Know your audience.
Not your visitors.
Privacy-first web analytics with the numbers you actually look at. No cookies, no consent banner, no personal data. One script tag, any framework, and a dashboard anyone can read.
Coldreader answers when, where, what and how. Never who.
Free for early adopters · Invites go out within a day · No card, ever, during early access
Built by frontend developers, for frontend developers.
We got tired of analytics that ship 40 KB of tag manager, need a consent banner, and bury the four numbers we wanted under sixty we didn't. Coldreader is the tool we wanted on our own sites.
Under 1 KB, no dependencies
One plain script tag. No tag manager, no SDK, no npm package, nothing to bundle or tree-shake.
Works with any framework
Static HTML, React, Vue, Svelte, Astro, Next. Client-side routing is tracked automatically through pushState, so single-page apps just work.
Nothing to configure
No events to define, no cookie consent to wire up, no sampling settings. Paste the tag, deploy, and read the dashboard.
Honest about the data
We say exactly what is stored and how visitors are counted, in plain language, on the privacy page. No black box.
Dashboards you can read at a glance
Visitors, pages, referrers, countries, devices, and a heat clock of when people show up. That is the whole product, on purpose.
Self-hosted feel, hosted for you
Zero-dependency Node server, SQLite, EU hosting. We run it so you don't have to, and your data is deletable in one click.
One line of code. That's the whole integration.
Paste the snippet before </head> on every page, or once in your app shell. Data shows up within seconds.
<script src="https://coldreader.io/a.js" data-site="YOUR_SITE_ID" defer></script>When, where, what and how. Never who.
The dashboard is organised around the four questions you actually ask about traffic. The fifth is one we refuse to answer, by design.
∅No cookies, no banner
Nothing is stored in the browser, so the consent popup that ruins first impressions can go.
#No personal data
IP addresses and user agents are used for a few milliseconds in memory and never written anywhere.
◎World map
See where your visitors are, country by country, without ever storing where any single person is.
▭Devices, browsers, screens
Desktop or mobile, Chrome or Safari, small or wide screens. Coarse buckets, not fingerprints.
▦Calendar and heat clock
A month at a glance. Click a day to see when its visits happened, minute by minute.
<1Under 1 KB
The script is smaller than most favicons, loads deferred, and never slows your page down.
⇄Single-page apps
Route changes are tracked automatically. No wrappers, no plugins, no configuration.
∞Unlimited sites
One plan, all your sites. Add a domain, paste one line, done.
⌫Delete everything, any time
Sites and accounts are deleted immediately and completely. No retention games.
Counting visitors without knowing who they are
Most analytics tools recognise people with a cookie. We never want to recognise anyone. Here is exactly what happens when a page loads.
The script sends four things
Your site ID, the page path without query strings, the referrer, and the window width. No cookies, no storage, no identifiers.
We compute a hash, in memory
The IP address and user agent are combined with a random salt that changes every day, and hashed. The result is a short code that looks like a8f1c0…. The IP and user agent are discarded immediately and never written to disk, not even in logs.
Yesterday's salt is destroyed
Each day gets a fresh random salt and the previous one is deleted. Nobody, including us, can recompute or reverse an old hash. That is why we can count "visitors today" but cannot follow anyone across days. We think that trade is worth it.
Only coarse facts are stored
Country from the IP range, browser family, operating system, and a screen-width bucket. Enough to make decisions, not enough to identify a person.
Coldreader vs. Google Analytics
| Coldreader | Google Analytics 4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Cookies | None | Yes |
| Consent banner needed | No | Yes, in the EU |
| Personal data stored | None | Identifiers, IP-derived data |
| Your data used for advertising | Never | Can be shared with Google |
| Script size | < 1 KB | ~ 100 KB |
| Time to understand the dashboard | Seconds | Training courses exist |
| Data ownership | Yours, deletable instantly | Google's terms |
Free while we build it with you.
Coldreader is in early access. Ask for an invite, tell us what you build, and use every feature for free while we shape the product with the first users. Paid plans come later, and early adopters get first say and a founding-member price.
Request early accessQuestions people ask before signing up
Is Coldreader GDPR compliant?
Coldreader is built to process as little personal data as possible. No cookies are set, IP addresses and user agents are never stored, and visitors are counted with a hash whose random salt is deleted every day. You remain the controller for your site and should mention analytics in your privacy policy, but there is no personal data to hand over, export, or delete.
Do I need a cookie banner?
No. The ePrivacy rules require consent for storing or reading information on a visitor's device. Coldreader stores nothing in the browser: no cookies, no local storage, no fingerprinting. There is nothing to consent to.
Does it work with single-page apps?
Yes. The script records a pageview on load and again whenever your app changes the URL with pushState or the back button. React, Vue, Svelte, Next.js, Nuxt and plain history-based routers all work without configuration.
Who owns the data?
You do. Every number in your dashboard belongs to you. Delete a site and its data is gone immediately. Delete your account and everything goes with it. We do not sell, share, or mine your traffic.
What does early access cost?
Nothing. Early adopters use every feature for free while we build the product with them. No card is asked for, and nothing is charged later without you explicitly choosing a plan.
Analytics your visitors would approve of.
Set up in two minutes. See your first visitors today.
Request early access