The short answer
Which is the right fit?
Choose Flow if you want an ongoing free hosted plan and five selectable revenue attribution models. Choose Plausible if its open-source, privacy-focused analytics and established goals, funnels, and ecommerce reporting fit your workflow. Plausible revenue features are on its hosted Business plan.
01 / The snapshot
At a glance
| What matters | Flow | Plausible |
|---|---|---|
| Hosted free access | Permanent Free plan; 10,000 events monthly | 30-day trial; no ongoing hosted free tier listed |
| Revenue workflow | Connect payment providers and link checkout to visits | Track ecommerce revenue with monetary custom events |
| Attribution view | First, last, linear, time decay, and position | Session-based last-click source reporting |
| Starting paid offer | $5 monthly for 100,000 events | Usage includes pageviews and custom events across sites |
| Product approach | Traffic, campaigns, providers, and revenue in one workspace | Focused, open-source, privacy-minded web analytics |
Flow plans and features come from the current product. Competitor details are based on the official sources below, reviewed 2026-09-25.
02 / The detail
Two clear dashboards, two different emphases
Plausible is a mature choice for site owners who want a concise picture of traffic, goals, and funnels. It is open source and offers an established ecommerce reporting path. Flow is built around the next question: which channels and visits are connected to actual payment revenue?
Flow shows traffic sources, campaigns, live activity, events, and revenue together. Its five selectable attribution models let you compare how credit changes across a customer journey. Plausible’s source reporting uses a last-click approach. Neither view is a guarantee of why a person bought; it is a structured way to read the data your site collected.
03 / The detail
Revenue setup is different
Flow supports six payment providers and requires checkout to carry its visitor context for purchase matching. Plausible supports ecommerce revenue through monetary custom events, with Shopify and WooCommerce guidance. It would be wrong to say that Plausible cannot track revenue. The question is which integration path suits your stack and how much attribution detail you need.
Plausible puts ecommerce revenue and related features on its hosted Business plan. Flow includes attribution models on Free, with 10,000 events monthly. If your site is early, you can test Flow’s reporting without a subscription, then move to $5 Starter for 100,000 events when needed.
04 / The detail
Compare the whole plan, not only a number
Flow counts events; Plausible bases its hosted tiers on pageviews and custom events across your sites. Check which interactions each tracker collects before comparing quotas. Plausible also advertises longer retention on paid plans and a 30-day trial, while Flow retains 12 calendar months on every plan.
If you value a compact, open-source web analytics product, Plausible may be the right choice. If you want hosted analytics with a permanent free tier and direct control over attribution models, start with Flow and test the purchase path end to end.
05 / The detail
What Flow Free offers for everyday site analytics
You can use Flow Free as a hosted website analytics tool before connecting any payment provider. It shows visitors, pageviews, traffic sources, campaigns, live activity, and searchable site events. Open the Reports view for top pages, device mix, an activity heatmap, and CSV export. The All sites dashboard keeps several websites in one workspace, with a 10,000-event monthly Free allowance.
Flow also provides tracking controls. Its script can require consent before it records a pageview, offers an explicit opt-out, and honors Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals. Those controls do not make Flow identical to Plausible’s open-source approach, so review each product’s tracking design against the needs of your site.
When purchases matter, Flow can match supported provider payments to visits if checkout passes the visitor context. You can then read campaign revenue under first click, last click, linear, time decay, or position-based attribution. Plausible’s monetary custom-event path may be a better fit for a team that wants its focused dashboard. Flow’s ongoing Free plan lets you test its broader revenue workflow without a hosted trial deadline.
A closer look
What the Flow workspace shows
See Flow in action
Flow analytics in action
An animated Flow demo with sample data. It shows traffic trends, adds revenue, then changes the chart style and date range.
Read the video description
An animated Flow demo with sample data. It shows traffic trends, adds revenue, then changes the chart style and date range. The video is an animation of product controls, not a recording of a competitor or a claim about real customer results. It has music and no spoken narration.
Questions
Questions people ask
Does Plausible track ecommerce revenue?
Yes. Plausible documents ecommerce revenue tracking through monetary custom events, with revenue features on its hosted Business plan.
Is Plausible free for hosted use?
Plausible advertises a 30-day hosted trial. Its current hosted plans do not list an ongoing free tier.
Are Flow events the same as Plausible pageviews?
No. Plausible counts pageviews and custom events across sites for plan usage. Compare the traffic and interactions your site will actually send to each product.
Can Flow show traffic before I connect payments?
Yes. Visits, sources, pages, and site events can appear after you install the tracker. Payment matching is a separate setup step for revenue attribution.
Source notes
Check the details
Competitor plans and features change. These links lead to the source pages used for this comparison.