Plausible popularized the "one simple page" analytics dashboard, and it's a genuinely good product. Orbit takes the same cookieless, lightweight approach but is built around watching several websites from one place instead of switching between separate dashboards per site.
| Feature | Orbit | Plausible Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Cookies required | No cookies | No cookies |
| Self-hosting | Not available (hosted only) | Yes, open source |
| Multi-site dashboard | Yes, via Boards | No, one dashboard per site |
| Team roles | Owner/manager/view-only per team | Basic team member invites |
| Pricing entry point | Free for 1 site | ~$9/mo, no free tier |
| Session recording / heatmaps | Included | Not offered |
If you only run one website and want the simplest possible dashboard, Plausible's focus is hard to beat. If you're watching five, ten, or more sites — an agency, a portfolio of products — Orbit's combined Board view saves the tab-switching Plausible doesn't solve for.
Yes — Plausible's code is open source and it offers a self-hosted option alongside its hosted cloud plans. Orbit is a hosted-only service (built on the open-source Umami project) — there's no self-hosting option.
Not natively — each site gets its own dashboard, and Plausible added a basic team/site-switcher but no combined cross-site view. Orbit's Boards feature shows stats from several sites on one screen.
Plausible starts around $9/mo for up to 10k monthly pageviews with unlimited sites. Orbit's free tier covers 1 site with full history for 90 days; paid tiers are €4.99/mo (5 sites) and €12.99/mo (unlimited sites), with unlimited data retention.
Yes — neither Orbit nor Plausible sets tracking cookies, so neither requires a cookie consent banner under GDPR for analytics purposes.