Plausible Analytics (Privacy analytics)
Created by: Uku Taht and Marko Saric

Plausible's pricing scales by pageviews. The visible revenue page is itself a pricing argument: customers can see what they're paying into.

TL;DR: Plausible prices on pageviews with a sliding scale, plus a self-hosted free option under their license. The public revenue dashboard turns the pricing model into proof — buyers see real customers paying real money before they decide. The lesson for indie founders: when transparency is the brand, the pricing page should let buyers see what they're buying into, not just what they're paying.

What they sell: A privacy-focused, cookie-free web analytics SaaS positioned as the ethical alternative to Google Analytics.
Who it's for: Indie founders, small SaaS, and privacy-leaning teams who do not want cookie banners or GDPR overhead.
Pricing model: Volume-tiered subscription scaled by monthly pageviews; self-host free under AGPL
Payment frequency: Monthly or annual with annual discount; tier re-evaluated by actual monthly pageviews
Free trial behavior: 30-day free trial on hosted; self-host is free in perpetuity (no trial needed).
Number of tiers: 3

Anchor pattern: Transparency-as-anchor
Plausible's anchor mechanic is unusual: the published revenue dashboard at plausible.io/revenue functions as a social-proof anchor. A buyer comparing privacy analytics tools sees Plausible's actual MRR and customer count, which converts the abstract question 'is this credible' into the concrete fact 'these many other people are paying this much'. The pricing page itself is straightforward volume-tiered; the anchor work happens on the revenue page.

Upgrade trigger: Pageview-cap volume threshold
The structural trigger is volume — buyers move up the tier ladder as their pageviews grow. There is no feature-gate trigger because all tiers include the full feature set. This aligns the bill with customer success (more pageviews = more value) and removes feature-comparison friction.

What's working:
Public revenue dashboard turns pricing into proof — buyers can verify the model works at scale before committing.|Volume tiering aligns the bill with customer success and platform cost simultaneously.|Same feature set across all tiers removes feature-comparison friction.|Self-host at $0 captures the principled buyer who would reject hosted SaaS.|Open-source code makes the platform's privacy claims verifiable, not just stated.|Annual discount is sized to materially shift commitment without forcing the choice on monthly buyers.

What to adapt:
If transparency is your brand, make at least one operational fact public (revenue, MRR, signup count). Visible proof beats marketing copy.|Volume-tiered pricing with the same feature set across tiers removes evaluation friction when the platform cost scales with usage.|A self-host or escape-hatch option captures principled buyers without giving up hosted revenue.

What to avoid:
Do not publish revenue if it is flat or declining; transparency works against you in that case.|Do not tier on pageviews if your unit economics do not actually scale with pageviews.|Do not offer self-host if you cannot sustain the open-source project long-term; stale repos hurt trust more than no repo.

Brunson lens:
Stack: Single-feature-set stack — every tier includes the same capabilities; the tier difference is volume.
Value ladder: Two-rung Value Ladder (hosted plus self-host) with an off-ladder enterprise option for very large volumes.
Decoy/anchor: Transparency-as-anchor: the public revenue page does the social-proof work pricing-tier anchors usually do.
Payment mechanics: Monthly or annual subscription scaled by pageview tier; perpetual free for self-host.

Pricing last verified: 2026-05-17