Zenith vs Umami
Self-hosted, cookieless — and built for client work
Umami is the closest thing to Zenith on this list, and an easy tool to recommend: open source, self-hosted, cookieless, pleasant to use. If you are measuring your own projects, the honest answer is that either will serve you. The difference shows up when the sites belong to other people.
Zenith vs Umami, feature by feature
Including the rows Zenith loses. Where Umami has something behind a paid tier or a plugin, the table says so rather than pretending it is missing.
| Feature | Zenith | Umami |
|---|---|---|
| Privacy & compliance | ||
| Cookie-free tracking | Yes | Yes |
| No cookie banner required | Yes | Yes |
| GDPR compliant by default | Yes | Yes |
| No personal data collected | Yes | Yes |
| You own the raw data | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | MIT | MIT |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Analytics features | ||
| Real-time dashboard | Yes | Yes |
| Visitors, pageviews, sessions | Yes | Yes |
| Bounce rate & visit duration | Yes | Yes |
| Custom events | Yes | Yes |
| UTM & campaign tracking | Yes | Yes |
| Funnel analysis | No | Yes |
| Cohort analysis | No | No |
| Session replay | No | No |
| Heatmaps | No | No |
| A/B testing | No | No |
| Feature flags | No | No |
| Agency & client work | ||
| Unlimited sites per deploy | Yes | Yes |
| Cost per extra client site | Nothing | Free self-hosted |
| Dashboard on the client's own domain | Yes | No |
| Client never sees a third-party tool | Yes | Shared link |
| Automatic monthly client emails | Yes | No |
| Per-client logins | Yes | Yes |
| SEO | ||
| Built-in SEO audits | Yes | No |
| Core Web Vitals from a real render | Yes | No |
| SEO report emails | Yes | No |
| Setup & usability | ||
| Install | Script tag or npm | Script tag |
| Learning curve | Minutes | Minutes |
| Tracking script size | ~1 KB | ~2 KB |
| API access | Yes | Yes |
| Unsampled data | Yes | Yes |
| Hosting & pricing | ||
| Hosting | Self-hosted | Cloud or self-hosted |
| Pricing model | Free, open source | Free self-hosted, paid cloud |
| Price scales with | Nothing | Events, on cloud |
| Every feature included | Yes | Yes |
Where we agree
Both are MIT-ish open source, both are self-hosted, both are cookieless and need no consent banner, both keep the raw data on your server, and both track unlimited sites from one deploy at no per-site cost. If that list is what you came for, Umami is a mature, well-maintained project and you will be happy with it.
The client-facing half
Zenith exists because handing a client a login to an analytics tool is a bad handover. Zenith mounts a route inside the client's own application, so their numbers live at theirsite.com/analytics — first-party, password-gated, no third-party branding. Umami's sharing is a link to your Umami instance. For internal work that is fine; for client work it is the difference between a page of their site and someone else's product.
SEO and reporting
Zenith runs headless-Chromium SEO audits against a site and reports titles, meta, headings, broken links and Core Web Vitals from the real render, then emails the client a monthly summary of both traffic and SEO on the first of the month. Umami is an analytics tool and does neither. If you already run a separate SEO tool and send reports by hand, that gap may not matter to you.
Where Umami wins
Umami has funnels, user journeys and revenue tracking; Zenith has none of the three. It is a more established project with a larger community and a hosted cloud option if you would rather not run a server. On pure web analytics depth, Umami is ahead — Zenith spends its surface area on the client-facing and SEO side instead.
Own your clients’ analytics.
One deploy, every site you build, no consent banner and no per-site cost. It is MIT licensed and it runs on one server.