Axiom vs Plausible for Solo Developers

Quick Comparison

Axiom Overview

Axiom is an observability platform designed to ingest massive amounts of log and event data, then let you query it with a powerful query language. Think of it as your centralized brain for everything happening in your infrastructure. Application logs, server metrics, deployment events, API traces: it all goes into Axiom and becomes searchable.

The value for solo developers is consolidation. Instead of checking five different places when something goes wrong, you check Axiom. The free tier includes 500 GB of ingest per month, which is wildly generous. The dashboard builder lets you create views for the specific metrics you care about, and the alerting system can notify you when error rates spike or response times degrade.

Where Axiom requires investment is in the learning curve. You need to instrument your application to send structured logs, learn APL (the query language), and spend time building useful dashboards. It is not a plug-and-play solution. But once set up, the payoff is significant. I rely on Axiom to catch issues before users notice them.

Plausible Overview

Plausible is a lightweight, privacy-friendly web analytics tool. It is the antithesis of Google Analytics: no cookies, no tracking scripts that slow down your site, no complex dashboards you never look at. You get a single clean page showing your visitors, pageviews, referral sources, top pages, countries, and devices. That is it. And that is exactly what most solo developers actually need.

I switched one of my projects to Plausible after realizing I spent maybe 30 seconds per week in Google Analytics and still did not understand half the reports. Plausible shows me everything I care about in one glance. The script is under 1 KB, so it does not affect page load times. It is GDPR-compliant out of the box, which means no cookie banners. Your visitors have a better experience.

Pricing starts at $9 per month for 10,000 pageviews, or you can self-host the open-source version for free. For a solo developer running a blog, SaaS landing page, or documentation site, the hosted plan is a no-brainer. If you are technical enough and want to save money, self-hosting on a cheap VPS works well too.

When to Pick Axiom

Axiom is the right choice when you need to understand what is happening inside your application, not just who is visiting your website. These are fundamentally different questions.

Pick Axiom if:

• You need to debug production issues with real log data
• You are running backend services, APIs, or worker processes
• You want to correlate events across multiple systems
• You need alerting when things break
• Your monitoring needs go beyond website traffic

Axiom answers questions like: "Why did this API call fail?", "What caused the spike in 500 errors at 2 PM?", and "How long are my database queries taking?"

When to Pick Plausible

Plausible is the right choice when you want to know how your website is performing from a traffic and engagement perspective, without the overhead of a full analytics suite.

Pick Plausible if:

• You want simple, actionable website analytics
• Privacy compliance matters to you (GDPR, CCPA)
• You are tired of Google Analytics complexity
• You run a blog, landing page, or content site
• You want analytics that load in under 1 KB

Plausible answers questions like: "How many people visited my site today?", "Which blog post is getting the most traffic?", and "Where are my visitors coming from?"

The Verdict

Axiom and Plausible solve completely different problems. Axiom is infrastructure observability. Plausible is website analytics. Comparing them is a bit like comparing a server monitoring dashboard to a visitor counter, but solo developers often evaluate both when setting up their monitoring stack.

My recommendation: use both. Plausible on your public-facing site to track visitors and traffic sources. Axiom on your backend to track logs, errors, and performance. They complement each other perfectly and together cost less than most single monitoring platforms. Plausible at $9 per month plus Axiom on the free tier gives you complete visibility for the price of a couple of coffees.

If you truly must pick one, ask yourself this: is your biggest blind spot "I don't know who's visiting my site" or "I don't know what's breaking in my app"? The answer tells you which tool to start with.