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

Plausible GDPR Analytics is cookieless web analytics you run yourself. This template deploys Plausible Community Edition v3.2.1 with Railway Postgres and ClickHouse in one project. You pick the region, so visitor data stays where you put it, and no third-party analytics vendor ever sees your visitors.

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

It's the same three-service stack as the official community-edition compose file: the Elixir app (ghcr.io/plausible/community-edition:v3.2.1), Railway Postgres for users, sites and goals, and ClickHouse (clickhouse/clickhouse-server:24.12-alpine) for events. Plausible sets no cookies, uses no localStorage, and creates no persistent identifiers. Unique visitors come from hash(daily_salt + website_domain + ip_address + user_agent); the salt is rotated and deleted every 24 hours, so nobody is recognisable across days, and raw IPs and User-Agent strings are never stored. CE and Cloud share that logic; only the database owner differs.

Why Deploy Plausible GDPR Analytics, the cookie-free Google Analytics alternative on Railway (Railway Free Trial)

GA4 sets cookies, so EU sites usually need consent before it loads. Plausible's position, backed by a published legal assessment, is that you don't need a cookie banner for analytics or consent for tracking. That's not legal advice: your privacy policy still names the analytics and your host, and your lawyer or DPO has the final word.

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 GDPR Analytics 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 GDPR Analytics self hosting

Provider	Data location	Who runs the box
DigitalOcean	Pick a region, EU included	You patch the Droplet, Docker, TLS and backups
AWS	Any region	You design VPC, IAM and EBS, then patch everything
Hetzner	EU and US locations	You own upgrades, firewall, backups and uptime

Common Use Cases for hosted Plausible GDPR Analytics

EU marketing sites and blogs that want to drop the analytics consent banner.
Projects that need a data residency answer: events live in your Postgres and ClickHouse, in your region.
Public-sector, health or education sites that can't send visitor data to Google.
Agencies giving each client a dashboard through shared links or invited viewers.

Dependencies for Plausible GDPR Analytics Docker hosted on Railway

Postgres stores accounts, sites, goals and settings; ClickHouse stores every pageview and custom event. Two generated secrets, SECRET_KEY_BASE and TOTP_VAULT_KEY, must stay stable: rotate the first and sessions die, rotate the second and every user loses 2FA.

Deployment Dependencies for Managed Plausible GDPR Analytics Service (Cookieless Web Analytics)

plausible: port 8000, public HTTPS domain, volume /var/lib/plausible, healthcheck /api/health.
Postgres: wired through DATABASE_URL=${{Postgres.DATABASE_URL}}.
ClickHouse: user plausible, generated password, database plausible_events_db, volume /var/lib/clickhouse.
Email (optional): nothing is configured, so invites, password resets and reports won't arrive. Railway blocks outbound SMTP below Pro, so on Trial or Hobby set MAILER_ADAPTER to Postmark, Mailgun or SendGrid. They then process account emails, never visitor data.

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

The start command calls /entrypoint.sh three times in a row: db createdb, then db migrate, then run. LISTEN_IP=:: and ECTO_CH_IPV6=true are set because Railway's private network is IPv6. DISABLE_REGISTRATION=invite_only lets the first user register at /register as owner; everyone after needs an invite.

Geolocation stays local: CE bundles a db-ip country database, so country stats work with no third-party lookup at request time. MAXMIND_LICENSE_KEY adds region and city via GeoLite2 for about 1 GB more RAM.

How does Plausible GDPR Analytics compare against other privacy-friendly analytics platforms

Plausible CE vs Google Analytics 4 (GDPR and consent)

Cookies: GA4 uses them and EU sites usually gate it behind consent. Plausible uses none.
Data location: GA4 data lives with Google. CE data lives in your Railway databases.
Script weight: Plausible says its script is 54 times smaller than Google Analytics.

Plausible CE vs Matomo (cookieless mode vs cookie-free by design)

Defaults: Matomo sets cookies unless you configure its cookieless mode. Plausible is cookie-free from the first pageview.
Stack: Matomo is GPL-3.0 PHP on MySQL or MariaDB; CE is AGPL-3.0 Elixir on Postgres plus ClickHouse.
Extras: Matomo's heatmaps, funnels and A/B testing are paid premium plugins on-premise.

Plausible CE vs Umami (Umami Alternative)

License: Umami is MIT; CE is AGPL-3.0. Both are cookieless.
Stack: Umami is Node.js on PostgreSQL only since v3. CE adds ClickHouse: more RAM, two stores to back up.

Plausible CE vs Plausible Cloud (EU-hosted SaaS)

Residency: Cloud is run by an Estonian company and keeps visitor data in the EU on European-owned infrastructure. With CE, you pick the region and Railway is your processor.
Bot filtering: Cloud also excludes about 32K data center IP ranges; CE filters User-Agent and referrer spam only.
Features: CE lacks funnels, user journeys, revenue goals, SSO, the Sites API and the Looker Studio connector.

How to use Plausible GDPR Analytics (the OSS cookieless analytics tool)?

Open the public URL and register at /register; that account owns the instance. Add a site, copy its snippet from Site Settings > General > Site Installation (site-specific since v3.1) and paste it into your <head>. Then add goals and custom events, invite teammates once email works, and turn on 2FA for every account.

The privacy discipline is yours. Plausible keeps the URL hostname and path and drops query parameters except supported campaign ones like utm_source, but it stores whatever custom properties you send. Never put emails or user IDs in properties or paths, or you've reintroduced personal data. Write the retention story too: deleting a site removes its stats, but Postgres and ClickHouse backups hold copies until they age out.

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

Official path: Docker Compose, same image and start command.

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 sit behind a reverse proxy.

Start the Plausible GDPR Analytics Application

Run docker compose up -d, then open BASE_URL and create the first user.

Official Pricing of Plausible GDPR Analytics (Plausible pricing)

CE is free under AGPL-3.0 with community support. Plausible Cloud, monthly, up to 10k pageviews: Starter $9 (one site, 3 years retention), Growth $14 (3 sites, 3 members), Business $19 (10 sites, 5 years, funnels, revenue, Stats API). At 100k pageviews it's $19, $29 and $39.

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

Cloud gives you EU hosting someone else operates, better bot filtering and the paid features. CE gives you region choice and no per-pageview fees, and makes patching part of your privacy duty: v3.2.1 removed a /storybook RCE (CVE-2026-8467) present in v3.0.0 to v3.2.0, and security fixes aren't backported.

Monthly cost of self hosting Plausible GDPR Analytics 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, tight for ClickHouse, so treat it as a test drive.

System Requirements for Hosting Plausible GDPR Analytics 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 for MaxMind city data. Back up Postgres and the ClickHouse volume together.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is self-hosted Plausible GDPR compliant?

Plausible avoids cookies, persistent identifiers and raw IP storage, and publishes a legal assessment of that design. Compliance still covers your whole setup, from privacy policy to custom properties. Ask your lawyer or DPO.

Do I need a cookie banner with Plausible?

Plausible's position is no for the analytics itself. Other embeds that set cookies, like ads or video players, may still need consent.

Does Plausible store IP addresses?

No. The IP is used to derive country and the daily hash, then discarded. The salt is deleted every 24 hours.

Where is my analytics data stored on Railway?

In the region you deploy Postgres and ClickHouse to. Keep all three services in one region, and pick an EU region if EU residency matters.

What's missing from CE compared to Cloud?

Funnels, user journeys, revenue goals, SSO, the Sites API, the Looker Studio connector and advanced bot filtering.