sourcebeam vs Plausible
Plausible is great — privacy-first, simple, open source. sourcebeam shares those values but takes a different approach to pricing and adds features like AI-powered analysis, revenue attribution, and visitor journeys.
Plausible is great — privacy-first, simple, open source. sourcebeam shares those values but takes a different approach to pricing and adds features like AI-powered analysis, revenue attribution, and visitor journeys.
$5/mo
10K events/month
<1 KB
Script size
$5
To start
More affordable entry point. Plausible starts at $9/month for 10,000 monthly pageviews. There is no free tier — just a 30-day trial. sourcebeam starts at just $5/month for 10,000 events — no trial expiry, no feature restrictions. For personal projects, documentation sites, open source landing pages, or early-stage products, this means real analytics from day one at nearly half the cost.
True pay-as-you-go. Plausible uses fixed monthly plans based on pageview tiers: $9 for 10K, $19 for 100K, $69 for 1M, and so on. If your traffic fluctuates — high during a launch week, quiet during development — you are paying the same amount regardless. sourcebeam charges based on actual usage. A quiet month costs less. A viral post costs proportionally more. Your analytics bill mirrors your actual traffic, not the tier you chose when you signed up.
AI-ready from day one. Your analytics data is accessible through a read-only API designed for LLMs. Ask questions about your traffic in natural language — no SQL, no exports, no dashboards to click through. "What are my top 5 traffic sources this month?" "Which pages have the highest bounce rate on mobile?" "How did my organic traffic change compared to last month?" Plausible has an API for programmatic access, but it was not designed for conversational AI queries.
Revenue tracking with Stripe. Plausible tracks pageviews, custom events, and conversion goals. But it does not connect those metrics to actual revenue. sourcebeam integrates directly with Stripe — every checkout is automatically attributed to the visitor, session, referrer, and campaign that drove it. You can answer "How much revenue did organic search generate this month?" without any custom event setup, data pipelines, or spreadsheet calculations.
Visitor journeys across sessions. Plausible is built around aggregate metrics — total visitors, top pages, referrer breakdown. It is intentionally designed to avoid individual-level tracking. sourcebeam takes a different approach: it tracks individual visitor journeys across multiple sessions using privacy-respecting methods (no cookies, no personal data). You can see how many sessions it took before a visitor converted, which pages they returned to, and what path they followed from discovery to purchase. These insights are essential for understanding complex buying cycles.
A lighter tracking script. Plausible's script is around 1.5 KB gzipped — already very light. sourcebeam pushes it further with a sub-1 KB script. Both are negligible compared to Google Analytics, but for teams measuring every byte of JavaScript — chasing perfect Lighthouse scores, optimizing for slow mobile connections in emerging markets — the difference exists.
Under 1 KB. No npm packages. No build step.
At 10K pageviews/month: Plausible charges $9/month. sourcebeam starts at $5/month. For small sites and side projects, this is a meaningful difference.
At 100K pageviews/month: Plausible charges $19/month. sourcebeam charges roughly $19/month. Similar price, but sourcebeam includes revenue tracking and the AI API at no extra cost.
At 1M pageviews/month: Plausible charges $69/month. sourcebeam charges roughly $108/month. Plausible is cheaper at higher volumes — but sourcebeam includes Stripe revenue attribution, visitor journeys, and AI-ready data access that Plausible does not offer at any price.
The flexibility factor. If your traffic drops 50% next month — after a launch spike settles, during a holiday season, or while you are heads-down building — your sourcebeam bill drops proportionally. With Plausible, you are paying the same tier price regardless. Over a year of variable traffic, pay-as-you-go can save significant money compared to a fixed plan sized for your peak months.
Plausible starts at $9/month. sourcebeam starts at $5/month for 10,000 events — no trial expiry, no feature restrictions.
| sourcebeam | Plausible | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at $5/mo | ||
| Pay-as-you-go pricing | ||
| AI-ready API | ||
| Visitor journeys | ||
| Under 1KB script | ||
| Revenue tracking (Stripe) | ||
| Cookie-free | ||
| One-line setup | ||
| Conversion goals | ||
| Real-time data | ||
| No consent banner needed | ||
| Open source | ||
| Self-hosted option | ||
| Public dashboards | ||
| Google Search Console integration |
Plausible is open source and offers self-hosting, public dashboards, and Google Search Console integration — genuine advantages depending on your needs.
Plausible is open source (AGPL licensed) and offers a self-hosted option — real advantages if you need full control over your analytics code and data. For organizations with strict data sovereignty requirements, or for developers who want to audit and modify the analytics code running on their infrastructure, Plausible's openness is hard to match.
Plausible also offers public dashboards (great for open source projects and transparency-focused organizations), Google Search Console integration for search keyword data, and has a longer track record with a large, established community. If high-volume pricing is your primary concern and you do not need revenue tracking or AI integration, Plausible offers excellent value.
But if you want affordable pricing for small projects, need to attribute revenue to traffic sources, want visitor-level journey tracking, or prefer querying your analytics with AI — sourcebeam is purpose-built for those use cases.
Starting at $5/month. Takes 30 seconds to set up.