The best Google Analytics 4 alternatives in 2026

Why Site Owners Are Leaving Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 is free, powerful and deeply tied to Google Ads. For many site owners it is also more tool than they need. GA4 is built around an event model, Explorations and attribution settings that make sense for marketing teams running paid campaigns across web and apps. A blogger, a SaaS founder or a small online store often wants something simpler: how many people came, where they came from, which pages they read and whether they converted.

Four practical issues push people to look at alternatives.

Cookies and consent. Google documents that the GA4 JavaScript tags set first-party cookies, including _ga (two years, used to distinguish users) and _ga_<container-id> (two years, used to persist session state). In regions with consent rules, many sites put GA4 behind a cookie banner. Google's consent mode adapts tag behaviour to the visitor's choice, and Google states that consent mode does not provide a banner itself. When visitors deny consent, tags send cookieless pings and Google fills gaps with behavioral and conversion modeling. Several alternatives in this guide take a different approach: they do not set cookies at all and describe their tools as usable without an analytics consent banner. Whether that holds for your site depends on your jurisdiction and setup, so treat vendor statements as a starting point for your own legal review, not as advice.

Data retention and ownership. In a standard GA4 property, event-level data retention can be set to 2 or 14 months. Google Analytics 360 adds 26, 38 and 50 month options. Aggregated standard reports are not affected, but Explorations on older data are. If you want the raw events, the free route is the BigQuery export, which Google caps at 1 million events per day for daily export on standard properties. Most alternatives keep your history for years, and three of them (Matomo, PostHog and Plausible Community Edition) can be self-hosted so the data never leaves your servers.

Hosting location. EU-based businesses often prefer analytics that process visitor data inside the EU. Plausible, Simple Analytics, Pirsch and Matomo Cloud all document EU hosting. Fathom routes EU visitors through EU servers and stores anonymised data in the US. PostHog lets you choose a US (Virginia) or EU (Frankfurt) cloud.

Simplicity. Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics and Pirsch put the key numbers on a single dashboard. You trade GA4's depth (Explorations, attribution and Google Ads integration) for something the whole team can read in a minute.

The other side of the ledger matters too. GA4 is free for standard properties, and none of the paid alternatives here replaces its Google Ads integration. If your business runs on Google Ads bidding and audiences, you may end up running a privacy-first tool alongside GA4 rather than instead of it. This guide covers both paths.

Google Analytics 4 review

Google Analytics 4 is Google's current analytics product for websites and apps. It replaced Universal Analytics and uses an event-based data model where every interaction, including a page view, is an event with parameters.

Key features

• Event-based measurement across web and app data streams
• Explorations for funnels, paths, segment overlap and cohorts
• Google Ads linking, conversion modeling and data-driven attribution where eligible
• BigQuery export (daily export up to 1 million events per day on standard properties; streaming export available)
• Consent mode integration with consent banners

Pricing

Google describes Google Analytics as free of charge. Google Analytics 360, the enterprise version, has no public price; Google's page directs buyers to "Talk to Sales". The 360 feature table in Google's help center lists higher limits: event data retention options up to 50 months (against 14 months on standard), much larger BigQuery daily exports, more custom dimensions and service level agreements. BigQuery itself is a Google Cloud product, so exports beyond the free sandbox limits are billed by Google Cloud.

Pros

• Free for standard properties with no traffic-based price
• The deepest reporting in this list, with Explorations and attribution
• Native Google Ads, Search Ads 360 and Display & Video 360 integrations
• BigQuery export for warehouse analysis

Cons

• Sets first-party cookies, so many sites in consent jurisdictions run it behind a banner, and denied consent leaves gaps that Google fills with modeling
• Event-level retention of 2 or 14 months on standard properties
• Reporting interface has a steep learning curve for non-analysts

Who should use it: businesses that buy Google Ads, measure apps and websites together, or need free analytics at large scale.

Who should avoid it: site owners who want a simple dashboard, cookie-free measurement, EU-only processing or long raw-data history without a warehouse.

Plausible review

Plausible is an open-source, cookieless web analytics tool made and hosted in the EU. Its pitch is direct: everything important on one page, without cookies or personal data.

