Matomo is a large analytics platform with a free self-hosted edition, a hosted Cloud, and a long list of premium features. SiteLine is small on purpose: cookieless traffic stats and a stored copy of Search Console. If you need to own the database or want heatmaps, Matomo is the answer. If you want someone else to run a narrow tool and keep your Search Console days, that is SiteLine.
The short answer
Choose Matomo when ownership, breadth or a GA4-shaped report tree matters. Choose SiteLine when you want the small version without operating anything. They are not substitutes, so do not weigh them on feature count.
Cost and hosting, as of October 2026
Matomo's pricing page lists three routes:
- On-Premise Community: "free forever", unlimited users and hits, forum support only. You run PHP and a database yourself.
- On-Premise paid bundles: Team at 275 € (up to 4 users, 5M hits a month), Business at 1,450 € (20 users, 30M hits), Enterprise at 3,400 € (50 users, 100M hits). The page does not say the billing period for these, so read it before budgeting.
- Cloud: priced by monthly hits, with tiers from 50,000 up to 5 million and a contact-sales line above 10 million. Data is stored in Frankfurt, Germany. A free trial needs no card; the page does not state its length. I am not quoting the Cloud price because the page shows a bare number with no currency.
SiteLine is $4.99 for 1M events, $19.99 for 10M, or $99.99 plus $2.99 per extra million. Matomo counts hits and SiteLine counts events (a pageview or a custom event), so tier boundaries do not line up. The free Matomo edition is the real price competitor, and its cost is your server and your time.
Comparison
| SiteLine | Matomo | |
|---|---|---|
| Who runs it | We do | You (On-Premise) or Matomo (Cloud) |
| Data location | Hosted by SiteLine | Frankfurt on Cloud; wherever you put your servers on-prem |
| Cookies | No analytics cookie; visitor key is a daily hash | Depends on how you configure the tracker |
| Search Console import | Core product, on every tier | "Search Engine Keywords Performance": included in Cloud, bought from the Marketplace on-prem |
| Search Console history | Stored while you subscribe | Keyword data imported into Matomo's reports; I found no statement about extra history |
| Heatmaps / session replay | Not offered | Heatmaps feature that records clicks, mouse movement and scrolls |
| Report depth | Pages, sources, goals, funnels | Far larger report set, segments, tag manager |
| Agent access | Two read-only MCP servers | API; no MCP in the pages I read |
| Quota behaviour | Starter and Growth hide overflow; Scale bills overage | Per tier on Cloud; unlimited on Community |
Search Console in Matomo, specifically
Matomo's FAQ describes two setups. On Cloud, an admin picks System, Search Performance, then Quick Connect with Google. On-Premise, the superuser creates Google OAuth credentials and uploads them, then runs the OAuth flow. Imports run with Matomo's regular daily archiving, and Google keywords usually take two days to appear. To combine several protocols or subdomains into one Matomo site, Matomo says to use a Domain property in Search Console.
That is a real integration, and it puts keyword data beside Matomo's visit reports. SiteLine's import is a different shape. It backfills about 16 months on connect, stores up to 25,000 rows per day per report across query, page, query plus page, country, device and search appearance, refreshes the latest 7 days every 4 hours, and keeps every day for as long as you subscribe. Both are read-only and both sit behind Google's 16-month window on the day you connect, which Google documents. You can check your own cliff with the GSC data expiry calculator.
What Matomo does that SiteLine will not
- Self-hosting with the raw tables. SiteLine is hosted only.
- Heatmaps. Matomo's feature page says it records clicks, mouse movements and scroll activity. SiteLine records none of that.
- A bigger report tree and a tag manager. SiteLine's goals are exact path, path contains, or event name, and funnels are ordered steps of those.
- A free option with no event cap. Community has unlimited users and hits.
- Choosing the server country. On-premise you decide it.
What SiteLine does that Matomo does not set out to
- It treats cookieless as the default and only mode, with no tracker configuration to get wrong. Collect uses
fetchwith credentials omitted, and the visitor key is a hash of a truncated IP (/24 IPv4, /48 IPv6), user agent and a daily salt. See /docs/privacy. - It exposes the Search Console store and the on-site stats to Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT through two read-only MCP servers, on every plan.
- It is one script tag and nothing to patch. The cost is that you cannot move it behind your firewall.
Choose Matomo if
You need data to stay on your own infrastructure, want heatmaps or segments, or need a free edition for a large site and have someone to run PHP, MySQL, cron and upgrades.
Choose SiteLine if
You want a hosted, low-maintenance tracker that sets no analytics cookie, and you care more about keeping Search Console history than about report breadth. If cookie banners are the reason you are looking, the cookie banner traffic loss calculator shows what consent costs.
Teams that run a Matomo on-prem install and still want the archive can add SiteLine for Search Console only. The reverse, Matomo for hits and SiteLine for search, works too.
Related: Plausible vs Matomo for a lighter hosted peer, SiteLine vs Umami for open source that stays small, and open-source web analytics for the wider list.
FAQ
Is Matomo more private because it is self-hosted?
It can be, since the data stays on your servers. Whether it uses cookies, records sessions or logs more than you need depends on your configuration. SiteLine is hosted but collects less and sets no analytics cookie. Self-hosted and cookieless are separate properties.
Does Matomo's keyword import replace SiteLine's archive?
It imports Google keywords into Matomo reports. I did not find documentation saying Matomo keeps those rows beyond what Google serves, so check that before relying on it for year-over-year history. SiteLine stores each day while you subscribe.
Can I import Matomo data into SiteLine?
No. SiteLine has no importer for other tools' traffic history. Search Console history comes from Google on connect, not from Matomo.
Is Matomo's On-Premise licence free?
The Community plan is listed as free forever with unlimited users and hits, with forum support. Team, Business and Enterprise are paid bundles with support.