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Business Intelligence · head to head

Cabin vs Nix

Cabin logo

Cabin

Business Intelligence

Cookieless web analytics that also reports the carbon footprint of your website

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Visit CabinFull review
Nix logo

Nix

Developer Tools

Purely functional package manager and the NixOS distribution built on it, for byte-reproducible environments

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Visit NixFull review

The short version

  • Cabin is a privacy-first analytics tool.
  • Nix is free; Cabin starts at $14/mo.
  • Only Cabin lists cookieless tracking; only Nix lists content-addressed store.
  • Prices and features on this page were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Cabin and Nix actually diverge.

Attributes where Cabin and Nix differ
AttributeCabinNix
Pricing modelPer month by pageview volumeOpen source, no licence fee
PlatformsWebLinux, macOS, Windows
CategoryBusiness IntelligenceDeveloper Tools

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Cabin

  • Cookieless tracking
  • Carbon reporting
  • 1.2kb script
  • Custom events
  • Ad-blocker bypass
  • MCP access
  • Branded dashboards
  • EU data storage

Only in Nix

  • Content-addressed store
  • Declarative system configuration
  • Atomic upgrades and rollback
  • nix develop shells
  • Flakes
  • Nixpkgs
  • Binary caches
  • Home Manager

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Cabin

  • Replacing Google Analytics on a site where a cookie consent banner is hurting conversion and you do not need behavioural advertising datanot Nix
  • An organisation with a published sustainability commitment that needs a reportable figure for its website emissionsnot Nix
  • An agency managing many client sites that wants unlimited domains and branded client dashboards for a flat $45 a monthnot Nix
  • A developer who wants to query site analytics conversationally through an MCP-connected assistant rather than reading a dashboardnot Nix

Nix

  • A team that wants every developer and CI runner to use byte-identical toolchains without shipping a container for local worknot Cabin
  • Reproducing a research computation or a build years later from a pinned commit rather than a written recipenot Cabin
  • Managing a fleet of Linux servers declaratively with atomic rollback if a deployment breaks a servicenot Cabin
  • Building minimal container images from precise dependency closures instead of a base image plus a package managernot Cabin

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Cabin

  • The analytics are deliberately shallow: no funnels, no cohort retention, no session replay and no user-level journeys, so anything beyond traffic and event counts requires a second tool
  • Carbon figures are modelled from bytes transferred using CO2.js assumptions about grid intensity and device energy, not measured, so they are directionally useful and should never be presented as audited emissions data
  • Cabin is a product of Normally, a design studio, rather than a company whose sole business is analytics, which puts a reasonable question mark over long-term roadmap investment and support depth
  • The 30-day retention on the free tier and 12 months on Plus mean year-on-year comparison needs the $45 Scale plan, which is a large jump for a small site that only wanted longer history
  • Because it does not use cookies or cross-site identifiers, returning-visitor and multi-session attribution are approximations, which matters if anyone in the business is trying to reconcile it with an ad platform's numbers

Nix

  • The Nix language is lazy, dynamically typed and poorly documented, and its error messages frequently point at the wrong expression, so debugging a failing build is a skill that takes months rather than days to acquire
  • Flakes are the way essentially everyone uses Nix in 2026 and are still formally an experimental feature behind a flag, meaning tutorials, official documentation and real practice disagree with each other constantly
  • Anything that expects a conventional Linux filesystem layout breaks: prebuilt binaries, language package managers that download their own toolchains, and proprietary vendor installers all need patching or an FHS-compatible wrapper
  • Project governance has been publicly fractious, producing the Lix fork and the separately funded Determinate Systems distribution, so a new adopter now has to choose which Nix before they can start
  • The /nix/store grows without bound until you garbage collect, and on a developer laptop with several pinned nixpkgs revisions it routinely reaches tens of gigabytes

Pricing, plan by plan

Cabin

Free
  • FreeFree
    • 1 domain
    • 10,000 pageviews per month
    • 30-day data retention
  • Plus$14/mo
    • Up to 10 domains
    • 100,000 pageviews per month
    • 12-month retention
  • Scale$45/mo
    • Unlimited domains
    • 5,000,000 pageviews per month
    • Unlimited retention

Nix

Free
  • Nix and NixOSFree
    • LGPL-2.1 licensed, no commercial tier
    • Public binary cache at cache.nixos.org
    • Community support via forum, Matrix and GitHub

Which should you pick?

Choose Cabin if

  • You need cookieless tracking.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You also want carbon reporting.
Cabin review

Choose Nix if

  • You need content-addressed store.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Windows.
  • You also want declarative system configuration.
Nix review

Questions people ask

Is Cabin or Nix better?
Neither clearly leads. Cabin starts at Free and Nix at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Cabin or Nix?
Cabin starts at Free and Nix at Free.
Does Cabin or Nix run on more platforms?
Cabin runs on Web. Nix runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Cabin for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Cabin best used for?
Cabin is most often used for replacing google analytics on a site where a cookie consent banner is hurting conversion and you do not need behavioural advertising data, an organisation with a published sustainability commitment that needs a reportable figure for its website emissions, an agency managing many client sites that wants unlimited domains and branded client dashboards for a flat $45 a month, a developer who wants to query site analytics conversationally through an mcp-connected assistant rather than reading a dashboard. Of those, replacing google analytics on a site where a cookie consent banner is hurting conversion and you do not need behavioural advertising data and an organisation with a published sustainability commitment that needs a reportable figure for its website emissions are not what Nix is typically brought in for.
What can Cabin do that Nix cannot?
Cabin covers Cookieless tracking, Carbon reporting, 1.2kb script, Custom events. Nix covers Content-addressed store, Declarative system configuration, Atomic upgrades and rollback, nix develop shells.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Cabin: Do I need a cookie consent banner with Cabin?

No. It sets no cookies and collects no cross-site identifiers, and data is stored in the EU, which is the specific reason most buyers switch to it.

Nix: Do I have to run NixOS to use Nix?

No. The package manager runs fine on any Linux distribution and on macOS, and most teams start there with development shells rather than converting their servers.

Cabin: How accurate is the carbon measurement?

It is an estimate derived from data transfer using the CO2.js model. It is reliable for tracking change over time on your own site and unsuitable as an audited emissions figure.

Nix: Is Nix a replacement for Docker?

It solves an adjacent problem. Nix reproduces the contents of an environment exactly; Docker distributes an image. Many teams use Nix to build the image.

Cabin: Who makes Cabin?

It was built at Normally, a research and design studio in London, out of work on data, privacy and the carbon footprint of digital products.

Nix: Are flakes safe to use in production?

They are used in production widely and are stable in practice, but they remain officially experimental, which means the interface can still change and documentation is split.

Cabin: Can it replace Google Analytics entirely?

For traffic, referrer and event reporting, yes. For advertising attribution, audience building and funnel analysis, no.

Nix: What is Lix and should I care?

Lix is a community fork of the Nix implementation created after governance disputes. It is largely compatible; the practical impact is that you must decide which implementation your team standardises on.

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