mcp-analytics vs Simple Analytics (2026)

Updated 2026-07-17 · All comparisons

When mcp-analytics

mcp-analytics

MCP-native, server-side events on Pro, AI crawler taxonomy, 100k free hits/mo no card. Best for the Claude/Cursor power user who needs more than just pageviews.

When Simple Analytics

Simple Analytics

The radically simple option. EU-hosted (Netherlands), no cookies, no events by default. Best for someone who only wants pageviews and referrers and nothing else.

Feature	mcp-analytics	Simple Analytics
Price entry	Free 100k hits/mo. €19/mo for 10M hits.	Free forever plan (no card, ~30-day data history, 1 user, 5 websites). Paid from ~$15/mo.
Hits at ~$19	10,000,000 / month	Usage-priced; entry Simple plan runs around $15-20/mo.
MCP server	Yes, 23 tools, primary interface.	No; their AI chat lives in their own UI. (A third-party Composio toolkit exists.)
Dashboard UI	None.	Single-page minimalist dashboard. The benchmark for 'just pageviews'.
EU hosting	EU-hosted in Germany.	Netherlands (Amsterdam).
Cookieless	Yes, by default.	Yes by default; the brand is built on it.
Custom events	JS + server-side SDK on Pro.	Limited (separate add-on/tier).
AI / bot taxonomy	8 traffic classes incl. ai_user_action, ai_training, ai_search.	Bots filtered.
Unlimited sites	Yes, all tiers.	On paid plans (free plan includes 5 websites).
Data retention	1 year (Free) / 3 years (Pro) / custom (Enterprise).	Long-term on paid; their free plan keeps ~30 days.

Simple Analytics is the radically minimalist take on web analytics. No cookies, no events, just pageviews and referrers. They’ve built a small, beloved product with a Dutch team. The honest comparison:

Where Simple Analytics wins

The dashboard. Simple Analytics built their brand on a single-page minimalist dashboard. If you literally only want pageviews and referrers, it’s the cleanest UX you can get. We have no UI.

Long-term retention on paid plans. Their paid plans keep data long-term. We’re 1y / 3y / custom. (Their free plan keeps about 30 days.)

Brand and maturity. Simple Analytics has been live since 2018, has a loyal customer base, has shipped through every privacy regulation shift. They’re a known quantity.

Pure simplicity. If “I just want pageviews, leave me alone” is your philosophy, Simple Analytics matches it. We can match it too (use only get_overview and top_pages and ignore the other 21 tools), but our existence is because people often want more.

Where we win

The free tier that remembers. Simple Analytics has a free forever plan too (no card, 1 user, 5 websites), but it keeps about 30 days of data history. Ours keeps a full year, 100k hits/month, unlimited sites. If you want your free analytics to answer “how does this month compare to March?”, that’s the difference.

More volume per euro. €19/month gets you 10M hits with us. Simple Analytics’ self-serve plans run roughly $15-40/month with usage-based volume on top. The exact ratio depends on their pricing slider; the headroom difference doesn’t.

MCP primary interface. Credit where due: Simple Analytics ships a built-in “Chat with your analytics” AI feature, so chat itself isn’t the difference anymore. The difference is where the chat lives. Theirs is inside their product, another tab to open. Ours lives in the tools you already have open (Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT) via MCP, next to your code and your other context.

Custom events as a first-class concept. Simple Analytics’s events story is limited. You can track them but the workflow is constrained compared to ours. Our server-side tracking (an HTTP ingest endpoint authenticated with a per-site secret, plus a first-party Rack middleware for Ruby) takes events straight from your backend (webhooks, cron, server-side conversions); npm wrappers are on the roadmap.

AI crawler visibility. Simple Analytics filters bots; we surface them across 8 classes.

Deploy-regression tracking on the Pro roadmap. GitHub Action plus MCP tools to flag traffic anomalies caused by a deploy. Simple Analytics has nothing similar.

When you should pick Simple Analytics

You only want pageviews and referrers. Anything more is noise to you.
You’re aesthetically committed to a single-page dashboard.
You don’t use Claude/ChatGPT as a daily workflow.

When you should pick us

You spend daily time in Claude/ChatGPT/Cursor.
You need custom events from your backend (webhooks, conversions, server-side).
You may spike or grow. Far more hits per euro.
You want bot/AI-crawler breakdown.

What’s not a real difference

Both cookieless and EU-hosted.
Both target the indie/SaaS/blog market.

Try it

Web analytics with no dashboard. Ask Claude.

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