Plausible Community Edition

Privacy-friendly, open-source web analytics built for the modern web

Deploy and Host

Deploy Plausible Community Edition on Railway in minutes. Plausible is a lightweight, open-source web analytics platform that doesn't use cookies and is fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and PECR. This template sets up Plausible CE with ClickHouse for high-performance analytics storage and PostgreSQL for metadata.

About Hosting

Plausible CE is the self-hosted version of Plausible Analytics, a privacy-first alternative to Google Analytics. Unlike traditional analytics tools, Plausible:

• No cookies required — No cookie consent banners needed
• GDPR/CCPA compliant out of the box
• Lightweight script — < 1KB, loads instantly
• ClickHouse-powered — Handles millions of page views
• 27.4K+ GitHub stars — Battle-tested by thousands

This Railway template deploys three components:

Why Deploy

• Eliminate Google Analytics — Own your analytics data completely
• Privacy by default — No tracking cookies, no personal data collection
• Lightweight performance — Tracking script is ~45KB gzipped
• Infinite scalability — ClickHouse handles billions of events
• Real-time dashboards — See visitor data as it comes in
• Zero-config SEO — Built-in sitemaps, canonical URLs, Open Graph

Common Use Cases

• SaaS Products — Track feature usage and user behavior without third-party scripts
• Content Websites — Monitor traffic, top pages, and referral sources
• E-commerce — Analyze conversion funnels and traffic sources
• Personal Blogs — Simple, privacy-respecting visitor analytics
• Enterprise Intranets — Host behind your firewall for internal analytics

Dependencies for Plausible

Deployment Dependencies

• Railway Account — Sign up at railway.app
• PostgreSQL Plugin — Added automatically via Railway's plugin system
• Custom Domain (recommended) — For production deployments

All services are containerized and deploy with a single click.

Quick Start

1. Deploy to Railway

Click the button above. Railway will:

1. Create the Plausible CE service
2. Create the ClickHouse service
3. Add a PostgreSQL database plugin
4. Wire internal networking between services

2. Configure Environment Variables

Set these required variables in Railway dashboard:

> Network Tip: ClickHouse runs as a Railway service. Use the internal Railway service URL format: > http://clickhouse:8123/plausible

3. Access Your Instance

Once deployed, visit your BASE_URL and register the first user account.

Environment Variables

Required

Registration

Email (SMTP)

Google Auth

IP Geolocation

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                     Railway Project                          │
│                                                              │
│  ┌──────────────────┐      ┌──────────────────┐            │
│  │   Plausible CE    │─────▶│    ClickHouse     │           │
│  │   (Elixir/Phoenix)│      │   (Analytics DB)  │          │
│  │   :8000           │      │   :8123/:9000     │           │
│  └────────┬──────────┘      └──────────────────┘            │
│           │                                                 │
│           ▼                                                 │
│  ┌──────────────────┐                                       │
│  │   PostgreSQL      │                                       │
│  │   (Railway Plugin)│                                       │
│  └──────────────────┘                                       │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

• Plausible CE — Main application server (Elixir/Phoenix)
• ClickHouse — Columnar analytics database for storing events
• PostgreSQL — Relational database for users, sites, and metadata

All internal communication happens over Railway's private network.

Troubleshooting

ClickHouse fails to start

ClickHouse requires SSE 4.2 or NEON CPU instruction support. Most modern CPUs support this. If using an older/ARM instance:

1. Check Railway's region for CPU compatibility
2. Consider using an external ClickHouse Cloud service instead

Connection refused to services

Services may need time to start. ClickHouse and PostgreSQL start in parallel:

• ClickHouse: ~30 seconds startup time
• PostgreSQL: ~10 seconds startup time
• Plausible CE: waits for both before starting

Registration is open

Anyone who knows your URL can register. After creating your account:

1. Set DISABLE_REGISTRATION=true in Railway dashboard
2. Restart the Plausible service

Health check fails

The health endpoint is at /api/health. Plausible CE takes 30-60 seconds to start on first deploy as it runs database migrations. This is normal.

License

Plausible CE is licensed under AGPL-3.0.

Resources

• Plausible CE Wiki
• Plausible CE Repository
• Plausible Documentation
• Railway Documentation