Real-time web analytics, without the noise.
Learn how live traffic, privacy-first collection, AI referrals, campaigns, and conversions actually work—then use the calculators and source-led product profiles to make a defensible choice.
18 sourced briefs · 6 working tools · 38 defined terms
Three routes through the signal
Start with the decision you need to make. The library is organized by method, product profile, and hands-on calculation—not keyword variants.
See what is happening now
Live visitors, action streams, freshness, launch monitoring, and false urgency.
Measure with less personal data
Cookies, identifiers, consent, hosting, retention, access, and deletion.
Choose an analytics system
Date-verified profiles of five products, each grounded in its own vendor documentation.
Tools that do the work
No signup, no submitted form data, no pretend demo. Every calculation runs locally in the browser and explains its method and limits.
A click, a citation, and a crawler are not the same signal.
Our AI traffic model separates observed human referrals, verified search crawlers, user-directed fetches, and citations that never produce a website request. That keeps “AI traffic” from becoming one impressive but meaningless number.
Read the AI traffic guideFive products worth knowing, and what each does well
No scores and no rankings. Each profile carries an evidence date, links the vendor’s own sources, and describes the work that product is built for.
Clicky: real-time analytics with the visitor detail still intact
An independent look at Clicky Analytics: live visitor and action logs, the Spy stream, heatmaps, uptime monitoring, privacy defaults, retention, and plan allowances.
Google Analytics 4: enormous reach, and raw data export for free
An independent look at Google Analytics 4: the event model, web and app streams, explorations, audiences, attribution, free BigQuery export, and retention controls.
Plausible: privacy built into the architecture, and the source is public
An independent look at Plausible Analytics: its no-cookie daily-rotating identity model, EU ownership and hosting, open-source code, self-hosting, goals, and API.
Fathom: fifty sites on every plan, and history that does not expire
An independent look at Fathom Analytics: its aggregate privacy model, at least 50 sites on every plan, forever retention while subscribed, live visitors, and an API.
Matomo: a full analytics platform you are allowed to own outright
An independent look at Matomo Analytics: free self-hosted On-Premise with unlimited users and hits, managed Cloud, tag manager, privacy controls, and APIs.
Independent before there is anything to sell.
slicky.click is a research publication and measurement bench. There is no commercial analytics product, customer count, pricing plan, testimonial, or hidden vendor relationship behind these pages — and no affiliate link, referral fee, sponsorship, or paid placement anywhere on the site. Every product written about here is somebody else’s, and we earn nothing whichever one you pick.
The current job is simpler: publish useful answers, show the source ledger, correct mistakes, and earn attention over time.
Read the independence statement
Twelve field guides, built to stay useful
The launch library covers distinct jobs. It will be revised when official documentation changes, not padded with synonym pages.
Web analytics: a practical field guide
Web analytics is the disciplined collection and interpretation of website activity to support a decision. It is not a dashboard, a tracking script, or…
Real-time web analytics without false urgency
Real-time web analytics reports activity within seconds or minutes of collection. It is most useful for operational questions—whether a launch is rece…
Website visitor tracking: what can be known
Website visitor tracking ranges from anonymous aggregate counts to session logs, account-linked journeys, and third-party firm enrichment. Those metho…
Privacy-first analytics is a configuration, not a slogan
Privacy-first analytics means designing measurement around a stated purpose while minimizing collection, identity, retention, and access. It cannot be…
Cookieless analytics: what changes and what does not
Cookieless analytics avoids storing a persistent analytics identifier in the browser. A service can still count pageviews and events, group activity i…
First-party analytics beyond the label
First-party analytics collects data in the context of the site the visitor intentionally opened. That may mean self-hosted software, a hosted service …