Google Analytics

Google Analytics 4 measures websites and apps as a stream of events. With enhanced measurement switched on, the Google tag collects page views, scrolls (when someone reaches 90% of a page), outbound clicks, site searches, file downloads, form interactions and plays of embedded YouTube videos without extra code. You mark the events that matter as key events (30 per property on the free version) and build from there: funnels, path and cohort explorations, ecommerce reports, audiences and attribution.

It is free for any site, and that is most of its appeal. One property can measure a website and an app together, and it connects to Google's other products, above all Google Ads and Search Console. The free version can export up to 1 million events a day to BigQuery, Looker Studio builds dashboards on top, and the Data API feeds other tools.

Google has also added Ask Advisor, a Gemini-based assistant that answers questions about your property in plain language. Google labels it a beta, says it only works in properties set to English, and warns that it can make mistakes.

Google Analytics suits sites that want depth without a bill: shops that need ecommerce reports, marketers who run Google Ads and want key events and audiences in their campaigns, and teams that want raw event data in BigQuery. If someone on your team already knows GA4, the free price is hard to beat.

It suits a site owner less well if all they want is a quick answer to "how many people came today, and from where?". The interface is crowded, the reports take a day or two to settle, and in the EU it brings a consent banner with it. Small blogs, local businesses and agencies with many client sites often find a simpler tool easier to live with. Our free shortlist lists the free options, and the Google Analytics alternative guide explains how to choose and how to switch.

You create an account and a property, then add a web data stream for your domain. The Google tag goes in by hand, through Google Tag Manager or with a CMS plugin, and page views show up in the Realtime report within minutes.

The real work comes after. You decide which events and parameters to send beyond the automatic ones, register custom dimensions for the parameters you want in reports (50 per property), mark key events, link Google Ads and Search Console, and set up consent mode if you have visitors in Europe. Ecommerce reports need your shop to send purchase events in Google's format, which a plugin or a developer usually handles.

One setting deserves attention on day one. Google says properties keep 2 months of event-level data by default, and you can raise that to 14 months under Data retention. Leave it, and your explorations will never reach further back than two months.

Expect a useful traffic and sources report the same day. Funnels and key events that reflect your business take a few days to a few weeks of tuning.

The Reports section holds the standard views: a snapshot, Realtime, acquisition (where users and sessions came from), engagement (pages, events, key events), monetisation for ecommerce and ad revenue, and retention. Admins can rearrange the report menu and build custom detail reports. You can compare segments and date ranges in any report, and admins can schedule up to 50 reports per property to go out by email daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly, as PDF or CSV files.

Questions the standard reports do not answer go to Explorations: free-form tables, funnel explorations, path explorations, segment overlap, cohort explorations and user lifetime. They answer far more questions but take time to learn, and they only reach back as far as your retention setting allows. Google samples an exploration when the query covers more than 10 million events. It also withholds rows with too few users when demographics or search queries are involved, using thresholds you cannot adjust.

The Realtime report covers the last 30 minutes: active users, sources, pages, events and key events. Google says its data is typically a few minutes old and that it runs without a formal service level. The standard reports are slower: Google says processing can take 24 to 48 hours, and some events arrive up to 7 days late.

There are no free-form dashboards inside Google Analytics. For a wall screen or a dashboard that mixes sources, you use Looker Studio. For raw data, the daily BigQuery export (free up to 1 million events a day), the streaming export (billed by BigQuery) and the Data API cover most needs.

The Google tag sets two first-party cookies, _ga and _ga_ followed by the container ID, each kept for 2 years by default. Admins can shorten that in the tag settings. Google says it does not log or store individual IP addresses from EU, Swiss or UK users, and does the location lookup on servers in those regions before discarding the address. Admins can switch off Google signals, and granular location and device data, region by region.

What Google may do with the data depends on the data sharing settings you pick when you create the account. With "Google products and services" on, Google can analyse your data to improve its own products, including its ad tools. With every setting off, Google says the data is used only to provide and maintain the Analytics service. Linking Google Ads puts your audiences and key events to work in ad campaigns.

Because it sets cookies and Google can reuse the data, EU regulators such as France's CNIL say Google Analytics generally needs visitors' prior consent. With consent mode, visitors who refuse disappear from your reports unless the property qualifies for Google's modelling. That needs at least 1,000 events a day from visitors who refuse, for at least 7 days, and 1,000 daily users who accept, on at least 7 of the last 28 days. Whether your site needs a banner depends on the law where you operate.

A small site pays nothing. A blog or a local business with 20,000 visits a month uses the standard version at no cost, with every report. The cost is time: setting up key events, learning Explorations and running a consent banner.

A growing shop or SaaS product also pays nothing for Google Analytics itself. Any bills come from around it: BigQuery storage and queries beyond the free sandbox, the streaming export (Google cites $0.05 per gigabyte, billed by BigQuery), a consent platform, and the hours of an analyst or agency to keep the tagging accurate.

A large organisation that hits the free limits can upgrade a property to Analytics 360. Those limits are 30 key events, 50 custom dimensions, 14 months of exploration history, 1 million exported events a day and sampling above 10 million events. Google publishes no price for 360. Its sales team and partners sell it under a contract, and an upgraded property gets service level agreements only once the account moves onto that contract. In return, 360 raises key events to 50 and custom dimensions to 125, keeps up to 50 months of event data, samples at 1 billion events, adds unsampled explorations and delivers intraday data in about an hour.

There is no overage on the free version. You reach the limits and live with them, or move to 360. Our web analytics pricing comparison shows what the alternatives cost.

WireBoard (made by us) suits readers who want to watch their traffic live. Its dashboards update within seconds, one view can add up several sites, and events, goals, funnels and revenue are on every plan. It is free for 2 sites and 50,000 pageviews a month, then $9 a month for 100,000 pageviews on 50 sites, on servers in Germany and Finland. Like Google Analytics, it sets cookies by default, with an optional cookieless mode.

Matomo is the closest match in depth, with ecommerce, funnels, cohorts and heatmaps. It is open source, runs in the cloud from $26 a month or free on your own server, and Matomo Cloud can import your Google Analytics data.

Plausible trades depth for a one-page dashboard without cookies, from $9 a month, and imports your GA4 history. Fathom Analytics is also cookieless and imports GA4 data, from $15 a month for 100,000 pageviews on up to 50 sites, but has no funnels. If live data is what you are after, see the real-time shortlist.

History is short where you need it most. Explorations and funnel reports reach back 14 months at most, and only 2 if you keep the default, though standard reports are not affected. Universal Analytics history was deleted in July 2024.

Numbers are not always exact. Large explorations are sampled, small groups of users are hidden, and the standard reports take a day or two to settle. Even the Realtime report runs a few minutes behind.

It asks for learning. Basic questions are easy, but anything past the standard reports means Explorations, custom dimensions or BigQuery, and dashboards live in a separate tool. In the EU you add a consent banner, with a gap in your data for every visitor who refuses unless your site is big enough for modelling. And if you switch on the "Google products and services" sharing setting, your data also feeds Google's own products.