Beam vs Rybbit

Where Rybbit Has the Edge

Rybbit is genuinely impressive for a product that launched in 2025. It's fully open source under the AGPL-3 license — not just the tracking script, but the entire platform. The GitHub community is active, with 11,000+ stars and growing. If you want to self-host and inspect every line of code, Rybbit is the better choice.

Rybbit also has features Beam doesn't: session replay lets you watch how individual visitors interact with your site, and funnel analysis helps track multi-step conversion flows. These are meaningful advantages for teams that need behavioral analytics beyond traffic metrics.

Where Beam Has the Edge

The core Beam advantage is simplicity and cost. There's no server to provision, no Docker Compose to maintain, no database to back up. You add one script tag to your site and analytics flow into a managed Cloudflare-backed dashboard. The entire stack runs on Cloudflare's edge network — globally distributed, low latency, zero ops overhead.

Pricing is the other differentiator. Beam's hosted Pro plan is $5/month with no pageview overage surprises. Rybbit's hosted Standard plan starts at $13/month, and the Pro tier at $26/month. If you want a hosted managed service rather than running your own infrastructure, Beam costs significantly less for equivalent pageview-level analytics.

Beam also has a free tier — 1 site, up to 50,000 pageviews per month. Rybbit's cloud offering has no free tier at launch. For indie developers running side projects or early-stage sites, that free tier matters.

Which Should You Choose?

Choose Rybbit if: you want a fully open-source stack you can self-host and control entirely, you need session replay to understand how users navigate your site, or you want funnel analysis for multi-step conversions. The operational overhead is real but manageable for technically capable teams.

Choose Beam if: you want managed analytics with zero infrastructure, you're watching your budget and $5/month beats $13/month, or you just need reliable traffic metrics without the overhead of running a server. Beam's free tier is a low-friction starting point for any new project.