Simple Analytics vs Hotjar
Simple Analytics is a European alternative to Hotjar: same web analytics use case, headquartered in Netherlands and governed by EU GDPR, while Hotjar (Contentsquare) is based in France.
By the EU Alternatives team Last updated
Gain website insights with a privacy-first, EU-based analytics tool. Understand visitors, track events, and ensure GDPR compliance without cookies or complex reports.
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- Primary privacy law
- EU GDPR
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- No
- Free tier
- Yes
Heatmaps, session recordings and feedback widgets that made behavior analytics mainstream; since July 2025 the product lives inside the Contentsquare platform. A free plan still exists, and paid plans start at 49 euros a month under Contentsquare's pricing. Contentsquare bought it in 2021 and is based in Paris, so this one is already European.
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- GDPR by default
- Yes
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
Simple Analytics vs Hotjar at a glance
| Simple Analytics | Hotjar | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Netherlands | France |
| Data jurisdiction | EU / EEA | EU / EEA |
| Primary privacy law | EU GDPR | EU GDPR |
| US CLOUD Act exposure | No | No |
| Best for | Teams looking for a different web analytics trade-off on price, openness and features | Teams already invested in the Contentsquare ecosystem |
Choose Simple Analytics if…
- You want to start free and scale up later
- You'd rather back the European tech ecosystem
Stick with Hotjar if…
- You depend on integrations only available in the Contentsquare ecosystem
- Migration costs outweigh the feature and pricing gains for now
About Simple Analytics
Simple Analytics is a Dutch privacy-first analytics platform that tracks website traffic without cookies, without personal data, and without requiring a GDPR consent banner. Every metric (page views, referrers, devices, countries, and goals) is derived from aggregate signals, never from individual fingerprinting or cross-site tracking.
A lightweight tracking script under 6 KB adds minimal page weight, and a full export API makes all data available for custom dashboards or data warehousing. Goals, funnels, and UTM parameter tracking give marketers the campaign intelligence they need without the privacy trade-off of heavier analytics platforms.
Key benefits:
- No cookies keeps you fully compliant without a consent banner in any EU country
- No personal data, meaning no IP addresses, no fingerprinting, no cross-site user IDs
- Lightweight script under 6 KB with minimal impact on page load performance
- Real-time reporting on a clean, single-screen dashboard
- Goals and funnels for conversion tracking without individual user tracking
- UTM campaign tracking for attributing traffic across marketing channels
- Export API for pulling data into custom tools and data warehouses
- Unlimited team members on all paid plans
Simple Analytics stores all data on servers in the Netherlands, with no data ever leaving the EU. Based in Amsterdam and built entirely around GDPR compliance, it uses no U.S. sub-processors and shares no data with advertising networks. The architecture is designed so that no personally identifiable information ever enters the system.
Ideal for businesses, agencies, and developers who want accurate website insights without compromising visitor privacy or adding cookie consent friction to every page.
Why choose Simple Analytics over Hotjar?
Jurisdiction is not the argument here: Hotjar is headquartered in France, so both products answer to European data-protection law. What separates them is pricing, openness, feature depth and how much of the European ecosystem you want to back.
Simple Analytics sits on the same side of that line. As a Netherlands-based provider, it operates under EU GDPR, and data stays inside the EU/EEA by default. For regulated sectors such as health, public administration, and finance, that's not a nice-to-have but a requirement. For everyone else, it's concentration-risk insurance: you avoid depending on a single jurisdiction that can change the rules without warning.