Key features

• One-page dashboard with real-time view, goals, custom events, segments and annotations
• Cookieless counting: a daily identifier is hashed from a daily salt, the website domain, the IP address and the user agent; the salt is deleted every 24 hours and raw IP addresses are not stored
• Google Analytics import, including GA4 properties
• Search Console integration, scroll depth tracking and reporting on traffic from AI tools such as ChatGPT and Perplexity
• Funnels, user journeys, ecommerce revenue attribution and a Stats API on the Business plan

Pricing

All plans are priced by monthly pageviews plus custom events across your sites, with a 30-day free trial (on Business features) and no credit card. Yearly billing costs ten times the monthly price ("2 months free"). Prices below are the USD prices on Plausible's site.

• Starter: $9/month for 10k pageviews, $19 for 100k, $29 for 200k, $49 for 500k, $69 for 1M, up to $169 for 10M. One site, 3 years of data retention, GA import, goals and custom events.
• Growth: $14/month for 10k, $29 for 100k, $44 for 200k, $104 for 1M, up to $254 for 10M. Up to 3 sites and 3 team members, shared links and embedded dashboards.
• Business: $19/month for 10k, $39 for 100k, $59 for 200k, $139 for 1M, up to $339 for 10M. Up to 10 sites and 10 team members, 5 years of retention, custom properties, funnels, ecommerce revenue attribution and the Stats API (600 requests per hour).
• Enterprise: custom pricing for 10+ sites, SSO, managed proxy and scheduled raw event exports.

Plausible Community Edition is the free, self-hosted, AGPL-licensed release. Plausible says it is released twice a year, is community supported only, and does not include funnels, user journeys, ecommerce revenue goals, SSO or the Sites API.

Pros

• No cookies and no persistent identifiers, by Plausible's own documentation
• Cloud data stays on EU-owned infrastructure, with servers in Germany
• GA4 import keeps your history in one dashboard
• Clear published prices and a 30-day trial without a card

Cons

• Imported GA data is day-level aggregates, so filtering is limited and ecommerce revenue is not imported
• Funnels and revenue attribution require the Business plan
• No free cloud plan; self-hosting means running your own server

Who should use it: content sites, SaaS marketing sites, agencies and small stores that want GA4's core numbers without cookies.

Who should avoid it: teams that need user-level product analytics, session replay or Google Ads audience building.

Fathom Analytics review

Fathom is a cookieless web analytics service from a Canadian company. Every plan includes the same features, and price depends only on monthly pageviews across all your sites.

Key features

• Single-page dashboard with events, revenue tracking, UTM campaign tracking and saved views
• EU Data Isolation on every plan: EU visitors are routed through an EU-owned CDN (Bunny.net) to EU servers, where the IP address is stripped before anonymised data is stored on Fathom's US servers
• GA importer for historical GA4 data and a Search Console connection
• 50 sites included on every plan, with shared dashboards
• Analytics API, unlimited email reports and CSV exports

Pricing

Prices are in USD and billed monthly; switching to yearly gives two months free.

• $15/month for up to 100,000 pageviews
• $25/month for 200,000
• $45/month for 500,000
• $60/month for 1,000,000
• $100/month for 2,000,000
• $140/month for 5,000,000
• $200/month for 10,000,000, rising to $470/month for 25,000,000; custom above that

Every plan includes 50 sites. Extra sites come in packs of 50 for $10/month or $100/year. Custom events count toward the pageview allowance. Fathom says it will not switch analytics off for occasional traffic spikes. There is no free plan; the 7-day trial requires a card.

Pros

• One price tier covers all your sites, which suits agencies and portfolio owners
• EU traffic is processed in the EU on every plan
• Full analytics history kept while you subscribe
• All features on every tier, so there is no feature-gating

Cons

• No free plan and a short 7-day trial that needs a card
• Anonymised data is stored on US servers, which some EU buyers will want to review
• No self-hosted option is listed on its pricing page

Who should use it: agencies, freelancers and businesses with many small sites who want one simple bill.

Who should avoid it: anyone who wants a free tier or EU-only storage of the anonymised data.

Matomo (Cloud and On-Premise) review

Matomo (formerly Piwik) is the open-source analytics platform closest to Google Analytics in scope. You can download it free and run it yourself, or pay for Matomo Cloud hosted in Frankfurt.

