Sealmetrics vs Plausible
Sealmetrics and Plausible are both cookieless, EU-hosted analytics tools that state no consent banner is needed. The main difference is how they tell two pageviews apart: Plausible computes a daily unique-visitor hash from the IP address and user agent, while Sealmetrics never derives any identifier from the IP and does not report unique visitors at all.
Side-by-side
Plausible facts checked 2026-09-04 on plausible.io; each row links to the page it was read on.
| Criterion | Sealmetrics | Plausible |
|---|---|---|
| Company / HQ | Sealmetrics, EU company | Incorporated in Estonia, EU (source) |
| Hosting model | Managed cloud only | Managed cloud or self-hosted Community Edition (source) |
| Licence | Proprietary | AGPLv3 (source) |
| Identifier between pageviews | In-memory session marker, ~2 h, not derived from IP (details) | hash(daily_salt + website_domain + ip_address + user_agent), salt rotated every 24 h (source) |
| Visitor IP address | Never stored; country from browser timezone (details) | Input to the hash and to geolocation; raw IP not stored (source) |
| Data residency | Dublin, Ireland only (details) | Hetzner servers in Falkenstein, Germany (source) |
| Vendor's position on consent | No banner needed for measurement | "No need for cookie banners or GDPR consent" (source) |
| Cookies / local storage | None | "We do not use cookies, browser cache or local storage" (source) |
| Script size (gzipped) | 1.1 KB (measured) | 2.5 KB, stated by the vendor (source) |
| Free tier | 14-day free trial; no self-service free plan (billing) | 30-day free trial, no credit card; no free plan — see pricing |
How each one measures visitors
Plausible's data policy spells out its identifier: a hash of a daily salt, the site domain, the visitor's IP address and user agent. The salt is discarded every 24 hours, so the same person becomes a new visitor the next day and cannot be followed across sites. Raw IPs and user agents are never written to disk. This gives Plausible a daily unique-visitor count and visit duration while staying cookieless, at the price of feeding the IP into the identifier.
Sealmetrics does not compute a visitor hash. Each hit is stored with timestamp, user agent, URL and referrer; a session marker held in memory for around two hours groups pageviews within a visit and is not derived from the IP. The IP is seen at the network layer, used in memory for anti-abuse checks and never persisted or used for geolocation — country comes from the browser timezone. The consequence is that Sealmetrics reports entrances rather than unique visitors, and has no visit-duration metric.
When Plausible is the better choice
- You want daily unique visitors and visit duration without cookies, and are comfortable that the identifier is a rotated hash of the IP.
- You want to self-host under an open-source licence or audit the source before trusting the privacy claims.
- You run a small site and want a deliberately minimal dashboard at a low entry price.
When Sealmetrics is the better choice
- Your legal review treats a hashed IP as derived from personal data and you would rather have no identifier to explain at all.
- You need item-level e-commerce data, custom channel grouping, an API on every plan and an AI layer (LENS, included in every paid plan and free to run on your own LLM key).
- You want retention fixed at 24 months across the board, with no per-plan variation to document.
Frequently asked questions
Does Plausible store my visitors' IP addresses?
No. Plausible's data policy says raw IPs and user agents are never stored; the IP is used as an input to the daily hash and to derive location, then dropped. Sealmetrics does not use the IP for either purpose.
Which tool needs a cookie banner?
Neither, according to each vendor's own documentation. Both set no cookies and use no local storage. Both statements are vendor positions; no supervisory authority certifies analytics tools, and Sealmetrics' compliance pages are self-assessments.
Which script is lighter?
Plausible publishes 2.5 KB gzipped for its script; the Sealmetrics tracker measured 1.1 KB gzipped in August 2026. Both are small enough that the difference rarely matters — the contrast with GA4 at roughly 145 KB is the one that does.
Can I run both together?
Yes. Neither tool interferes with the other, and a parallel run is the simplest way to compare Plausible's daily uniques against Sealmetrics' entrances on your own traffic.
- Both are cookieless and EU-hosted with no banner required per their own docs.
- Plausible's daily identifier includes the IP address; Sealmetrics derives nothing from it.
- Plausible reports unique visitors and is open source; Sealmetrics reports entrances and adds e-commerce depth and AI.