Google Analytics must be the most popular analytics tool for webmasters, but I have recently come across an open source alternative called Piwik. Since I just posted a benchmark test of Google Analytics wordpress plugins, I thought I’d compare the “winner” of those (in terms of overhead) with Piwik (using the WP-Piwik plugin) and Mint.
Note that Piwik and Mint must be installed on your own server before you can use it.
Since my Google Analytics benchmark test I have decided to use the WP-Memory-Usage plugin to check how much memory the they use as well. Firefox and Firebug was done to check the requests and amount of data transferred.
The baseline was done on a fresh Wordpress installation with just WP-Memory-Usage activated.
| Baseline | 6 requests | 27 kb of data transferred | 10.65 mb of memory in use |
| Google Analytics | 8 requests | 37 kb of data transferred | 10.67 mb of memory in use |
| WP-Piwik | 8 requests | 36 kb of data transferred | 10.74 mb of memory in use |
| Mint | 8 requests | 30 kb of data transferred | 10.69 mb of memory in use |
Conclusion
Looks like Piwik and Mint beats GA when it comes to size, but GA beats them both when comparing memory usage. If we disregard memory the winner will have to be Mint, which adds 6-7 kb LESS overhead than the other two.
On a separate note, an obvious advantage of Piwik and Mint over GA is that you are hosting all your statistics on your own server, so the privacy conscious can sleep good at night.
