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Proxying Plausible through Netlify

Don't want to manage your own proxy? We can handle it for you

Our managed proxy lets you send analytics through your own domain name as a first-party connection. All you need to do is set up a CNAME record using the instructions we'll send you and update the snippet on your site. We'll take care of everything else. Contact us for details.

Step 1: Get your snippet​

In the "Site Installation" area of the "General" section in your site settings you can see the snippet specific for your site. It will look similar to the following:

<script async src="https://plausible.io/js/pa-XXXXX.js"></script>
<script>
  window.plausible=window.plausible||function(){(plausible.q=plausible.q||[]).push(arguments)},plausible.init=plausible.init||function(i){plausible.o=i||{}};
  plausible.init()
</script>

Your snippet will have a different script location than the example above. Look for the https://plausible.io/js/pa-XXXXX.js part in your snippet - that's the personalized location for your site's script. Mark it down for subsequent steps.

Step 2: Add URL rewrite rules​

If you don't already have a _redirects file at the publishing directory of your site, create one. You can learn more about Netlify redirects and rewrites here.

Here's the setup for proxying Plausible Analytics:

/your-subdirectory/js/script.js https://plausible.io/js/pa-XXXXX.js 200
/your-subdirectory/api/event https://plausible.io/api/event 200

Replace https://plausible.io/js/pa-XXXXX.js with script location from step 1.

Note that:

  • The source paths identified here must be used when configuring the HTML script tag in the next section.
  • You can use whatever paths you like here (for example, here prefixing with /your-subdirectory/). Do choose a generic or irrelevant name. If you choose something like analytics, stats or plausible, it might get blocked.

Step 3: Update your snippet​

See Plausible's script tag docs

Add a script tag to your application's HTML page, passing the values configured above as attributes. The src and endpoint attributes must match the source values in the _redirects file.

<script async src="/your-subdirectory/js/script.js"></script>
<script>
  window.plausible=window.plausible||function(){(plausible.q=plausible.q||[]).push(arguments)},plausible.init=plausible.init||function(i){plausible.o=i||{}};
  plausible.init({
    endpoint: "/your-subdirectory/api/event"
  })
</script>

Deploy these changes to your Netlify site. You can verify the proxy is working by opening your network tab. You should see a request to https://yourdomain.com/your-subdirectory/js/script.js with status 200 and another one to https://yourdomain.com/your-subdirectory/api/event with status 202.

Troubleshooting​

If your <script> tag's src attribute is being manipulated to some unrecognised CDN URL, it's because you have the Asset optimization JS settings enabled in Netlify. Both the Bundle JS and Minify JS options must be de-selected to avoid interference with the proxied Plausible URL.

Prefer not to disable the Asset optimization? Try to use the absolute URL in the src attribute of your <script> (https://yourdomain.com/your-subdirectory/js/script.js).