In the EU, there's a legal requirement to display a consent banner (cookie banner) and actively ask users for permission to track them and their actions. So-called cookies are stored on the user's device, which is where the whole problem begins. Due to this consent requirement (opt-in), you typically lose more than 50% of sessions because users click "reject" in frustration or have a plugin installed that automatically blocks cookies.
Cookieless tools bypass this by using a server to accompany the user during their visit. This doesn't require storing cookies on the user's device, which is significantly better from a consent banner perspective.
Our top 3 list focuses on value, feature set, and how easy it is to get started with each tool.
We've placed two tools in first place because this combination is hard to beat. Both excel in terms of price and value.
A very new tool on the market with the goal of making web analytics more accessible and simple. Instead of complicated dashboards and countless subpages, it focuses on clarity and presents data in a very modern approach. A huge advantage: the tool works completely without banner requirements, meaning it runs independently of existing cookie banners and requires no development effort to try out. The script automatically captures all conversion-specific events like scroll depth, outbound link clicks, abandoned forms, submitted forms, and offers many custom events to extend this further.
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Where bchic Analytics stops, Hotjar really begins. While bchic gives you the quantitative data (what happens on your site), Hotjar provides the qualitative insights into why it happens. Hotjar is the undisputed market leader when it comes to visually understanding actual user behavior.
Instead of just looking at numbers, with Hotjar you see real heatmaps (click, scroll, and movement maps) and can even watch complete session recordings, as if you're looking over the user's shoulder live. You see exactly where users hesitate, get confused, or click away in frustration ("rage clicks"). Since this type of individual behavior analysis requires tracking a single user's actions, Hotjar is naturally cookie-based and requires consent in the consent banner.
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The combination is unbeatable: bchic Analytics gives you 100% GDPR-compliant overall numbers and shows you that, for example, 70% of users abandon checkout. Hotjar then shows you in video why they abandon, perhaps because a button isn't clickable on mobile devices.
For lovers of radical minimalism. Fathom lands in second place because it consciously focuses on a single thing and perfects it: blazing-fast, beautiful, and absolutely privacy-friendly web analytics. For our taste, it lacks some of the feature depth for deeper insights compared to our power combination in first place, but this very reduction is Fathom's greatest strength.
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Our third place goes to Umami, the developer's favorite and absolute price-performance winner, because in its core form it's completely free. Umami is, similar to Fathom, a lean, fast, and privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics. The crucial difference and the reason for ranking third: Umami is an open-source project that you must host yourself.
This means you need your own server (or web hosting with the right requirements) on which you install the software. For technically savvy users, agencies, or companies with their own IT department, this is an unbeatable advantage: full data control, no monthly fees, and the ability to customize the code yourself. For typical website owners without deep technical knowledge, however, this represents a significant barrier to entry.
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Especially the combination of quantitative tracking and qualitative feedback, as offered by bchic Analytics and Hotjar, gives you a complete picture of your user behavior, without legal gray areas.
If you're ready to capture 100% of your visitor data, receive automatic conversion insights, and spare your users an annoying cookie banner, now is the perfect time to act.
