How to self-host Plausible Analytics in 2026

What Plausible is and why people self-host it

Plausible is open-source web analytics built around three ideas: no cookies, no personal data collected, scriptable in under 1 KB. The open-source version (Community Edition) has been hovering around 22,000 GitHub stars and is the de facto Google Analytics alternative for privacy-focused teams.

Skip the manual setup: livemy.app has a one-click Plausible template — free SSL, persistent storage, and a live URL in about two minutes.

Three reasons to self-host instead of using Plausible Cloud.

Plausible Cloud charges by plan and pageview volume. Plans start at $9/month (Starter), $14/month (Growth), or $19/month (Business) at 10,000 monthly pageviews, and each tier scales up as traffic grows. Self-hosted Community Edition has no pageview cap — you pay only for the server.

Data sovereignty. Self-hosted means analytics data lives on your server, not Plausible's. Strong fit for GDPR-conscious EU companies, healthcare, fintech, anything where customer data crossing third-party borders is a problem.

Site limits disappear at scale. Cloud plans include a fixed number of sites (1 on Starter, up to 3 on Growth, up to 10 on Business); a self-hosted instance tracks unlimited sites at the same flat cost.

Three ways to self-host Plausible

Path A: Docker Compose on your own VPS

Plausible's docs ship an official docker-compose.yml with all three required services: the Plausible web app, PostgreSQL (user accounts and site config), and ClickHouse (event storage). Spin up a VPS with at least 4 GB RAM ($10–20/month at DigitalOcean, Hetzner). Drop the compose file. Configure environment variables. Set up nginx plus free SSL.

The good. Cheapest path. Full control of both databases.

The catches. ClickHouse needs tuning at scale; PostgreSQL needs occasional maintenance; nginx and SSL are on you. Realistic time-to-first-deploy: 1–3 hours.

Path B: Managed Docker host (Coolify, Dokploy)

Coolify ships Plausible as a one-click template. Install Coolify on a 4+ GB VPS, deploy Plausible, point your domain. SSL, reverse proxy, both databases wired up for you.

When this works. You want self-hosted economics without writing the Docker Compose yourself.

Path C: livemy.app one-click deploy

Pick the Plausible template, point your domain, ship. livemy.app provisions both PostgreSQL and ClickHouse, handles SSL, applies daily backups for both databases.

The good. Three-minute deploy. $15/month flat ($10 Maker + $5 backups). No database tuning needed for small-to-medium sites.

The catches. For very high-traffic sites (10M+ pageviews/month), you'll want to scale up to a tier with more RAM. ClickHouse appetite for memory grows with cardinality.

From zero to Plausible on livemy.app (about 3 minutes)

Step 1: Sign up at livemy.app, pick Maker

Go to livemy.app, click Start free. Pick Maker ($10/month) — for analytics you can trust, you want a custom domain, 10 GB storage, and Maker's 99.5% uptime SLA so event ingestion never drops pageviews.

Step 2: Deploy from the Plausible template

In the dashboard, click New project → Template → Plausible. livemy.app pulls the official Plausible Community Edition image plus the PostgreSQL and ClickHouse instances Plausible needs.

Step 3: Configure the four essential environment variables

Under Project Settings → Environment Variables:

• BASE_URL — the full public URL with https:// (e.g., https://analytics.yourdomain.com)

• SECRET_KEY_BASE — a 64-character random string (generate with openssl rand -base64 48 or similar)

• DATABASE_URL — PostgreSQL connection (auto-populated by livemy.app template)

• CLICKHOUSE_DATABASE_URL — ClickHouse connection (auto-populated)

Optional but recommended: SMTP variables for email notifications (signup confirmations, weekly reports). Mailgun, Postmark, or Resend all work.

Step 4: Deploy and complete the Plausible setup

livemy.app spins up all three containers (Plausible + Postgres + ClickHouse). Typical deploy time: 3–5 minutes (longer than the n8n deploy because ClickHouse takes ~30 seconds to initialize). When status is Live, visit your URL and complete the Plausible signup wizard. Add your first site, get the tracking script.

Step 5: Point your domain and install the tracker

Add the custom domain on livemy.app, update DNS, wait for SSL. Update BASE_URL to the new domain and redeploy — Plausible uses it for the tracking script's data source URL.

Copy the Plausible tracking snippet from the dashboard, paste it into your website's <head>. Verify in the Plausible dashboard's Realtime view that pageviews are landing.

Five things that quietly break self-hosted Plausible

1. ClickHouse runs out of memory at scale

ClickHouse loves RAM. The 4 GB minimum holds for moderate traffic; high-cardinality dashboards (lots of custom events, many sites tracked at once) can spike memory and crash the container.

