The archive · Developer & Business Tools · Product decision · 2018–2022
Plausible bootstrapped a Google Analytics alternative to $1M ARR with zero VC
Uku Taht and Marko Saric grew an open-source, privacy-first analytics tool into a profitable $1M ARR SaaS — no investors, no ads, no outside money.
Plausible Analytics
What the business is
Privacy-friendly web analytics: a lightweight script that counts visitors without cookies, sold as a paid cloud subscription alongside fully open-source code.
Starting capital：No funding raised. The founders covered early costs from personal savings and were down more than $50,000 combined before reaching $10k MRR in January 2021.
How it started
Developer Uku Taht wrote the first line of code in December 2018, launched a public beta on Indie Hackers in January 2019, and started charging in May 2019, ending that month at $64 MRR. The code went fully open source under MIT in September 2019; Marko Saric joined as marketing co-founder in March 2020.
What happened
Growth was flat until April 2020, when the post 'Why you should stop using Google Analytics on your website' hit the top of Hacker News and drew 25,000+ visitors in a day. MRR then climbed from $400 to $10,000 in nine months and to $500k ARR in ten more. In October 2020 the pair switched to the stricter AGPL license after big companies exploited the permissive MIT license, and started donating 5% of gross revenue to open source and environmental causes.
How it ended up
On June 2, 2022 Plausible passed $1M ARR ($83,637 MRR) with 7,000+ paying subscribers and 1B+ monthly page views counted — still a bootstrapped, profitable team of four with zero outside investment.
Background
Plausible started as a personal rebellion: in December 2018 developer Uku Taht wrote the first line of code after refusing to integrate Google Analytics into a landing page at work. He launched a public beta on Indie Hackers in January 2019 and began charging in May, closing the month at $64 MRR. In September 2019 the code went fully open source under MIT.
Growth stayed flat until April 2020, when the post 'Why you should stop using Google Analytics on your website' reached the top of Hacker News and brought more than 25,000 visitors in a day. Marko Saric, who had joined as marketing co-founder in March 2020, turned that moment into a compounding channel: the pair went from $400 to $10,000 MRR in nine months and to $500,000 ARR in ten more, while staying entirely bootstrapped and more than $50,000 of personal savings down at the low point.
On June 2, 2022 Plausible passed $1M ARR — $83,637 MRR from more than 7,000 paying subscribers counting over a billion monthly page views — as a profitable four-person team with no investors and no paid advertising. The company had switched to the stricter AGPL license in October 2020 and began donating 5% of gross revenue to open source and environmental causes, publishing its revenue and traffic openly along the way.
What has to be true
- Charging from day one made the product self-funding: growth to $1M ARR came from 7,000+ paying subscribers, not investors or ads.
- Open-source licensing built trust in a privacy-first market where users had to believe the tool had no trackers — the code itself was the proof.
- Content aimed at Google's missteps (FLoC, AMP) repeatedly hit Hacker News, giving a zero-advertising budget the reach of a funded startup.
- Staying small and profitable let the founders reject pressure to scale on investors' terms and keep pricing affordable for smaller sites.
- Publishing revenue and traffic openly created a compounding loop: transparency attracted privacy-minded customers who then spread the word.
What can be applied
Open source does not have to mean free: a managed cloud subscription can fund a project anyone can read, and radical transparency becomes the marketing an ad budget cannot buy.
Aftermath
In the June 2022 milestone post, Plausible described itself as intentionally small, profitable and sustainable: a four-person team that publishes its revenue and traffic openly, spends zero on paid advertising or affiliates, and donates 5% of gross revenue to open source and environmental causes. The founders said they had no plans to raise money or change the approach, betting the same organic, content-driven playbook that reached $1M ARR would keep working.
Sources
- How we built a $1M ARR open source SaaS
- How we bootstrapped our Google Analytics alternative to $500k ARR
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