How to add analytics to Gatsby (no cookies)

Before you start

Create a free Cool Analytics account and add your site. You'll get a site ID — replace YOUR_SITE_ID in the code below with it. The dashboard shows the snippet with your ID already filled in.

Install on Gatsby

1Create or open gatsby-ssr.js (or gatsby-ssr.tsx) in the project root.
2Export onRenderBody and add the script with setHeadComponents.
3Run gatsby build and deploy.

gatsby-ssr.js

import React from "react";

export const onRenderBody = ({ setHeadComponents }) => {
  setHeadComponents([
    <script key="coolanalytics" defer src="https://coolanalytics.dev/hb.js" data-site="YOUR_SITE_ID" />,
  ]);
};

Check that it works

Open your live site in a new tab, then open your Cool Analytics dashboard. Your visit appears on the live map within seconds — with the page you're on, where you came from and your browser.

Nothing showing up? Make sure you're looking at the published site (not a preview or editor), that an ad blocker isn't blocking the script, and that you're not testing on localhost.

Track signups, purchases and clicks

Pageviews, sources, countries and outbound link clicks are tracked automatically. For the moments that matter to you, send a custom event. Events named like a signup show up as signups, and events with an amount show up as revenue — on the live map and per traffic source.

custom events

// anywhere in your Gatsby site's browser code
window.hb?.track("signup");

// with an amount, it shows up as revenue
window.hb?.track("purchase", { amount: 49 });

Gatsby tips

Client-side route changes are tracked automatically — the script listens to the browser history, so there's no router hook to wire up.
Changes to gatsby-ssr.js need a fresh build — restart gatsby develop to see them locally.
Visits from localhost are ignored so your own development doesn't count. To test locally, add data-dev="1" to the script tag for a moment — then remove it.

Want to keep your own visits out of the stats? Open your site once with #hb-ignore at the end of the URL. That browser is excluded until you visit with #hb-track.

Gatsby analytics FAQ

Do I need a Gatsby plugin?+

No. onRenderBody is built into Gatsby and adds the tag to every generated page.

Can I use the Gatsby Head API instead?+

The Head API is per page. For a site-wide tracker, gatsby-ssr is the simpler, single place.

Will it count pages served from Gatsby's prefetch?+

Prefetching only downloads data. A pageview is recorded when the visitor actually navigates to the page.

How to add analytics to Gatsby