Fix. Scale up the host's RAM, or set ClickHouse's max_memory_usage in config.xml to limit per-query usage. livemy.app's Maker covers most sites; for very large deployments, scale up the tier.

2. BASE_URL mismatch breaks the tracking script

Plausible's tracking script POSTs events to BASE_URL/api/event. If BASE_URL still says localhost or the temporary livemy.site subdomain after you moved to a custom domain, the tracker silently fails.

Fix. Update BASE_URL to the final public URL with https:// after every domain change. Redeploy.

3. SECRET_KEY_BASE changes invalidate all sessions

Plausible signs session cookies with SECRET_KEY_BASE. Change the value and every signed-in user gets logged out and shared dashboard links break.

Fix. Set SECRET_KEY_BASE once at first deploy, save it somewhere secure, never change it without a planned re-login flow.

4. Ad blockers block the default /js/plausible.js path

Some aggressive ad blockers block the default tracker path because it matches their analytics patterns. The result: a Plausible install that under-counts traffic from a meaningful slice of visitors.

Fix. Proxy the tracking script through your own subdomain (Plausible docs cover this for Cloudflare, Vercel, Nginx). The script becomes /stats/script.js or similar on your own domain and bypasses most blocklists.

5. Backups must cover both PostgreSQL and ClickHouse

Plausible's two databases hold complementary data — a backup of one without the other is a partial restore that won't work cleanly.

Fix. Snapshot both. livemy.app's $5/month backups add-on covers both databases automatically. For manual setups, schedule pg_dump + a ClickHouse snapshot in cron.

Cost: Plausible Cloud vs self-hosted

Honest numbers for a site doing 100,000 pageviews per month with one tracked domain.

Plausible Cloud: around $19/month for 100K pageviews on the Starter tier (Growth and Business cost more at the same volume). Scales up as traffic grows.

Self-hosted on a $10 VPS: $10/month plus your time. Unlimited pageviews, unlimited tracked sites.

Self-hosted on livemy.app: $15/month flat ($10 Maker + $5 backups). Unlimited pageviews, unlimited tracked sites, managed databases.

At 100K pageviews, the math is roughly even between Plausible Cloud and livemy.app. The crossover is around 250K pageviews — above that, self-hosted wins. For agencies tracking many client sites, self-hosting wins immediately because Cloud plans cap the number of tracked sites per tier (1 on Starter, 3 on Growth, 10 on Business).

ClickHouse compression is roughly 1 GB per 10 million pageviews — even a popular site stays small on disk for years.

FAQ

Is self-hosted Plausible GDPR-compliant by default?

Yes. Plausible doesn't use cookies or collect personal data — the privacy-by-design architecture works the same self-hosted as on Plausible Cloud. Self-hosting adds the data-sovereignty benefit (analytics never leaves your server), which strengthens the GDPR case further.

Can I migrate from Plausible Cloud to self-hosted?

Yes, but with a caveat: there's no built-in event export between the two. Sites and dashboards can be recreated on the self-hosted instance; historical event data stays on Plausible Cloud unless you export via the Stats API. Most teams accept the gap and start fresh on self-hosted.

Why does Plausible need two databases?

PostgreSQL handles relational data — user accounts, site configurations, billing if you're running a multi-tenant install. ClickHouse handles event storage — columnar, blazing-fast aggregations across millions of pageviews. The two together is how Plausible delivers fast dashboards on large datasets.

How much traffic can a self-hosted Plausible handle?

On a 4 GB RAM VPS or livemy.app Maker, comfortably 1–3 million pageviews per month. ClickHouse scales well past that with more RAM and CPU. The hard limit is the server, not Plausible.

Can I track multiple websites with one self-hosted Plausible?

Yes — a single instance tracks unlimited sites at the same flat cost. This is the big win over Plausible Cloud for agencies and multi-brand companies. Add a site in the dashboard, paste the tracking script, done.

Is there a Plausible Cloud feature I'd lose self-hosting?

Funnels and Goals are now available in Community Edition. Email reports work if you wire up SMTP. The biggest gap is automatic version upgrades — Cloud is always on the latest version; self-hosted requires pulling new Docker images. livemy.app offers opt-in auto-update on the Plausible template.

Self-host Plausible — own your analytics, lose the pageview cap

If you're hitting Plausible Cloud's pageview tiers or tracking multiple sites, self-hosting flattens the bill. The cheapest path is a $10 VPS. The fastest path is livemy.app's Plausible template.

→ Start free on livemy.app · Plausible template with Postgres + ClickHouse provisioned, custom domain, SSL, backups, all on Maker at $10/month flat.

Migrating from Plausible Cloud or Google Analytics and want a hand? Email hello@livemy.app with the tracker setup. Replies inside one business day.

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