Mike Cao

Creator of Umami, the open-source, privacy-focused Google Analytics alternative

@MikeCao San Francisco, United States1.1K followersAnalytics & Data Open Source Makers

About Mike Cao

Mike Cao is a software developer and the founder and CEO of Umami, a fast, simple and privacy-focused web analytics tool. He studied at UC Davis, started his career at CampusEngine, a dot-com era startup that hosted websites for college campuses, and after it folded worked through several full-time and consulting development roles before spending years in digital marketing technology at Adobe.

He has always built side projects as a way to learn, and he open-sources nearly all of them. Long before Umami he created Flight, a minimalist PHP micro-framework first published in 2011 that is now maintained by a community organisation, along with small PHP libraries such as the Sparrow database toolkit and the Shorty URL shortener.

In mid-2020, frustrated that Google Analytics was slow and built for marketers rather than developers tracking a few personal sites, he wrote the first version of Umami in about a month and released it under the MIT license; v1.0 shipped in October 2020. Cookie-free tracking, a clean single-page dashboard and easy deployment on Vercel, Netlify or a small server made it one of the most popular self-hosted analytics projects on GitHub, with roughly 39,000 stars by 2026.

In 2022 he formed Umami Software with his brothers Brian and Francis Cao and raised a $1.5M pre-seed round led by Race Capital to build Umami Cloud, the hosted paid edition, alongside the free open-source version. Umami v2 in 2023 and v3 in late 2025 expanded it from simple web analytics into product analytics with events, funnels, retention, journeys and attribution reports.

Products by Mike Cao

Umami

umami.is

Open-source, privacy-focused web and product analytics; self-host free or use Umami Cloud.

Flight

flightphp.com

Fast, simple, extensible micro-framework for PHP, now maintained by the flightphp community.

Sparrow

github.com

Simple database toolkit and query builder for PHP.

Shorty

github.com

Simple self-hosted URL shortener written in PHP.

Builds indie alternatives to:Google Analytics Bitly

Mike Cao's journey, 2020–20255 milestones · self-reported

First product
Funding
Launch / milestone
Started 2020

2011First product: Open-sourced Flight, a PHP micro-framework that went on to…
2020Launch: Built Umami in about a month as a simpler Google Analytics…
2022Funding: Raised a $1.5M pre-seed for Umami Cloud
2023Launch: Released Umami v2.0 in April
2025Launch: Released Umami v3.0 in November

Timeline

2011 — Open-sourced Flight, a PHP micro-framework that went on to earn thousands of GitHub stars.
2020 — Built Umami in about a month as a simpler Google Analytics replacement, open-sourced it and shipped v1.0 in October.
2022 — Formed Umami Software with his brothers and raised a $1.5M pre-seed round led by Race Capital to build Umami Cloud.
2023 — Released Umami v2.0 in April.
2025 — Released Umami v3.0 in November.

How Mike builds

Analytics should be simple, fast and respect visitor privacy.
Build the tool you want for your own projects, then open-source it.
Offer a free self-hosted version alongside a paid cloud.
Treat a breakout open-source project as a business sooner rather than later.

Mike Cao FAQ

Who created Umami analytics?

Umami was created by Mike Cao, who built it in 2020 as a simpler, privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics and open-sourced it right away.

Is Umami free?

Yes, Umami is open source under the MIT license and free to self-host; Umami Cloud is the hosted version with free and paid plans.

Is Umami bootstrapped?

Umami started as Mike's solo open-source project; in July 2022 the company, co-founded with his brothers Brian and Francis, raised a $1.5M pre-seed round led by Race Capital.