Swetrix vs Cloudflare Analytics: A Comprehensive Comparison

Swetrix and Cloudflare Analytics are both tools for tracking website traffic, but we approach it from completely different angles.

Cloudflare Analytics is a free add-on primarily designed for users already within the Cloudflare ecosystem. While "free" sounds appealing, it comes with significant trade-offs in data accuracy, ownership, and feature depth. Swetrix, on the other hand, is a dedicated, privacy-focused analytics platform built to give you accurate, unsampled data with no strings attached.

Here is a quick comparison to help you understand the real differences.

Why choose Swetrix over Cloudflare Analytics?

	Swetrix	Cloudflare Analytics
Core Features
Real-time Analytics
Page views
Device stats (browser, OS, type)
Custom Events
Live visitors count
UTM Tracking
Entry/Exit pages
Session duration metrics
Email Reports
Advanced Features
Performance Monitoring (Web Vitals)
Segments		Basic
User Flow Analysis
Error Tracking
Alerts / Notifications
Geolocation map visualisation		Limited
Funnels
Multiple Domains per Site
Data Quality & Ownership
Data Sampling	0% (None)	10% (only 1 of 10 visitors are counted)
Data Retention	Unlimited	6 months
Data Export
CDN Independent
Open Source
Self-hostable
Privacy & Compliance
Cookie-less Tracking
EU data residency
Pricing & Support
Entry price	$19.00	Free*
Customer support

The "Free" Trap: Sampling & Retention

One of the biggest hidden costs of Cloudflare Analytics is data quality. Cloudflare uses data sampling, meaning that when they generate a report for you, they only account for a subset of your traffic and guess the rest.

This sample in Cloudflare Analytics ranges from 10% (for the last 24 hours) down to 1% for any longer period than that. This practice leads to inaccurate numbers that can mislead your decision-making.

Furthermore, Cloudflare Analytics has a hard limit on data retention of just 6 months. Want to see your year-over-year growth? You can't. Your historical data is simply deleted.

Swetrix does not sample your data. We track 100% of requests so your numbers are always accurate. Plus, we offer flexible retention policies that allow you to keep your data for as long as you need.

Vendor Lock-in & CDN Dependency

Cloudflare Analytics is designed to keep you in the Cloudflare ecosystem. For their most seamless integration, you are forced to use their CDN and proxy your traffic through their servers (DNS proxying). This creates a massive vendor lock-in. If you want to move your DNS or CDN provider, you lose your analytics.

Swetrix is infrastructure-agnostic. You can use Swetrix with any hosting provider (Vercel, Netlify, AWS, DigitalOcean) and any CDN. We are a standalone product that works everywhere, giving you the freedom to change your tech stack without losing your data.

Side Project vs. Core Product

For Cloudflare, analytics is a side project—a "value-add" to sell their security and CDN services. It lacks essential features like custom alerts, error tracking, user flow analysis, and robust export capabilities because it's not their main focus.

For Swetrix, analytics is our entire business. We are obsessed with building the best analytics tool possible. That's why we have features like:

• User Flow Analysis: To see exactly how users navigate your site.
• Error Tracking: To catch JavaScript bugs affecting your users.
• Funnels: To optimize your conversion rates.
• Data Export: Because it's your data, and you should be able to take it with you.

Conclusion

Cloudflare Analytics is a "good enough" solution if you are already heavily invested in Cloudflare, have zero budget, and don't care about long-term data or accuracy.

However, if you want a serious analytics tool that offers 100% accurate data, long-term retention, data ownership, and deep insights into user behavior—without locking you into a specific CDN—Swetrix is the clear winner.