On 13 October 2026, Matomo released the sixth beta of Matomo 6, version 6.0.0-b6. It is the first major release since Matomo 5 in December 2023, and there is no final version yet. The headline feature for anyone who works with the numbers: spam and bot filtering is now built in and on by default. On top of that come changes you should check before you upgrade.
Spam and bot filtering built in#
The former "Tracking Spam Prevention" plugin is now a fixed part of Matomo 6. It is on by default and can no longer be uninstalled. The upgrade also switches it on where it was deactivated or never installed.
- Headless browsers are blocked by default, that is browsers without a user interface used for automation: Headless Chrome, PhantomJS, Electron and a few load testing and UI testing tools. Matomo explicitly describes this as filtering headless-browser traffic generated by AI tools as well.
- Cloud providers: on installations that did not have the plugin before, Matomo 6 also starts with requests from the data centres of large cloud providers blocked, using Matomo's own provider list and known IP ranges.
For your statistics, this means fewer visits may be recorded after the upgrade, because automated traffic drops out. Add an annotation in Matomo on the day you upgrade. That way you can tell later which drop comes from the filter, and comparing the weeks before and after shows roughly how much of your previous traffic was automated.
New in betas 5 and 6#
Since our Matomo 6 upgrade checklist of 30 September (based on beta 4), a few things have been added:
- Time on page per pageview: Matomo now measures how long each pageview was actually visible and stores it in a new table. Time on page in the page URL and page title reports therefore changes for all data tracked after the upgrade, while older periods are calculated as before. Be careful when comparing time on page across the upgrade date.
- AI features: super users decide in Matomo which categories of data AI features may send to an AI provider. Settle this with your data protection officer before you use AI features.
- Real-time: the separate setting for aggregated real-time figures is gone. When the Visits Log is disabled, Matomo now shows the counters for the last 24 hours and the last 30 minutes automatically.
- Custom dimensions: a goal conversion without a dimension value of its own now counts for the value the visit ended with. After re-archiving, conversions in these reports can therefore be higher.
Three things to check before you upgrade#
- Minimum requirements: Matomo 6 needs PHP 8.1 (previously 7.2.5) and MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.6 (previously 5.5). Support for TiDB is dropped. If you run older versions, upgrade them before you upgrade Matomo.
- Database change: the upgrade adds a new column to the visits table
log_visit, according to Matomo in preparation for consent tracking. On large installations this step can take a while, because it touches the largest table. Plan a maintenance window. The details are in our upgrade checklist. - SEO plugin removed: with the plugin, the "SEO Rankings" widget and the
SEO.getRankAPI method disappear. Check dashboards and scripts that use them.
Test now, but not in production#
Betas are meant for testing. Matomo only releases them once its automated tests pass, but warns that they can contain bugs that in very rare cases lead to data loss. Our advice: install the beta on a copy of your instance, check plugins, reports and your numbers, and wait for the final 6.0.0 release for production.
Already testing the beta? We would like to know how much the new filter changes your numbers. Feel free to get in touch.
