Google Analytics alternative guide 2026

Google Analytics is free and deep, with funnels, cohorts, ecommerce reports and a BigQuery export. People look elsewhere for a few concrete reasons.

Google Analytics 4 replaced the version they knew. Standard Universal Analytics properties stopped processing data on 1 July 2023, and from the week of 1 July 2024 Google removed access to them and to their API. GA4 records everything as events, with new reports and a new vocabulary.

It takes real learning. Anything past the standard reports means Explorations, custom dimensions or BigQuery. Google says processing takes 24 to 48 hours, so yesterday's numbers can still move.

Detailed history is short. In a standard property, the event-level data behind Explorations and funnel reports is kept for 2 or 14 months, and a new property starts at 2. Standard reports are not affected, but a new exploration cannot reach back past that limit.

Small numbers are hidden. When a report includes demographics or search queries, Google withholds rows with too few users, so that no one can infer who a visitor is. You cannot adjust these thresholds.

Consent banners leave gaps. The Google tag sets two cookies kept for 2 years, so in the EU it generally needs consent. Consent mode is Google's answer: it passes each visitor's choice to Google's tags. In its advanced setup, the tags send cookieless pings when a visitor refuses, and Google fills the gap with modelling. But Google lists minimums for modelling: at least 1,000 events a day from visitors who refused, for 7 days, and 1,000 daily users who accepted, on at least 7 of the last 28 days. Below that, the visitors who say no are simply missing.

Transfers to the US worried European regulators. In 2022, after complaints that followed the EU Court of Justice's Schrems II ruling, France's CNIL, working with other European authorities, ordered several organisations to stop using Google Analytics because of how their data reached the United States. On 10 July 2023 the European Commission adopted an adequacy decision for the EU-US Data Privacy Framework: personal data can now flow freely to US companies that take part in it, and Google says Google LLC has certified. In September 2025 the EU General Court dismissed an action to annul that decision. The Court of Justice struck down the two frameworks before it, and the Commission must keep monitoring this one. This is not legal advice: check your own case with your adviser.

"Google Analytics alternative" covers very different products. A cookieless dashboard shows visitors, sources and pages on one screen. A heatmap tool shows what people do on a single page. Product analytics follows users through a sign-up flow. Pick the kind of tool before you pick the brand, starting from the question you need answered.

We score every tool on the same seven criteria (how we review). Each one hides a practical question.

Features you will actually use. List the questions you ask every month, then check which plan answers them. Funnels are on Umami's free plan, on Plausible's Business plan and on Pirsch's Plus plan, and Fathom has none at any price.

Reports. Look at how you will read the data: filters you click, saved views, period comparisons, email reports, exports and an API. Matomo has segments on every report and custom reports; Simple Analytics keeps custom views and its export API for Enterprise.

Live data. "Real time" means very different things. WireBoard, made by SwissOps (which runs this site), streams visitors, pages, sources and events as they happen on every plan, and its live API (on paid plans) sends each change within about a second. Clicky's Spy updates every couple of seconds on paid plans, Matomo's visits log every 5 seconds, Plausible's live view every 30 seconds, and Fathom's current visitors panel in 5-minute intervals. Google says its Realtime report typically runs a few minutes behind. That gap matters on launch day or in a newsroom, much less on a blog. See the real-time shortlist.

Ease of setup. Nearly every tool starts with one script tag, but then they differ. Plausible, Fathom and Simple Analytics fit on one page anyone can read. Mixpanel and Heap need someone to plan or name events, and Adobe Analytics asks for a solution design before tagging.

Dashboards. Most simple tools give you one fixed page, and Plausible, Pirsch and Fathom have no custom dashboards. WireBoard goes furthest the other way: more than 60 widgets you drag and resize, and one dashboard can combine several sites. Umami's boards and Matomo's widget dashboards also let you build your own layout.

Privacy defaults. Plausible, Umami, Pirsch, Fathom and Simple Analytics set no cookies by default. Matomo and WireBoard set cookies until you switch to their cookieless modes.

Pricing, and how it grows. Compare the price at the traffic you expect in two years, and check what is counted: pageviews, events, hits or sessions. Check the number of sites too: WireBoard's $9 plan and Pirsch's Standard plan cover 50, and every Fathom plan at least 50, while Plausible's Starter plan covers one.

The same tool can suit one site and frustrate the next. Here are seven common cases, what each usually needs, and the reviewed tools that fit, with what to watch. The full reviews end with what each tool does badly, which is often what decides.

A cookie keeps an ID in the visitor's browser, so a tool can tell that Monday's visitor came back on Thursday. In the EU, under Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive, storing or reading information on a visitor's device is only allowed with consent, or when it is necessary for a few specific purposes the article lists. The European Data Protection Board points out that the rule covers "similar technologies", not only cookies, so moving the ID to local storage does not get around it.

