Deploy and Host self hosted Plausible CE (Open-Source Web Analytics) on Railway

Plausible CE is the free, AGPL-3.0 self-hosted edition of Plausible Analytics: a lightweight, cookie-free Google Analytics alternative with a one-page dashboard. This template runs the official v3.2.1 image with Postgres for accounts and ClickHouse for events, so you own every pageview and skip the consent banner.

About Hosting Plausible CE open-source software on Railway (self hosted Plausible template)

The template deploys three services. plausible runs ghcr.io/plausible/community-edition:v3.2.1 on port 8000 with a public HTTPS domain and a volume at /var/lib/plausible. Railway Postgres holds users, sites, goals and settings. ClickHouse (clickhouse/clickhouse-server:24.12-alpine, volume /var/lib/clickhouse) stores the events. It mirrors the official compose file, so upstream notes apply.

Why Deploy Plausible CE, the Google Analytics alternative on Railway (Railway Free Trial)

GA4 is free, but you pay with cookies, consent banners and a heavier script. Plausible Cloud starts at $9/mo. CE on Railway costs only the resources it uses, and Railway's $5 trial credit is enough to see your first pageviews arrive.

Railway is a singular platform to deploy your infrastructure stack. Railway will host your infrastructure so you don't have to deal with configuration, while allowing you to vertically and horizontally scale it.

By deploying Plausible CE on Railway, you are one step closer to supporting a complete full-stack application with minimal burden. Host your servers, databases, AI agents, and more on Railway.

Railway vs Other Hosting Providers and VPS for Plausible CE self hosting

Provider	What You Get with Railway	What You Get with the Other Provider
DigitalOcean	Three services wired over private networking, HTTPS domain and volumes on first deploy	A Droplet where you install Docker, run compose, issue TLS and patch the OS
AWS	Usage billing with no IAM, VPC or security groups to design	EC2 or ECS plus EBS and networking, a lot of setup for a stats dashboard
Hetzner	Per-second billing and one-click redeploys when you bump the image tag	The cheapest raw RAM, but upgrades, backups and uptime are all yours

Common Use Cases for hosted Plausible CE

Cookie-free analytics for marketing sites, blogs and docs without a consent banner.
Agency setups where each client gets a site, a shared link or an invited viewer.
Privacy-sensitive projects that can't send visitor data to Google.
Goal and custom-event tracking for signups, downloads, outbound clicks and form submissions.

Dependencies for Plausible CE Docker hosted on Railway

The Elixir app needs Postgres for relational data and ClickHouse for events, and both must survive redeploys. The template wires DATABASE_URL to Postgres and CLICKHOUSE_DATABASE_URL to ClickHouse's HTTP port over the private network. Two secrets, SECRET_KEY_BASE and TOTP_VAULT_KEY, are generated at deploy time and must stay stable after that.

Deployment Dependencies for Managed Plausible CE Service (Web Analytics)

plausible: start command /entrypoint.sh db createdb && /entrypoint.sh db migrate && /entrypoint.sh run, so every boot creates and migrates schemas first. Healthcheck: /api/health.
Postgres: Railway Postgres via ${{Postgres.DATABASE_URL}}.
ClickHouse: user plausible, generated password, database plausible_events_db.

Implementation Details for Plausible CE (Using Plausible CE official docker image)

BASE_URL=https://${{RAILWAY_PUBLIC_DOMAIN}}. Update it for a custom domain.
SECRET_KEY_BASE (64 chars) signs sessions; TOTP_VAULT_KEY (base64, 32 bytes) encrypts 2FA secrets. Rotate it and 2FA breaks.
LISTEN_IP=:: and ECTO_CH_IPV6=true, because Railway's private network is IPv6.
CLICKHOUSE_DATABASE_URL=http://user:pass@${{ClickHouse.RAILWAY_PRIVATE_DOMAIN}}:8123/plausible_events_db.
DISABLE_REGISTRATION=invite_only, ENABLE_EMAIL_VERIFICATION=false, TMPDIR=/var/lib/plausible/tmp, RAILWAY_RUN_UID=0 for volume writes.

Optional: email. Railway blocks outbound SMTP below Pro, so on Trial or Hobby set MAILER_ADAPTER to the Postmark, Mailgun or SendGrid API adapter; on Pro, SMTP_HOST_ADDR and friends work. Without email, invites, resets and reports never arrive. Country stats work out of the box with the bundled db-ip database; MAXMIND_LICENSE_KEY adds city-level GeoLite2 for about 1 GB more RAM.

How does Plausible CE compare against other web analytics platforms

Plausible CE vs Google Analytics 4 (Google Analytics Alternative)

Privacy: Plausible sets no cookies and collects no personal data. GA4 uses cookies, so EU sites usually need consent first.
Script weight: Plausible says its script is 54 times smaller than Google Analytics.
Ownership: CE data sits in your own databases; GA4 data lives with Google.
Depth: GA4 has deeper ads integration and custom reports, and a steeper learning curve.

