# Self-host Plausible Analytics on a VPS

> Run Plausible Community Edition, cookie-free web analytics, on your own VPS: register through an SSH tunnel, then serve it on your domain with HTTPS.

Source: https://vpsnine.com/help/self-host-plausible · Updated: 2026-10-21

To self-host Plausible Analytics, run Plausible Community Edition (CE) from its official repository with Docker Compose: three containers, Plausible itself, PostgreSQL for accounts and sites, and ClickHouse for the events. You register the first account, put it on a domain with HTTPS, and add the script it gives you to your pages.

CE is the free, self-managed release of Plausible's dashboard. It comes without Plausible's support, is released less often than their cloud, and some features stay in the cloud; the [community-edition README](https://github.com/plausible/community-edition) lists them. Your data stays on your server.

## What you need

- A server. Standard (2 vCPU, 4 GB) is the smallest plan we offer it on. Plausible recommends at least 2 GB of memory, and ClickHouse is the hungry part, so Standard leaves room for traffic peaks and ClickHouse's background work. ClickHouse also needs a CPU with SSE 4.2.
- A domain or subdomain for the dashboard, such as `stats.example.com`.
- An SSH client on your computer. [Connect with SSH](https://vpsnine.com/help/connect-with-ssh) covers it.

We haven't benchmarked how much traffic each plan handles. Memory is usually the first limit; watch the server's graphs in the panel and move up a plan if ClickHouse runs short.

## Install it with the one-click app

Order a server with [the Plausible Analytics one-click app](https://vpsnine.com/apps/plausible). On the first boot it installs Docker, clones the newest CE release to `/opt/plausible`, generates its secret keys in `/opt/plausible/.env`, and starts the containers with Plausible published on `127.0.0.1:8000` only.

Plausible lets whoever registers first, while it has no users, create the first account. So you register through a tunnel before the dashboard is public. From your computer:

```bash
ssh -L 8000:127.0.0.1:8000 root@203.0.113.10
```

Leave that open, browse to `http://localhost:8000` and register your account. After the first account, registration is by invitation only, which is Plausible's default.

On the server, this shows whether Plausible is ready, with PostgreSQL and ClickHouse reported as ok:

```bash
curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/system/health/ready
```

## Put it on your domain with HTTPS

1. Point `stats.example.com` at the server with an `A` record for its IPv4 address.
2. Allow ports 80 and 443 in [the panel firewall](https://vpsnine.com/help/server-firewall).
3. On the server, run:

```bash
vps9-https stats.example.com
```

`vps9-https` first checks Plausible's database for users and refuses to go on while there are none, so the registration page is never public. Then it sets `BASE_URL` in `/opt/plausible/.env` to `https://stats.example.com`, restarts Plausible with it, installs Caddy from Caddy's own packages and points it at `127.0.0.1:8000`. Caddy gets and renews the Let's Encrypt certificate, usually within a minute.

Log in at `https://stats.example.com`, add your site, and put the script it gives you on your pages.

## Doing it by hand on another server

The [community-edition README](https://github.com/plausible/community-edition) has the quick start. In outline, on a server with Docker ([Install Docker](https://vpsnine.com/help/install-docker)), clone a release tag (check the README for the current one):

```bash
git clone -b v3.2.1 --single-branch https://github.com/plausible/community-edition plausible-ce
cd plausible-ce
echo "BASE_URL=https://stats.example.com" >> .env
echo "SECRET_KEY_BASE=$(openssl rand -base64 48)" >> .env
echo "HTTP_PORT=80" >> .env
echo "HTTPS_PORT=443" >> .env
```

Then create `compose.override.yml` to publish those ports, so Plausible gets its own Let's Encrypt certificate:

```yaml
services:
  plausible:
    ports:
      - 80:80
      - 443:443
```

Start it with `docker compose up -d`, then open your domain and register straight away: until someone has, anyone who opens the page can.

## Updates and backups

Updates are yours. Read the release notes first, because major versions can need extra steps. Then, in `/opt/plausible`, fetch the new release tag with Git, check it out and recreate the containers:

```bash
cd /opt/plausible
git fetch --tags
git checkout v3.2.1
docker compose up -d
```

Use the tag of the release you're moving to in place of `v3.2.1`. We turn on the operating system's automatic security updates.

Back up `/opt/plausible/.env` and the `db-data`, `event-data` and `plausible-data` volumes off the server. `.env` holds the secret keys (`SECRET_KEY_BASE` and `TOTP_VAULT_KEY`), so a restore without it isn't complete. [Backups you should run](https://vpsnine.com/help/backups-you-should-run) shows how to copy archives off the server every night.

## When it goes wrong

- **`vps9-https` says to register through the SSH tunnel first**: nobody has registered yet. Open the tunnel, register at `http://localhost:8000`, and run it again.
- **Links in the dashboard and emails point at `localhost`**: `BASE_URL` is still `http://localhost:8000`. Run `vps9-https` with your domain, which sets it and restarts Plausible.
- **No visits show up**: the script on your pages points at the wrong address, or an ad blocker on your own browser is blocking it. Check the snippet in your site's settings matches `https://stats.example.com`, and test from another browser.