Page Visit Counter and WP Statistics answer the same question: who visits my WordPress site, and what do they read? Both keep the numbers in your own database and work without cookies. This Page Visit Counter vs WP Statistics comparison is for bloggers, small businesses and agencies choosing between them: what each tracks, what is free, what the paid plans cost and where each is the stronger pick.
Page Visit Counter is made by WPAnkit, the team behind this site. We have tried to keep this comparison fair and link to WP Statistics’ own documentation for every claim.
Last updated: 24 September 2026
In this comparison
Quick verdict
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Page Visit Counter vs WP Statistics at a glance
“Free” means included in the free plugin. “Pro” or “Paid” means a paid plan or add-on. Prices as of 24 September 2026.
| Feature | Page Visit Counter | WP Statistics |
|---|---|---|
| Tracking method | JavaScript, posting to your own REST API | JavaScript, posting to your own site |
| Cookies or browser storage | ✗ None | ✗ None |
| Real-time | ✓ Free: active visitors (last 5 minutes), refreshed every 10 seconds | ✓ Free: Online Visitors list. Self-updating live view is Paid |
| Sessions and engagement | ✓ Free: sessions, views per session and time on page by date range; today’s bounce rate and average session duration | ✓ Free: bounce rate (a visit is one visitor per day). Time on page for online visitors only |
| Top content reports | ✓ Free: pages, posts, custom post types | ✓ Free: posts, pages, categories, authors. Custom post type analytics are Paid |
| Countries and devices | ✓ Free: countries, devices, browsers, OS. Cities in Pro | ✓ Free: country, region, city, browser, OS, device model |
| Traffic sources and referrers | Pro | ✓ Free |
| UTM campaigns | Pro | ✓ Free: UTM values per page. Campaign reports are Paid |
| Goals | Pro: page-visit goals | Paid: pageview goals and events |
| Heatmaps | Pro: click heatmaps (beta) | ✗ Not listed |
| E-commerce | ✓ Free: product page views (once selected). ✗ No revenue reports | Product page analytics are Paid. ✗ No revenue reports listed |
| Counts on the front end | ✗ None | ✓ Free shortcode. Blocks and widgets are Paid |
| Email reports | Pro: weekly | ✓ Free: daily, weekly or monthly |
| Data export | Pro: goal data (CSV) only | ✓ Free: raw data (XML, CSV, TSV). Report export buttons are Paid |
| External services | GeoLite2 database (about 63 MB) from pagevisitcounter.com, currently refreshed daily; optional Freemius opt-in | GeoIP database (jsDelivr by default); admin notifications (can be turned off); usage sharing off by default |
| Free plan / paid from | ✓ Free. Pro from $49/year | ✓ Free. Premium from $119/year, single add-ons from $15/year |
Setup and dashboard
Page Visit Counter. Install and activate, and tracking starts. The free version needs no account, tracking code or API key, and the optional opt-in screen can be skipped. Reports live under an Analytics menu. The overview compares today’s pageviews and sessions with yesterday, shows today’s bounce rate and average session duration, and adds a 7-day trend, active visitors, devices, and top countries and browsers. It has no date picker, but the individual reports do.
Two setup notes: PVC tracks all roles until you exclude them, so exclude Administrator first. And its Top Sessions report and time-on-page figures need MySQL 8.0+ or MariaDB 10.2+ (plus WordPress 5.5+ and PHP 7.4+).
WP Statistics. Setup is just as quick. Its installation notes ask you to visit settings after activation, which also downloads the GeoIP database. Logged-in users are not tracked unless you turn that on, and a Privacy Audit page is on by default. It needs WordPress 6.6+ and PHP 7.4+.
Reports and metrics
PVC’s free reports focus on content and sessions. Top Pages, Top Posts and Top Custom Posts show views, sessions, views per session and average time on page. Home, archive and search views count toward totals but are not listed. Top Countries and Top Devices cover location, device, browser and OS. Top Sessions lists individual visits with entry page and depth. Sessions are grouped in 30-minute windows on the server.