Plausible CE vs Umami (Umami Alternative)

License: Plausible CE is AGPL-3.0; Umami is MIT.
Stack: Umami is Node.js on PostgreSQL only (v3 dropped MySQL). CE needs Postgres plus ClickHouse, more RAM but an event store built for analytics queries.
Cloud: Umami Cloud has a free Hobby tier up to 100K events/mo and Pro at $20/mo.
Fit: Umami is lighter to run; Plausible's one-page dashboard is easier to hand to clients.

Plausible CE vs Matomo (Matomo Alternative)

Scope: Matomo is a full GA-style suite. On-premise, heatmaps, funnels and A/B testing are paid plugins.
Stack: Matomo is PHP with MySQL/MariaDB, GPL-3.0.
Cloud: Matomo Cloud's Business plan starts at 29 a month (local currency) for 50,000 hits.

Plausible CE vs Fathom Analytics (Fathom Alternative)

Source: Fathom is closed-source SaaS with no self-hosted option.
Pricing: Fathom starts at $15/mo for 100,000 pageviews across 50 sites, after a 7-day trial that needs a card.
Overlap: Both are cookie-free with goals and events. Fathom includes revenue tracking on every plan; CE doesn't have revenue goals.

How to use Plausible CE (the OSS web analytics tool)?

Open your public domain and register at /register. The first account can always sign up; after that registration is invite-only. Add your site and paste its snippet (v3.1+, Site Settings > General > Site Installation) into your ``. Then add goals, events, outbound-link, file-download and form tracking, segments, team roles and shared links. Set up email before inviting anyone.

How to self host Plausible CE on other VPS Services (Plausible CE self hosting guide)

The official path is Docker Compose on a server you maintain.

Clone the Repository

git clone -b v3.2.1 --single-branch https://github.com/plausible/community-edition plausible-ce, then cd plausible-ce.

Install Dependencies

Install Docker and Docker Compose. ClickHouse needs a CPU with SSE 4.2 or NEON.

Configure Environment Variables

Create .env with BASE_URL=https://plausible.example.com and SECRET_KEY_BASE=$(openssl rand -base64 48). For automatic Let's Encrypt, set HTTP_PORT=80 and HTTPS_PORT=443 and expose both in compose.override.yml, or run behind a reverse proxy.

Start the Plausible CE Application

Run docker compose up -d, wait for migrations, open BASE_URL and create the first user.

Official Pricing of Plausible CE (Plausible CE pricing)

CE is free under AGPL-3.0, with community support only. Plausible Cloud, billed monthly for up to 10k pageviews: Starter $9 (one site, 3 years retention), Growth $14 (3 sites, 3 members), Business $19 (10 sites, funnels, revenue, Stats API). At 100k pageviews it's $19, $29 and $39. Yearly billing gives two months free; the trial is 30 days, no card.

Plausible CE cloud vs self hosted comparison (Pricing, features, costs, and more)

CE is a long-term release published about twice a year; Cloud ships updates every week. CE lacks marketing funnels, user journeys, ecommerce revenue goals, SSO and the Sites API, and its bot filtering is basic (User-Agent and referrer spam) while Cloud also drops ~32K data center IP ranges. Security fixes aren't backported: v3.2.1 removed a /storybook RCE (CVE-2026-8467) present in every v3.0.0 to v3.2.0 image.

Monthly cost of self hosting Plausible CE on Railway

A low-traffic site usually lands around $10-20/mo for all three services, mostly ClickHouse RAM. Hobby is $5/mo with $5 of usage included. Trial services cap at 1 GB RAM each, which is tight for ClickHouse.

System Requirements for Hosting Plausible CE on a VPS

The CE README asks for an SSE 4.2 or NEON CPU and at least 2 GB of RAM to avoid OOMs. Add about 1 GB if you enable MaxMind city data. Disk grows with event volume.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is Plausible CE self hosted?

The AGPL-3.0 edition of Plausible Analytics you run yourself, with Postgres and ClickHouse on your own infrastructure.

How much does Plausible CE self hosting cost on Railway?

Usually about $10-20/mo for a low-traffic site, depending on ClickHouse memory and event volume. There's no license fee.

Is Plausible free to use?

CE is free. Plausible Cloud starts at $9/mo for 10k monthly pageviews.

What features does Plausible CE support, and what's Cloud-only?

CE has goals, custom events, scroll depth, segments, teams, shared links, email reports and the Stats API. Funnels, user journeys, revenue goals, SSO, the Sites API and the Looker Studio connector are Cloud-only.

Where can I download Plausible CE?

Images are at ghcr.io/plausible/community-edition; the compose setup is at github.com/plausible/community-edition.

What are some alternatives to Plausible CE?

Umami or Matomo to self host, Fathom for cookie-free SaaS, GA4 if you need Google Ads depth.