Plausible alternative
Lantern vs Plausible: a Plausible alternative that shows which channel brings paying customers
Plausible is the right tool for private, cookieless visit counts. It can't tell you which channel brings paying customers, because it doesn't recognise a returning visitor and doesn't read your payment provider. Lantern Analytics is the alternative built for that question. It keeps one visitor id in a first-party cookie on your own domain, connects to Stripe, Razorpay, Cashfree, Dodo Payments, Paddle, Polar and Lemon Squeezy, and credits every payment, renewal and refund to the channel of that customer's first visit.
Last updated 10 November 2026.
Lantern vs Plausible, side by side
| Lantern Analytics | Plausible | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Which channel brings customers and revenue | Simple, private visit counts |
| Recognises a returning visitor days later | Yes, with one first-party cookie | No, by design |
| Revenue from your payment provider | Seven providers connect directly | No. You send a revenue goal from your own code, on the Business plan |
| Renewals and refunds | Credited to the first channel, and refunds subtracted | Not tracked |
| AI crawlers such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot | Yes, by company, purpose and page | No. Crawlers don't run its script |
| Cookies | One first-party cookie on your domain | None |
| Open source and self-hosting | No | Yes |
| Data location | Google Cloud, United States | European Union |
| Entry price | $8 a month, every feature | $9 a month; revenue tracking is on the $19 Business plan |
Plausible's details are from its own site on 10 November 2026. Products change, so check before you decide.
Pick Lantern if
- You keep asking which channel your paying customers came from, and Plausible shows them as Direct.
- Your customers sign up or pay days after their first visit, often on a different subdomain.
- You want revenue read from your payment provider, with renewals and refunds, without sending events yourself.
- You want to see which AI crawlers read your pages and what the visitors assistants send you go on to pay.
Pick Plausible if
- You must not set any cookie, or you need your data kept in the EU.
- You want open source software you can host yourself.
- A visit count and top pages are all you need.
What Lantern is
Lantern Analytics is web analytics for founders. One dashboard shows where visitors come from, with ChatGPT, Perplexity and other AI assistants as their own channel, which AI crawlers read your pages, where people drop off, and who is on the site right now. Connect a payment provider and every payment, renewal and refund is credited to the channel that first brought that customer.
- Revenue by channel from seven payment providers.
- AI traffic as its own channel, and AI crawlers by company and page.
- An MCP server, so Claude, Cursor and Codex can answer questions from your numbers.
- Plans from $8 a month, priced by traffic, with every feature on every plan.
Switching, or running both
Lantern's script is 1.8 KB and runs next to Plausible without conflict, so many founders add Lantern, compare a week, and then decide. Lantern uses a first-party cookie, so check whether your consent setup needs to mention it.
Questions
What is a good Plausible alternative for seeing which channels bring paying customers?
Lantern Analytics. It recognises the same visitor across days and subdomains, reads payments from Stripe, Razorpay, Cashfree, Dodo Payments, Paddle, Polar and Lemon Squeezy, and credits each one to the channel that first brought the customer.
Can Plausible show revenue by channel?
Partly. On its Business plan you can attach a monetary value to a custom event that you send from your own code. The revenue counts for the visit that paid, so a customer who first came from Reddit and paid later from a bookmark shows as Direct. It doesn't read renewals or refunds from a payment provider.
Does Lantern use cookies?
One first-party cookie on your own domain, holding a random visitor id. There are no third-party cookies, no tracking across other sites, and IP addresses are never stored.
Can I run Lantern and Plausible together?
Yes. They are separate scripts and don't interfere. Some teams keep Plausible as a public, cookieless counter and use Lantern for attribution and revenue.
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