Key features

• Full analytics suite: ecommerce, events, campaigns, site search, real-time, segmentation, visitor profiles and custom dashboards
• No data sampling
• Google Analytics importer, including a Quick Connect setup on Cloud
• Premium features such as funnels, heatmaps and session recording, A/B testing, cohorts and multi-channel attribution (included on Cloud, sold as bundles or plugins On-Premise)
• Built-in Tag Manager

Pricing

Matomo Cloud is priced by monthly hits. Matomo defines a hit as any interaction sent to it, including page views, events, downloads, outlinks and site searches, so a site's hit count is higher than its pageview count. Prices exclude tax and are listed in USD and EUR.

• Cloud Business: $26/month for 50,000 hits, $42 for 100,000, $85 for 300,000, $139 for 600,000, $204 for 1 million, $399 for 2 million and $975 for 5 million (EUR prices: €22, €38, €75, €118, €172, €334 and €822). Annual billing gives two months free. Includes 30 websites, 30 team members, 24 months of raw data and report data kept forever.
• Cloud Enterprise: custom pricing above 10 million hits.
• Free trial: 21 days, all features, no card.

Matomo On-Premise:

• Community: free forever, unlimited users and hits, forum support.
• Team bundle: €275/month billed monthly (from €230/month billed annually), up to 4 users and 5M hits/month, with funnels, heatmaps, session recording, custom reports and form analytics.
• Business bundle: €1,450/month (from €1,209/month annually), up to 20 users and 30M hits/month.
• Enterprise bundle: €3,400/month (from €2,834/month annually), up to 50 users and 100M hits/month, adding A/B testing and SAML/LDAP.
• VIP: custom.

On consent, Matomo's own FAQ is careful: depending on your privacy team's advice, a narrow configuration (anonymised tracking, no cookies, passive JavaScript only and browser feature detection disabled) may be usable without consent, and in Germany only server-side tracking is clearly recognised for that. Its privacy guide lists disabling cookies as one of the configuration steps.

Pros

• The broadest feature set among the alternatives, close to GA4 for marketing reports
• Full data ownership: self-host anywhere or use Cloud hosted in Germany
• No data sampling and long report retention on Cloud
• You can move data between Cloud and On-Premise

Cons

• Priced per hit, not per pageview, so events raise your tier
• Self-hosting means maintenance, upgrades and server capacity are yours
• Premium On-Premise bundles are expensive compared with lightweight tools

Who should use it: organisations that want GA-style depth with full control over where data lives, including public sector and regulated teams.

Who should avoid it: small sites that only need a traffic dashboard; Plausible or Pirsch will be cheaper and simpler.

PostHog review

PostHog is a product platform rather than a pure web analytics tool. Web analytics, product analytics, session replay, feature flags, experiments, surveys and error tracking share one SDK and one bill.

Key features

• Web analytics dashboard with visitors, pageviews, sessions, bounce rate, referrers, UTMs and Core Web Vitals
• Product analytics: funnels, retention, paths, cohorts and autocapture
• Session replay, feature flags, A/B experiments and surveys on the same events
• Cookieless mode, either always on or only when visitors reject cookies
• Cloud hosting in the US (Virginia) or EU (Frankfurt), or a free self-hosted deployment

Pricing

PostHog uses per-product usage pricing in USD, excluding tax. Each month every account gets 1 million analytics events, 5,000 session recordings, 1 million feature flag requests, 100,000 exceptions and 1,500 survey responses free. The free plan includes 1 project and 1-year data retention, and usage stops at the free limits.

On pay-as-you-go you keep the same free allowance and pay above it. PostHog's billing data lists analytics events at $0.00005 each from 1 to 2 million, $0.0000343 from 2 to 15 million, $0.0000295 from 15 to 50 million, and lower rates above that. Events tied to identified users carry an additional charge, and PostHog's docs say anonymous events can be up to four times cheaper. Paid usage unlocks 6 projects and 7-year retention. You can set billing limits per product. Annual plans, volume discounts and platform packages (SSO, audit logs, custom roles) go through sales.

Self-hosting is available as a free Docker Compose "hobby" deployment under the MIT license. PostHog states that self-hosted deployments are officially unsupported.

Pros

• 1 million free analytics events a month covers many small and mid-size sites
• Product analytics and session replay alongside web analytics
• Choice of US or EU cloud
• Per-product billing limits prevent surprise bills

Cons

• More complex than a one-page dashboard; built for product teams
• Full user tracking needs cookies and a consent banner, per PostHog's own cookieless guide
• GA history import requires the GA4 BigQuery export and a script, and a paid product analytics plan

Who should use it: SaaS companies and app teams who want to understand what users do inside the product, not only how they arrived.

