Cookieless web analytics

How it counts without cookies

Visits. A visit counts when someone enters your site from another site or directly. Clicks between your own pages don't add visits, so there's nothing to remember in the browser.

Live visitors, events and goals. These use a SHA-256 hash of the IP address, user agent and site, with a random salt that changes every UTC day. The salt is deleted a minute after the day ends, so the same person can't be linked across days.

Countries. Taken from the browser's time zone, never from the IP address.

Do Not Track. Visitors with Do Not Track turned on aren't counted, unless you set data-collect-dnt="true".

What is and isn't stored

Analytics data is stored in Frankfurt, Germany, and collected on Cloudflare's network.

Returning visitors without cookies

Weekly retention cohorts over 12 weeks come from a small response the browser keeps in its HTTP cache. It records two things: the week the browser was first seen and the week it was last seen. Clearing the cache or using a private window makes it a new visitor. Add data-retention="false" to the script tag to turn it off.

Set it up

Sign in with Google, add your domain and paste the tracking script from your site settings into your HTML:

<script
  async
  src="https://totallytics.com/latest.js"
  data-hostname="example.com"
  data-verify="YOUR_SITE_VERIFY_TOKEN"
></script>

The first pageview verifies your site. See the installation guide.

FAQ

Can I track events and funnels without cookies?

Yes. Send events with window.tt_event("signup") or POST /events, and build up to 20 goals and funnels per site. See funnel analytics.

How is this different from Google Analytics?

GA4 sets _ga cookies that last 2 years. Totallytics sets none. See the Google Analytics alternative comparison.