What actually differs,
line by line.
Nineteen rows, no asterisks. Where something is a paid add-on somewhere else, it says so — and where GhostPane is genuinely the same as an alternative, it says that too.
| GhostPane | Google Analytics 4 | Plausible Cloud | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cookies required | No | Yes | No |
| Consent banner needed | No | Yes | No |
| Data sampling | Never | Above thresholds | Never |
| Script size (gzipped) | 1.8 KB | ~50 KB | ~1 KB |
| Where the data lives | Your Cloudflare account | Their servers | |
| Raw data export | CSV, any range | BigQuery only | CSV |
| Conversions + properties | Yes | Yes | Paid plans |
| Goals & funnels | Yes | Yes | Paid plans |
| Revenue per conversion | Yes | Yes | Paid plans |
| Saved segments | Yes | Yes | Paid plans |
| Stats API | Yes | Via BigQuery | Paid plans |
| Scheduled reports & alerts | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Import GA4 history | Yes | — | Yes |
| Core Web Vitals | Yes | Partial | No |
| Video & audio engagement | Yes | Manual setup | No |
| Scroll depth & rage clicks | Yes | Manual setup | No |
| Real-time visitors | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No | Yes |
| Recurring cost | None | Free, paid in data | $9–19/mo |
What it costs to run afterwards.
Usually nothing
It is built to fit inside Cloudflare's free tier — Workers, D1 and Durable Objects — and pageviews are counted into pre-grouped rows rather than stored one at a time, so the write budget goes a very long way.
Past roughly a million pageviews a month across all your sites, you would move onto Cloudflare's own usage pricing, which is a few dollars — paid to Cloudflare, not to me.
How this compares over time
Plausible Cloud runs about $228 a year and Fathom about $180, every year. The Team tier costs less than two years of either and then stops costing anything — and unlike both, the database stays in your account.
Prefer to do it yourself?
The whole thing deploys with one command. If you are comfortable with Wrangler and a Cloudflare API token, you do not need me at all.
One payment, then it is yours.
No subscription, no per-pageview fee, and no vendor between you and your own numbers.
One payment · runs in your own Cloudflare account · nothing reports back