Plausible vs cite-met — the short version
Plausible is an excellent, open-source, cookieless pageview counter — and if a clean privacy-first counter is all you need, it's a great pick. cite-met matches it on privacy (cookieless, no consent banner, server-side, no data sold) and then does the parts a standalone counter structurally can't: it tracks which AI answer engines cite you, scores how citable your site is with one-click fixes, hosts your site GitHub→edge, and watches its health.
Why teams outgrow Plausible
- →No AEO: Plausible counts humans, but it can't tell you whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or Gemini can find and cite you — the fastest-growing discovery channel.
- →Counter only: it measures that people visited; it can't improve your visibility, fix a robots.txt block, or publish an llms.txt.
- →No hosting: you still run your site somewhere else, so analytics and delivery live in separate tools.
- →No cookieless journeys: Plausible is page-level; it doesn't reconstruct the ordered, sessionized path a visitor took — cookielessly.
- →No site health: no uptime, SSL/DNS, or outage alarms — it's analytics, not infrastructure.
Plausible vs cite-met, at a glance
| Capability | Plausible | cite-met |
|---|---|---|
| Cookieless, no consent banner, GDPR-friendly | Yes | Yes |
| Lightweight, no page-speed impact | Yes | Yes — or zero script on cite-met-hosted sites |
| Human traffic, top pages, sources, geography | Yes | Yes |
| AI-crawler (AEO) intelligence — who cites you in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini | No | Core feature |
| AI-visibility score + one-click fixes (llms.txt, schema, robots.txt) | No | Yes |
| Server-side sessionized journeys (cookieless) | No | Yes |
| Hosts your site — GitHub → global edge | No | Yes |
| Site Health, uptime & proactive outage alarms | No | Yes |
| Google Search Console, built in | No | Yes |
| Open-source / self-host | Yes | No (managed platform) |
Where cite-met is different
AEO is a first-class column
See AI-citation crawlers (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Cohere) next to Human and SEO traffic — not a blind spot. It's the discovery channel a pageview counter can't see.
A score you can improve
The CiteMET Score grades how citable your live site is (A+–F) and turns every failing check into a one-click fix — llms.txt, schema, robots.txt. Plausible measures; cite-met measures and improves.
Cookieless journeys, not just counts
Server-side, sessionized navigation paths reconstructed from a daily-salted, non-reversible hash — funnel insight with zero cookies, which a page-level counter can't produce.
It hosts your site too
GitHub → global edge with managed DNS, Site Health, and outage alarms. On cite-met-hosted sites, analytics needs zero tracking script — it's captured at the edge.
The fair take
What Plausible is genuinely good at
- Genuinely great, lightweight, cookieless pageview analytics with a clean UI.
- Open-source and self-hostable — full control if you want to run it yourself.
- Simple, privacy-first, and GDPR-friendly with no consent banner.
Who should pick cite-met
Pick cite-met if: You want cookieless analytics AND to know (and improve) whether AI answer engines can cite you — ideally with your site hosted, scored, and health-monitored in the same place.
Stick with Plausible if: You only need a clean, open-source, self-hostable pageview counter for human traffic, you host elsewhere, and AI visibility isn't yet on your radar.
Pricing
Plausible is open-source (self-host for free) with a usage-based paid cloud. cite-met is a managed platform that bundles analytics with hosting, the CiteMET Score, and site health — so you're comparing a standalone counter to an all-in-one host-measure-improve platform, not a like-for-like counter. See the pricing page for current plans.
See your AI-visibility score in 60 seconds
Run a free scan on your live site — no signup — and see exactly whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI can find, read, and cite you. Then host, measure, and improve it all in one place.