Pulse

Pulse is a web analytics tool built to replace Google Analytics for sites that need to respect visitor privacy and comply with EU data protection laws. It tracks pageviews, unique visitors, referrer sources, geographic data, and performance metrics, everything you'd use analytics for, but without cookies, fingerprinting, or consent banners. The tracking script is 5 KB gzipped (25 times lighter than Google Analytics) and loads asynchronously so it never blocks page rendering.

The tool is built by Ciphera, a Belgian company, and runs on Swiss and EU infrastructure. Both the tracking script and the dashboard are open source, so you can inspect exactly what data gets collected and how it's processed. The backend is closed and managed by Ciphera, following the same model as Proton Mail: auditable clients you can verify, a trusted operator running the core.

Key capabilities include:

• Dashboard, Live visitor count, hourly/daily/weekly/monthly trends, referrer breakdown, and country-level geographic data.
• Visitor insights, Top pages ranked by views, browser and OS analytics, device breakdown, and peak hours heatmap.
• Journey tracking, Step-by-step navigation flows showing where visitors enter, what they click next, and where they drop off. Filter by page, country, device, or referrer.
• Performance monitoring, Daily Lighthouse scores (mobile and desktop), Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, TBT), accessibility and SEO audits, and page-load filmstrip timelines.
• One-line install, Add a single script tag to your HTML; no npm packages, build steps, or configuration files needed. Works with any framework or static site.

Unlike Google Analytics, Pulse doesn't require a consent banner in the EU because it collects no personal data. There are no user accounts, no cross-site tracking, and no history beyond one calendar month, by design. This makes it unsuitable if you need to track individual user journeys across multiple visits or export user-level data, but it's ideal if you want to understand traffic patterns, content performance, and site health without the privacy trade-offs.

The free Hobby tier covers up to 5,000 pageviews per month. Paid plans start at €7 per month for higher traffic. Installation guides are available for 29 frameworks and static site generators including Next.js, React, Vue, Angular, Astro, Hugo, Jekyll, and many others.