---
title: "Kitbase vs Umami: Free Self-Hosted Analytics vs the AI Layer | Kitbase Blog"
description: "Kitbase vs Umami compared on cost, self-hosting, funnels and retention, and the AI crawler and answer-engine data no JavaScript tag can collect."
canonical: https://kitbase.dev/blog/kitbase-vs-umami
---

**Umami is free, MIT-licensed, cookieless, and now covers funnels, retention and journeys, which makes it hard to beat on price for privacy-first web analytics.** Kitbase costs money and adds two things Umami structurally cannot provide.

We build Kitbase. If your only requirement is privacy-friendly web analytics, Umami is an excellent answer and free is a strong argument.

## Umami's case

Open source under MIT, self-hostable on modest infrastructure, or available as managed cloud. Cookieless, no personal data, so no consent banner for anonymous analytics. Light enough to run on a small VPS alongside other things.

The feature set has grown well past pageviews: funnels, retention, user journeys, custom events, goals. For most content sites and a lot of SaaS marketing sites, that covers what anyone actually opens.

Self-hosting means the data is yours outright, which settles data residency questions rather than negotiating them. And the licence means no vendor can change terms on you.

If that's your requirement, stop here. Paying us $99 a month for analytics you can run for the cost of a small server is not a good trade.

## Kitbase's case

Kitbase's analytics are comparable in shape: cookieless with a server-side anonymous ID, autocapture, custom events, funnels, journeys, retention, page durations, realtime, and rage and dead click detection. Not obviously better than Umami's, and the honest position is that they're in the same category.

The difference is two layers Umami doesn't have and can't easily add.

**AI crawler detection.** Umami is a JavaScript tag. GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot don't execute JavaScript, so they never fire it and never appear in any report. Kitbase reads requests forwarded from your server or edge, resolves each to a named crawler and vendor, verifies the claim against that crawler's published identity, and reports per-path crawl frequency. Forwarders exist for Next.js, Vercel, nginx and Cloudflare Workers.

**AI visibility.** Up to ten answer surfaces, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. Presence rate splits brand mentions from domain citations. Share of voice is normalised across every tracked brand with a dense rank. Cited sources go to the exact page, classified as yours, a competitor's or third-party and tagged by source type. Each mention carries sentiment, recommendation status and list position.

Plus backlink opportunities built from the domains AI cites where you're absent, a link marketplace, a site audit, keyword research and an MCP server on every plan.

**The honest limitation:** you're paying for the AI layer, not for better web analytics.

## Side by side

| | Umami | Kitbase |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free self-hosted; low-cost cloud | From $99/mo, 7-day trial |
| Licence | MIT, open source | Proprietary, self-hostable |
| Cookieless | Yes | Yes, server-side anonymous ID |
| Funnels, retention, journeys | Yes | Yes |
| Frustration signals (rage, dead clicks) | No | Yes |
| Autocapture | Limited | Yes |
| AI crawler detection | No, structurally | Yes, with identity verification |
| AI visibility in answers | No | Up to 10 surfaces |
| Backlinks / link marketplace | No | Yes |
| MCP server | No | Yes, every plan |

## The honest decision

Run Umami if you want privacy-friendly analytics and nothing more. It's free, it's good, and the AI features would be paying for something you're not going to use.

Consider Kitbase when a specific question appears: which AI crawlers read your site, whether ChatGPT and Perplexity mention you, and whether AI referrals convert. Those aren't analytics questions in the traditional sense, which is why no analytics tool answers them, free or paid.

There's a middle path worth naming. Nothing stops you running Umami for web analytics and adding a tool for the AI layer. You'd have two dashboards and pay less than a bundled tool, at the cost of joining the data yourself when you want to connect a crawl to a citation to a conversion.

## FAQ

**Is Umami really free?**
Self-hosted, yes, under an MIT licence. You pay for hosting. Managed cloud has paid tiers.

**Can Umami track AI crawlers?**
No. It's a JavaScript tag and AI crawlers don't execute JavaScript, so the requests never register.

**Does Kitbase have better web analytics than Umami?**
Comparable in shape, with autocapture and frustration signals as the main additions. The real difference is the AI layers.

**Can I self-host Kitbase?**
Yes. See the self-hosting documentation for the deployment path.

**Should I run both?**
It's viable and means joining data yourself. Most teams pick one and accept the trade.

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*Want to see the AI crawlers and citations your analytics can't? [Start your free trial](https://app.kitbase.dev/signup/) — 7 days, no credit card required.*