Visitant vs Cloudflare Web Analytics
Cloudflare Web Analytics is a free, cookie-free traffic counter that you get with any Cloudflare account, either through the proxy or a JavaScript beacon. It answers "how many people, from where, on which pages" and stops there. Visitant is also cookie-free, but it is a full product: goals, funnels, revenue, 5 years of history, and the AI loop that shows which crawlers read your pages and which assistants send buyers. Honest verdict: if $0 is the budget and 6 months of top-line numbers is enough, Cloudflare is hard to beat.
- Cloudflare Web Analytics costs $0 on every Cloudflare plan, including Free; the soft limit is 10 sites per account (Cloudflare FAQ).
- Data window: Cloudflare shows the previous 6 months and keeps unsampled data for 7 days, then aggregates to about 10% (Cloudflare FAQ). Visitant keeps 13 months on Free and 5 years on Pro, unsampled.
- No custom events in Cloudflare ("Not yet" in the FAQ), so no goals, funnels or revenue. Visitant has all three, goals on every plan.
- Visitant logs 44 AI crawlers and groups referrals from 21 assistants. Cloudflare's Web Analytics does not, but a separate AI Crawl Control panel shows crawler activity for sites proxied through Cloudflare.
- Both measure Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS); in our view Cloudflare's per-country performance view is the nicer of the two.
Prices and features checked 2026-09-25 at www.cloudflare.com/web-analytics/. If something changed, tell us: promptowy@gmail.com
Features
| Visitant | Cloudflare Web Analytics | |
|---|---|---|
| Cookie-free, no consent banner | yes0 cookies, no IP stored | yesno cookies, no localStorage, no fingerprinting |
| Price | yesFree plan, paid from $12/mo | yes$0 on all Cloudflare plans |
| Works without moving DNS to the vendor | yesone script tag | yesJS beacon, or the Cloudflare proxy |
| EU hosting | yesPoland | n/aglobal Cloudflare network; region not stated on the product page |
| Script size (vendor's own number) | yes1.9 KB gzipped | n/adescribed as a lightweight beacon, no number given |
| Data retention | yes13 months on Free, 5 years on Pro | partialprevious 6 months; unsampled for 7 days, then about 10% sample |
| Sites per account | yes2 / 20 / 100 / 1,000 by plan | partialsoft limit of 10, raised on request |
| Goals and custom events | yesevery plan | nocustom events: "Not yet" in the FAQ |
| Funnels | paid extraPro and up | no |
| Revenue per source | paid extraPro and up | no |
| Core Web Vitals | paid extraPro and up | yesLCP, INP, CLS; CLS only in Chromium browsers |
| Stats API and export | yesCSV on every plan, API on Pro and up | partialGraphQL API; no CSV button mentioned |
| Public share links | yesevery plan | nonot found in the docs |
| Team seats | yes1 / 3 / 15 / 100 by plan | n/aCloudflare account members |
| Alerts and weekly digest | paid extraPro and up | nonot found in the docs |
| AI assistant referrals as a channel | yes21 assistants | noreferrers only |
| AI crawler log (server-side) | yes44 crawlers, checked against published IP ranges | partialnot in Web Analytics; AI Crawl Control for sites proxied through Cloudflare |
| AI agents kept out of human counts | yesSignature-Agent, webdriver | n/anot documented |
| Ask questions in plain language | paid extraEnglish and Polish, Business and up | no |
| Session replay and heatmaps | no | no |
Pricing
| Free | $0/mo | 5,000 events |
| Pro | $12/mo | 100,000 events |
| Business | $39/mo | 1,000,000 events |
| Scale | $149/mo | 10,000,000 events |
AI crawler hits never count toward the limit. Going over the limit never locks the dashboard.
| Web Analytics (JS beacon) | $0 | any site, soft limit of 10 sites per account, 6 months of data |
| Web Analytics (proxied site) | $0 | sites on Cloudflare DNS, same reports without a script |
| Custom events, goals, funnels | n/a | not offered ("Not yet" in the FAQ) |
Read on 2026-09-25 from the product page and the Web Analytics FAQ at developers.cloudflare.com. Web Analytics is included on all Cloudflare plans; the Cloudflare plans themselves (Free, Pro, Business, Enterprise) are priced separately and are not needed for the JS beacon.
The AI loop
Cloudflare sees a lot of bot traffic on its network, but Web Analytics shows people, not crawlers. Visitant closes the loop in three steps. A server snippet records fetches by 44 known AI crawlers, split into training, AI search and user-fetch, checked against the IP ranges each operator publishes; spoofed crawlers are flagged. The browser script groups referrals from 21 assistants into one AI channel, adds a "likely AI" estimate from text-fragment landings, and keeps AI agents out of human counts. Then goals, funnels and revenue can be attributed per assistant, so the dashboard reads "ClaudeBot read 120 pages, Claude sent 18 people, 2 signed up". If your site is proxied through Cloudflare, AI Crawl Control gives you the crawler half of that picture and lets you block or charge crawlers; the assistant half and the conversion side are not in Web Analytics. Crawler hits never count toward the Visitant plan limit.
- You need $0 and 6 months of pageviews, countries and referrers is all you look at.
- Your site is already on Cloudflare: reports appear without a script, and AI Crawl Control adds a crawler view and blocking rules.
- You want per-country Core Web Vitals and page load times from a global network; in our view that view is better than ours.
- You do not want another vendor account or another script.
- You need goals, events, funnels or revenue; Cloudflare has none of them.
- You want unsampled history: Visitant keeps 13 months on Free and 5 years on Pro, Cloudflare keeps 6 months and samples after 7 days.
- You publish content that AI assistants quote and want crawlers (44) and assistant referrals (21) attributed to conversions.
- You need share links, alerts, a weekly digest or a Polish dashboard.
Questions
Can I run both at once?
Yes. Both are cookie-free and neither changes the other. In our view a sensible setup is to keep the beacon for the free performance view and add Visitant for goals and the AI loop.
Does Cloudflare Web Analytics need my site on Cloudflare?
No. The JavaScript beacon works on any site. If the site is proxied through Cloudflare, the data is collected without a script.
What does 100,000 pageviews a month cost?
Cloudflare: $0. Visitant: Pro at $12/mo for 100,000 events, with AI crawler hits not counted.
Does Cloudflare show AI crawlers?
Not in Web Analytics. Cloudflare's AI Crawl Control, available on all plans, shows AI crawler activity for sites proxied through Cloudflare and lets you set allow or block rules. Visitant records the crawlers on any host with a server snippet and links them to assistant visits and conversions.