goals and 30 custom dimensions; raw data is kept for 24 months and report data has no end date.
What the subscription buys is work rather than software. The vendor’s FAQ lists hosting, maintenance, automatic updates, security monitoring, daily backups and access to Matomo features, with the plan table setting the numbers behind features such as heatmap pageviews and session recordings. The trial runs 21 days.
What changes on your own server
The requirements page is the shortest description of the job. Matomo 5 asks for PHP 8 with MySQL 5.5 or newer or MariaDB, the 6.0.0 release for PHP 8.1 with MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.6, plus extensions such as GD for the graphs in email reports. Reports are archived by an hourly cron job: the crontab route needs php-cli and SSH access, the FAQ documents a web cron for hosts without one, and Matomo for WordPress uses WP Cron instead. Updates, backups, uptime and capacity are yours, and so is the choice of where the server stands. The vendor publishes recommended sizing by monthly request volume; what that hardware costs depends on your provider, which is why this page carries no estimate for it.
The feature split is the other difference. The free Community tier has unlimited users and hits, community plugins and forum support. Premium plugins such as Custom Reports, Funnels, Users Flow, Media Analytics, Heatmaps and Session Recording and Form Analytics come as paid bundles with their own caps on users and hits per month, or one at a time from the Marketplace.
Questions and answers
Can I move from one to the other later?
Yes, in both directions, through the vendor. It states it can import data you collected on your own server into the cloud, or hand you an export of your cloud data to use on your own server. The request goes by email rather than through a button in the interface.
Which edition keeps data longer?
On the cloud plan recorded here, raw data lives 24 months and reports have no end date. On your own server the database keeps whatever you keep: the deletion schedule in the privacy settings is yours to set, the vendor’s own advice is three to six months of raw logs, and archived reports survive that cleanup.
Are the same features available in both?
The reports are the same code, but not on the same terms. In the cloud the premium features come with the plan and its allowances. On your own server the free edition ships without them and they arrive as paid plugins, bundled or single, which also means you install and update those plugins yourself.