WP Statistics offers more dimensions for free. Its feature comparison lists content, category and author analytics, word counts, referral and source-channel reports, region and city data, device models, visitor journeys and 404 tracking. On time on page, its guide says: “Currently, WP Statistics only shows online visitors’ time on page.” (WP Statistics)
In short, WP Statistics gives you more ways to slice traffic for free. PVC gives you session-level engagement for free.
Privacy and data ownership
The basics match. Neither plugin sets cookies or uses browser storage, and both write to your own database rather than a vendor’s cloud (WP Statistics: what we collect). In the details, WP Statistics goes further:
- IP addresses. By default, WP Statistics removes the last part of the IP, then hashes it with the user agent and a daily-changing salt (docs). PVC never writes raw IPs to its tables. It keeps a one-way hash of the IP instead: pseudonymized, not anonymous.
- Other data. Both record country, region and city. WP Statistics discards the full user-agent string by default, keeping browser, OS and device; PVC stores it.
- Consent tools. WP Statistics offers Do Not Track support, WP Consent API integration, the Privacy Audit, and export and erase tools. PVC 4.1.0 has none of these. Its controls are exclusions by role, user, post and IP.
- Bots. WP Statistics filters bots with the Device Detector library plus your own exclusions. PVC counts only visits where its JavaScript runs, which leaves out most simple crawlers, but it has no bot list.
WP Statistics describes itself as GDPR, CCPA and PECR compliant by default, but no plugin makes a site compliant on its own.
Performance and site speed
Both plugins track in the browser and send one request per pageview to your own site. Neither calls an outside analytics service per visit. We have not benchmarked either, so here are facts you can check:
- Script size. PVC loads one 743-byte script (about 400 bytes gzipped) in the footer. WP Statistics 14.16.14 loads a tracker.js of 7,922 bytes (about 2.7 KB gzipped), which also handles single-page apps, consent plugins and add-on events.
- Database growth. PVC deletes rows older than your retention period daily (1 to 365 days, 90 by default). WP Statistics offers optional purging, or aggregation that keeps visitor and view totals.
- Page caching. WP Statistics says it is compatible with caching plugins and CDNs. PVC works with page caching as long as cached pages refresh within WordPress’s nonce lifetime (about 12 to 24 hours).
Free vs paid features
PVC has one paid plan. Every Pro tier adds UTM campaign reports, page-visit goals, click heatmaps (beta), user journeys, a referrer breakdown, top cities, a world map and weekly email reports.
WP Statistics sells eight add-ons, bundled in Premium or sold separately. Marketing adds Google Search Console data, campaign reports, events and goals. Data Plus adds custom post types, taxonomies, and link and download tracking. Real-Time Stats adds the live dashboard.
So the splits run in opposite directions: traffic sources, journeys and email reports are free only in WP Statistics, while a self-updating live view and custom post type reports are free only in PVC.
Pricing
As of 24 September 2026, in USD, billed yearly.
| Plan | Page Visit Counter | WP Statistics |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 |
| 1 site | $49/year (Pro) | $119/year (Premium) |
| 5 sites | $99/year | $249/year |
| Unlimited sites | $199/year | $449/year (fair use up to 100 sites) |
| Single add-ons | ✗ One plan, every Pro feature | ✓ $15 to $39/year each for 1 site |
| Monthly or lifetime | ✗ Neither | ✗ No monthly. Lifetime at 3× the standard price, on request |
| Money-back guarantee | 14 days | 14 days |
PVC prices exclude VAT or sales tax, and Pro renews at the signup price. The WP Statistics pricing page notes introductory pricing with renewals at full price, so check the renewal rate.
Support and development
WP Statistics is built by VeronaLabs and has been on WordPress.org since March 2011, with 600,000+ active installs and a 4.1 out of 5 rating from 757 ratings. The changelog lists 11 releases between 16 March and 19 September 2026 (version 14.16.14). Its documentation has more than 180 articles.
