Web analytics without cookies

What "cookieless" actually means

Most analytics tools drop a cookie (or write to local storage) to recognise the same browser over time. That identifier is what turns a visit into a tracked individual, and it is what triggers the cookie-consent banner under EU ePrivacy rules.

PlainStats sets none of it. No cookies, no local storage, no device fingerprint. Load the page on plainstats.eu yourself and check: there is nothing in the cookie jar. Counting still works, it just does not need to follow a person around.

How a visit is counted without an identifier

Instead of a permanent ID, the tracker derives a short-lived, anonymous signature from coarse, non-identifying signals, and that signature is rotated and discarded on a daily basis. Geography is country level only (from the network edge), never a precise location, and the raw IP address is never stored. The result is an aggregate count, not a profile.

• No cookies, no local storage, no fingerprinting.
• No raw IP address stored, no per-visitor record kept.
• Country-level geography only, never a city or precise point.
• Aggregate counts by day, designed to hold no personal data at rest.

What you still get

Cookieless does not mean featureless. You get the day-to-day numbers a privacy-respecting site actually uses: live visitors in real time, top sources and referrers, top pages, countries, and device and browser breakdowns. See it on the live demo.

What you give up (an honest note)

Without a persistent identifier, you cannot follow one person across many sessions or build long-term, user-level cohorts. If your business depends on stitching an individual's journey together over weeks, a cookie-based tool will do that and PlainStats will not. For most sites that simply want honest traffic numbers, that trade is the whole point.

Why it reduces compliance friction

Because there is no cookie or device storage, using PlainStats does not, on its own, trigger an ePrivacy consent requirement, so it can reduce the consent-banner friction your visitors see. It is built to minimise the personal data involved in the first place. Read more on GDPR-compliant analytics and whether you need a cookie banner. This is general information, not legal advice.

Built in the EU

PlainStats is built in the European Union and your analytics are processed and stored on EU infrastructure. If an EU-first data story matters to you, see EU web analytics and the Google Analytics alternative overview.