PulseTrack vs Matomo
Matomo is the sovereignty answer: open source, installable on your own servers, and it will import your Google Analytics history. PulseTrack is the lighter, simpler one that sets no cookie at all and starts at zero. This page is about which of those matters to you.
Matomo can be yours entirely
Open source and self-hostable: your servers, your database, your backups. Nothing we offer replaces that.
PulseTrack sets no cookie at all
Matomo's default tracking code uses first-party cookies. Cookieless is a configuration you have to make and keep.
Two very different entry prices
Matomo Cloud starts at €22 a month excluding tax for 50,000 hits. PulseTrack has a free plan, and €9 a month for heatmaps, replay and the assistant.
Side by side
| Criterion | PulseTrack | Matomo |
|---|---|---|
| Works without cookies | No cookie, no local storage: a daily-rotating anonymous identifier computed on the server | The default tracking code uses first-party cookies; cookieless tracking is possible but must be configured, and cross-session recognition goes with it |
| Open source and self-hosting | Not open source; hosted service only | Open source, and the self-hosted edition is free — your servers, your database |
| Google Analytics import | Not yet: PulseTrack measures from the day you install it | A Google Analytics data importer is included in Matomo Cloud |
| Free hosted plan | 1 site, 5,000 events a month, 1 funnel, 30 days of history — no card | A free trial without a card, then a paid plan; free only if you host it yourself |
| Entry price, hosted | Free plan, then €9 a month: 3 sites, 50,000 events, heatmaps, session replay and the AI assistant | From €22 a month excluding tax for 50,000 hits, with 2 months free on annual billing |
| Heatmaps and session replay | Included from €9 a month: 500 recorded sessions a month, and heatmaps with no pageview cap | Included in Cloud with allowances: 1,500 heatmap pageviews and 150 session recordings a month |
| A/B tests | Experiments with a significance verdict | A/B testing included in Matomo Cloud |
| Feature flags | Percentage rollouts, evaluated by the same script | Not offered |
| Funnels and user flows | Multi-step funnels with revenue lost per step, plus flows and weekly retention | Funnels, Users Flow and Cohorts included in Cloud |
| Revenue per traffic source from Stripe | A read-only Stripe key; every payment is attributed to the session and channel that brought it (Growth plan and above) | Ecommerce tracking and multi-channel conversion attribution from the events your site sends; no native Stripe connection |
| MCP server for AI assistants | Ours, hosted, OAuth sign-in, read-only by default — nothing to install | An official plugin you install on your own Matomo and enable; MCP access is off by default and can be kept read-only |
| History kept | 30 days on the free plan, up to 12 months depending on plan | Raw data kept 24 months, aggregated reports kept indefinitely — longer than ours |
| Data hosted in the EU | Stored in Ireland, servers in Dublin | Matomo Cloud stores data in Europe; self-hosted, it is wherever you put it |
| Base script weight | 3.7 KB gzipped; heatmaps and replay load extra code only when you enable them | matomo.js: 44 KB compressed, measured on 18 September 2026 |
Choose PulseTrack if…
- You do not want cookies at all, rather than cookies you have to switch off.
- You want to start free, and pay €9 rather than €22 when the site grows.
- You want every euro traced to its channel straight from Stripe.
- You would rather not administer an analytics server, or configure one correctly.
Choose Matomo if…
- You want the code on your own servers, auditable and under your control.
- You need your Google Analytics history imported.
- You want years of history kept, with raw data retained for two years.
- Your organisation requires open source software.
Cookies you configure away, or no cookies at all
Matomo's documentation is clear: the default tracking code uses first-party cookies, and cookieless tracking is something you enable. It works, and it is one of the reasons Matomo is recommended for consent-free configurations in some countries. But it is a setting: someone has to make it, document it, and not undo it on the next tag deployment. PulseTrack has no such setting because there is no cookie to disable — the identifier is computed on our servers and rotates every day.
Hits, events, and what you are actually paying for
Matomo Cloud is priced per hit: a pageview, an event, a download and a site search each count as one. PulseTrack is priced per event, and a pageview is one event. The units are close enough to compare, unlike pageview-only pricing, but check your own numbers: a site with heavy event tracking reaches 50,000 quickly on either tool.
What self-hosting really costs
The self-hosted edition is free, and that is a genuine advantage — but the bill moves rather than disappears. You provide the server, the database, the updates, the backups and the archiving cron that keeps reports fast at volume. If your organisation already runs infrastructure, that is cheap. If it does not, a hosted tool at €9 or €22 a month is usually cheaper than the afternoon you will spend on a broken upgrade.
Frequently asked
Is PulseTrack as GDPR-friendly as Matomo?+
Both are built for it, from different angles. Matomo lets you keep the data on your own servers; PulseTrack keeps it in Ireland and never writes anything on the visitor's device. Neither of us can tell you whether your site needs a consent banner — that depends on every tool your pages load.
Can I import my Matomo history?+
No. There is no import from Matomo today, so PulseTrack measures from the day you install it. You can run both for a while and compare.
Why is your script so much smaller?+
Because it does less on the page. Matomo's script carries twenty years of options — content tracking, site search, log analytics, tag manager hooks. Ours collects the page, the source and the events you send, and fetches the heavy parts only where you turned them on.
Sources, checked on 18 September 2026
- Matomo — Pricing (Cloud price per traffic tier, allowances, EU hosting)
- Matomo FAQ — Cookies used by Matomo (first-party cookies by default)
- Matomo Plugins Marketplace — MCP Server
- Matomo FAQ — How to configure the Matomo MCP Server
- matomo.js, measured by PulseTrack (compressed transfer size)
Products change: something looks out of date? It was accurate on the date above, and we correct it as soon as it is reported. Matomo is a trademark of its owner, not affiliated with PulseTrack.