Page Visit Counter is a newer plugin published by WPAnkit. Version 4.1.0 was released on 23 September 2026. Docs are at pagevisitcounter.com/docs, free support runs through the WordPress.org forum, and pre-sales questions go to the contact page.
When WP Statistics is the better choice
- You want free traffic sources. Referrers, search engines, social, source channels and UTM values cost nothing.
- Stats need to leave wp-admin. Free scheduled emails, raw XML and CSV export, and a shortcode for showing counts on your pages.
- Others need access. Role-based access lets editors or clients see stats. PVC reports are for administrators only.
- Privacy controls come first. IP truncation and daily-salted hashing by default, Do Not Track, WP Consent API support and a Privacy Audit.
- You need long history or a network. Purging is optional, and aggregation keeps totals after detailed rows are removed. PVC keeps at most 365 days. WP Statistics also supports multisite.
- You want a mature ecosystem. More than 15 years on WordPress.org, plus paid add-ons for Search Console data, event tracking, front-end blocks and white-labeling.
FAQ
Can I switch from WP Statistics to Page Visit Counter?
Yes. PVC starts counting the day you activate it. PVC 4.1.0 does not import WP Statistics data, so export what you want to keep first, or run both side by side for a while.
Which is better for GDPR?
Neither can guarantee compliance alone. Both avoid cookies and keep data on your server, but WP Statistics has more privacy tooling, as covered above. PVC stores a one-way IP hash, the user agent and approximate location, so list it in your privacy policy and check with your privacy advisor.
Can I show a view counter on my posts?
Not with PVC 4.1.0; counts appear in admin reports only. WP Statistics can: its free shortcode shows counts such as page visits, it adds a Visitors column to post lists, and its Advanced Widgets add-on provides blocks and widgets.
Why Page Visit Counter is the better choice if you want simple, session-based stats
WP Statistics is the broader tool and wins on free traffic sources, privacy tooling and history. But if you want engagement numbers in the free version and a cheaper upgrade, PVC makes the stronger case:
- Session metrics are free. The free version already reports sessions, bounce rate, average session duration and pages per session, plus a list of individual sessions, so you don’t have to upgrade to see how people move through the site. (Bounce rate and session duration cover today; the rest work for any date range.) WP Statistics counts a visit as one visitor per day for bounce rate, and shows time on page only for visitors online now.
- A live view that updates itself, free. PVC’s free dashboard shows how many visitors were active in the last five minutes and refreshes every 10 seconds. WP Statistics’ free Online Visitors report shows more per-visitor detail, but its self-updating view is the Real-Time Stats add-on ($39/year for 1 site, as of 24 September 2026).
- Custom post types without an add-on. PVC’s free Top Custom Posts report covers any post type you choose to track, including WooCommerce products. In WP Statistics, custom post type analytics need the paid Data Plus add-on.
- A lighter tracker. PVC adds one script under 1 KB, served from your own site. WP Statistics’ tracker, which also does more, is about ten times the size (roughly seven times gzipped). Both are small, but if you count every kilobyte, PVC comes out ahead.
- Pro costs less, with every feature in every tier. PVC Pro is $49/year for 1 site, $99/year for 5 sites or $199/year for unlimited sites (as of 24 September 2026). Every tier includes every Pro feature, from UTM campaigns to click heatmaps (beta), with a 14-day money-back guarantee. WP Statistics Premium costs $119, $249 and $449 a year for the same site counts. It includes extras PVC Pro lacks, such as Search Console data and event tracking, but heatmaps are not on its feature list.
If free traffic-source reports, email reports and exports matter most, WP Statistics is the better free option. If you want lean, session-based stats inside WordPress and a smaller bill when you upgrade, start with Page Visit Counter.
Get started: download Page Visit Counter free from WordPress.org, activate it, and your first sessions appear under Analytics. When you’re ready for campaigns, goals and heatmaps, compare the Pro plans.