The read · 26 Oct 2026
Google's gravity sets the shape
WordPress analytics is a Google category with a handful of independents working the edges. Site Kit by Google holds 40% of the category's installs across 5M+ sites, and it shipped an update a week ago, so it shows no sign of coasting. MonsterInsights at 2M+ and GTM4WP at 700K+ also exist mainly to pipe data into Google's tools, and so does GA Google Analytics at 400K+. Most of the top of this market is about connecting WordPress to someone else's dashboard.
That's a moat. A newcomer can't out-Google Google, and the incumbents are well kept: most of the top dozen have released within the last six weeks.
The privacy pitch is the only real counterweight
The real competition sits a rung below. WP Statistics at 500K+ and Burst Statistics at 200K+ make the opposite argument and keep the data on your own server. Both shipped updates within the last week, and Burst has one of the best user ratings among the leaders. They look like the only independents with a durable claim on the category.
The soft spot near the top is ExactMetrics. It has 200K+ installs, but its adjusted rating sits around 2.5 stars, far below every plugin near it. That suggests a lot of its users are tolerating it more than choosing it, which makes it the most exposed of the big names.
A thinning tail with small, niche bets
Downloads across the category fell 20.8% over the last 90 days. The drop is real, and the data doesn't show the cause yet. Further down, quality is uneven: among the 1,787 tracked plugins, the ones in poor shape outnumber the well-maintained ones by more than two to one.
Growth in the tail is modest. Jetpack Stats posted the biggest jump, from 30 to 500 installs. The newer entrants are chasing AI-era angles: ConvertNow Analytics filters AI traffic and bots, and Openpixly tracks conversions for OpenAI Ads. Both are still at around 100 installs or fewer, so these are early bets with nothing proven yet.
The directory closed eight analytics plugins since mid-August, most of them at their authors' request. The largest was Better Google Analytics, which had 2K+ installs when it closed on 2026-09-11, with no reason recorded.
At roughly 6,000 downloads a month per plugin, demand is spread too thin to back a general-purpose challenger. Any opening is in narrow niches like AI traffic measurement. The broad analytics slot already belongs to Google and the two privacy players.