"Cookieless" usually means the tool stores nothing on the device and recognises a visitor by a hash instead. Plausible builds it from the IP address, the browser and a salt it deletes every 24 hours. Fathom changes its salt at midnight UTC, and Pirsch adds the date and a salt for each site. Umami rotates its salt monthly by default. Simple Analytics keeps no identifier at all and counts unique pageviews instead. The price is accuracy: with most of these tools, a person who comes back another day counts again, and so does anyone who switches device.

Tools that set no cookies and store no personal data are designed to run without a consent banner for analytics. Whether your site needs a banner also depends on everything else it loads (ads, embeds, chat widgets) and on the law where you operate. In France, the CNIL accepts that audience measurement trackers, cookies included, can be used without consent when they only measure the site's own audience, produce anonymous statistics, are not combined with other data or passed on, and do not follow people across sites. It recommends a lifetime of about 13 months and keeping data for 25 months at most. The CNIL also says these rules may vary by country, and that most large audience measurement offerings do not qualify, whatever their configuration. None of this is legal advice: check with your own adviser.

Three questions matter more than any badge on a pricing page:

1. Does it set cookies or other identifiers by default? Check the vendor's documentation, not its home page. Matomo sets a visitor ID kept 13 months and WireBoard one kept 2 years, until you switch to their cookieless modes.
2. Where is the data stored? WireBoard, Plausible, Pirsch, Simple Analytics and Matomo Cloud keep it in the EU. Umami and Mixpanel let you pick a region. Fathom, Clicky and Crazy Egg store or process it in the US.
3. Can you check? Plausible (AGPL v3), Umami (MIT) and Matomo (GPL v3) publish their code, so anyone can read what the script collects, and you can host them yourself (open-source shortlist). With closed tools, you rely on the vendor's word or an audit.

What decides the bill as you grow is the unit the tool counts.

• Pageviews. WireBoard is free up to 50,000 a month and then $9 for 100,000 on 50 sites, with custom events counted in the same quota. Pirsch starts at $6 for 10,000 on 50 sites, Plausible at $9 for 10,000 on one site, and Fathom at $15 for 100,000. Clicky counts per day: its free plan allows 3,000 pageviews a day.
• Events or hits. Umami counts every event and each event property you save, and a Matomo hit is any tracked pageview, event, download, outlink, site search or content interaction. Mixpanel is free up to 1 million events, then $140 a month at 1.5 million on monthly billing.
• Sessions. Heatmap and product tools such as Contentsquare (formerly Hotjar) and Heap count sessions.
• Quote. Adobe Analytics and Heap's paid plans publish no price.

Among free plans, WireBoard's covers 50,000 pageviews on 2 sites with the last 30 days visible, Umami's 100,000 events on one site with 6 months of data, and Simple Analytics' 5 sites with 30 days of history and a badge. Self-hosting Plausible, Matomo or Umami is free if you run the server. See the free shortlist.

Yearly billing usually saves money: two months free at WireBoard, Plausible, Pirsch, Fathom, Simple Analytics and Matomo, 33% at Clicky, 20% at Contentsquare. Crazy Egg bills paid plans yearly only.

Check what happens at the limit. WireBoard and Crazy Egg pause tracking until the next month. Pirsch keeps collecting for five days, but its dashboard stops at the day you hit the limit. Heap keeps collecting but asks you to upgrade before you can view the data. Matomo and Woopra charge overage fees, and Umami's paid plans bill extra events. Every price side by side is on compare web analytics pricing.

A switch takes about a month, most of it waiting for enough data to compare. Start by saving what you already have, because only GA4 history is left: Universal Analytics properties are no longer accessible.

Export your reports. GA4 downloads a standard report as a PDF, a CSV file or a Google Sheet, and CSV and Sheets files hold up to 100,000 rows. Export the reports you compare year on year, such as traffic by month, sources and top pages.

Check the retention setting. Explorations and funnel reports only reach back 2 or 14 months, depending on the property's data retention setting. If you rely on an exploration, export its results now.

Link the BigQuery export for raw data. Standard GA4 properties can export raw events to BigQuery, up to 1 million a day. You can use BigQuery's free sandbox, but Google charges for use beyond its limits. Google says data starts flowing within 24 hours of linking, and its help pages describe no export of the days before, so link it early.

Import into the new tool. Plausible, Pirsch, Fathom and Simple Analytics import GA4 data, and Matomo Cloud includes an importer for Google Analytics data. What survives differs. Pirsch stores imported data as daily totals, so its filters do not work on it. Simple Analytics imports pageviews only. Fathom keeps imported figures out of its email reports, and Plausible's import skips ecommerce revenue, exit pages and scroll depth. WireBoard, which we make, has no import, so its charts start on the day you install it.

No tool fits every site. A blog needs one page of clear numbers, a shop needs revenue by campaign, a product team needs funnels and retention, and a newsroom needs to see a spike while it is happening. Start from the kind of tool, shortlist two or three from the ranking, and run your choice next to Google Analytics for a month before you remove anything. Prices change often: check them on the vendor's page before you buy, and see the news for this year's changes.