The Best Umami Alternative for Indie Developers (2026)
Umami is a great open-source option. Trackaton is for founders who want less maintenance, predictable spend, and AI-driven growth guidance.
TL;DR
The real trade-off
Self-host control vs hosted convenience + growth guidance.
Trackaton
- Hosted + simple setup
- Credits never expire (pay-as-you-grow)
- AI insights that suggest next actions
Umami
- Open source + self-host control
- Great for devs who enjoy running infra
- Maintenance is your responsibility
The cost of idle time
Self-hosting isn’t “free” — it’s paid in time
When traffic is low, the biggest cost with self-hosting is usually time: keeping containers updated, monitoring, backups, and debugging.
Self-host model
Low cash spend, but you pay in ops time (and hosting still costs something).
Idle month cost: time + infra
Trackaton credits
Hosted. Your spend tracks usage. No traffic → no burn.
Idle month cost: $0
Deep feature dive
Lightweight analytics, different philosophies
Script size
Speed-first.
Trackaton’s tracking script is <1kb.
Privacy posture
Cookie-free by default.
Trackaton is designed to be GDPR/CCPA-friendly with cookie-free analytics.
AI insights
Actionable growth, not just charts.
Trackaton aims to recommend next marketing moves based on your traffic patterns.
Who should choose what
Honest recommendations
Choose Umami if…
- you want open-source + self-host control,
- you’re comfortable maintaining analytics infrastructure, and
- you mainly need dashboards and reporting.
Choose Trackaton if…
- you’d rather spend time shipping than maintaining infra,
- you want usage-based costs with $0 idle burn, and
- you want AI insights that translate traffic into growth actions.