What Stats4U is
A visitor counter for embedding: one design, one line of code, pasted into the page. No account, no sign-up form, no confirmation mail – the counter number is already in the code that gets copied.
Counting happens when the image is served, not in the visitor's browser. The image is the count. That is why the counter needs no cookie, no browser storage and reads nothing from the device – and why it still counts where scripts are not allowed through at all.
Stats4U has been running since 2006 and is entirely free: no paid tier that does more, no trial that expires, and no limit at which counting stops.
What is inside
Six things that set this counter apart from a plain hit counter.
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Live and hour by hour
Today, yesterday and all time – plus who is on the site right now. The day is shown hour by hour, the week as a grid of weekday and time. The statistics page refreshes itself while it stays open.
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Where visitors come from
Countries and cities, plus regions for Germany, Austria, Poland, Ukraine, the USA and Canada – and a world map coloured by what actually arrives. The same information is available as a flag counter.
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Browser, system, device
Which browser, which operating system, phone or desktop, which language. Derived from the identification the browser sends anyway – only the result is stored, never the identification itself.
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Designs, not graphics work
580 designs in 28 families: crisp vector counters of today and the classics from 2006. Anything more individual comes together from shape, colours and font in the wizard – with a preview before anything is embedded.
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No cookies, no stored IP
The counter sets nothing in visitors' browsers. The IP address is not stored – it serves to determine country and city and goes into a daily hash whose key is deleted after two days.
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Fits anywhere
HTML, Markdown or BBCode. For WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Neocities, Hugo, Jekyll and forums the home page says where the code belongs – including the places where a script does not get through and the plain image steps in.
Three steps and it runs
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1
Choosing a design
The gallery on the home page holds them all. Every preview shows the design exactly as it will sit on the page – not a promotional image but the same counter.
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2
Copying the code
One button, one click. As HTML, as Markdown for a post, or as BBCode for a forum.
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3
Pasting it, done
Wherever the counter should appear – usually just before the closing body element or in the footer of the template. It counts from the next page view on.
This is what the code looks like
<script src="https://www.stats4u.net/s4u.js"
data-id="123456" data-style="30" async></script>data-id is the counter number, data-style the design chosen. The statistics then live at stats4u.net/live/ followed by that number – it is the way back and worth noting down.
What the statistics page shows
All of it from data the browser sends anyway. Bounce rate, time on page and scroll depth have been here since August: they come from the row a visit already has for one hour, condensed into daily sums when that row expires. No cookie, and no identifier that outlives the hour.
- Visitors and views for today, yesterday, 30 days and a freely chosen period
- Who is online right now – the page refreshes itself while it stays open
- The day hour by hour and a week grid of weekday times time of day
- Countries, cities and regions, plus a coloured world map
- Browser, operating system, device type and language of the visitors
- The most visited pages and where visitors were referred from – of the referrer only the domain
- Search engines and bots listed separately, so it is clear what of it was a visit
- Everything downloadable as CSV or JSON, for the same period shown on screen
Privacy is not an add-on here
Four points where it is decided. The full overview – which item serves which purpose, whether it is stored and for how long – is in the privacy policy, generated there from the system configuration rather than maintained by hand.
- No cookies. The counter puts nothing on visitors' devices – verified through the response headers on every route.
- The IP address is never stored. It determines country and city and goes into a daily hash of 16 bytes that is deleted after two days.
- The salt for that hash changes every day and is deleted after two days. After that, not even a known IP allows anyone to work out which hash belonged to whom – the operator included.
- Because the counter number is part of the hash, the same visitor on two different sites cannot be recognised as the same person. A cross-site profile never comes into being.
What this means next to a big analytics suite
Not a comparison with one particular provider, but with the usual design: a script that follows a session across several page views.
| Aspect | Stats4U | typical analytics suite |
|---|---|---|
| Weight on the page | image about 3 KB, script 3.8 KB | usually 20 to 100 KB of JavaScript |
| Sign-up | none | account, confirmation, setup |
| Cookies | none | as a rule required |
| Consent banner for the counter | not needed | in the EU usually required |
| Cost | none, with no ceiling | free up to a limit |
| Visible to visitors | yes, the counter is an image – an invisible one exists too | no, runs in the background |
The weights on the left are measured: design 30 as PNG 3,351 bytes, s4u.js 3,754 bytes over the wire. On the right is the range typical scripts fall into.
Frequently asked questions
Is it really free?
Yes. There is no paid tier and no limit at which counting stops. The service is carried by advertising on stats4u.net itself – none of it appears on the page carrying the counter, where only the counter sits.
Do I need an account?
No, there is none. The counter number is the way back to the statistics, so it is worth noting down. A password can be set on top of that, but it is not required.
Can I keep my statistics private?
Yes, in two ways. “Private” takes the page out of the sitemap and out of the examples on the home page; it then remains reachable only through a link containing an access key. On top of that a password can be set.
Do I have to embed JavaScript?
No. As Markdown or BBCode the plain image counts just the same. What is missing then: which page was called up and where the visitor came from – only the HTML version with the script knows that.
Are bots counted too?
They are recognised and listed separately in the statistics – on 9 August 2026 they made up about 14 percent of all counts. They still add to the total for now, so that the figures of existing counters do not drop by that share overnight.
How long is the data kept?
The daily hash two days, the evaluated figures 400 days. The IP address is in none of those figures – the web server access log holds it for 14 days. The nightly cleanup works to exactly these values.
Does it work on WordPress, Wix or a static site?
Yes. The home page says for eight platforms where the code belongs – including the places where a script is not let through: on WordPress.com with the free plan and on Squarespace below Core. There the Markdown version steps in.
Getting a counter
A design, the code, one paste. It takes no longer than that, and deleting that same line undoes it.