Who should avoid it: content sites and small businesses that want a simple traffic report.

Simple Analytics review

Simple Analytics is a Dutch privacy-first analytics service. It is one of the strictest on data collection: no cookies, no similar technologies such as local storage or fingerprinting, and no collection or storage of IP addresses.

Key features

• One-page dashboard with goals, events, filters and email reports
• No cookies, no IP storage and no fingerprinting, per its "what we collect" documentation
• Servers in the Netherlands; Simple Analytics says data never leaves the EU
• GA4 importer for historical pageviews
• Enterprise option to run alongside GA4 and compare observed traffic with consent-mode modeled data

Pricing

• Free: 1 user, 5 websites, 30 days of history, a badge required on your site, and unlimited pageviews under a fair-use policy.
• Self-serve (paid): $20/month for 100,000 pageviews, priced on a slider that runs up to 2.5 million. Its plan data shows $40/month up to 500,000 and $60/month up to 1 million. One user is included; each extra user is $20/month. Annual billing gives two months free. You can pay in USD, EUR or GBP.
• Enterprise: custom pricing with a free 30-day assisted proof of concept alongside GA4.

New accounts get a 14-day trial with no card. After the trial you pick a paid plan or drop to the free plan.

Pros

• A real free plan for hobby sites
• Strict data collection with no cookies and no IP addresses
• EU hosting in the Netherlands
• GA4 import of pageview history

Cons

• Free plan keeps only 30 days of history and requires a badge
• Per-user charge on the paid plan adds up for teams
• Lighter feature set than Plausible's Business plan or Matomo

Who should use it: hobby sites, public bodies and privacy-strict organisations that want the minimum of data collection.

Who should avoid it: teams that need funnels, revenue attribution or many seats at a low price.

Pirsch review

Pirsch is a cookieless analytics service from Germany (Emvi Software GmbH) with some of the lowest published prices in this category.

Key features

• Cookieless tracking using a hash of the IP address, user agent and other data points to count visitors
• Events, conversion goals, session analysis, 404 and file download tracking
• Funnels, A/B testing and segmentation on the Plus plan
• Built-in URL shortener, API and SDKs, server-side integration
• Imports from Google Analytics, Plausible and Fathom

Pricing

Prices are in USD, exclude VAT, and are billed monthly or yearly (yearly is ten times the monthly price). Custom events and 10% of session-extension events count toward the pageview limit. All plans come with a 30-day trial and no card.

• Standard: $6/month for 10,000 pageviews, $12 for 100,000, $18 for 200,000, $36 for 500,000, $54 for 1 million, $99 for 5 million. 50 websites, unlimited members and unlimited data retention.
• Plus: $12/month for 10,000, $27 for 100,000, $45 for 200,000, $159 for 1 million. Unlimited websites, funnels, A/B testing, segmentation, teams, custom domains and white labeling.
• Enterprise: custom quote, with on-premise installation, SAML SSO and raw data access.

If you hit your limit, Pirsch restricts dashboard access to the day you reached it and keeps collecting data for five more days while you upgrade.

Pros

• Lowest entry price in this guide
• Unlimited members and unlimited retention on the cheapest plan
• Hosted in Germany; on-premise available on Enterprise
• Imports from GA, Plausible and Fathom make switching easy

Cons

• No free plan
• Imported GA data is daily aggregates that cannot be filtered or exported
• Funnels and A/B testing need the Plus plan

Who should use it: small businesses, freelancers and developers who want privacy-friendly analytics at the lowest cost.

Who should avoid it: teams that need GA-level depth or a free tier.

Head-to-Head Comparison

Cookies and consent. Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics and Pirsch do not set cookies and each says its tool can run without an analytics consent banner. Simple Analytics goes furthest by not using IP hashing at all. Matomo and PostHog document cookieless configurations; Matomo's FAQ adds that the rules differ by country. GA4 sets first-party cookies and relies on consent mode and modeling when consent is denied. None of these statements is legal advice; check with your own counsel.

Hosting and data ownership. Self-hosting is available for Matomo (On-Premise, free Community edition), PostHog (free hobby deployment, unsupported) and Plausible (Community Edition). Pirsch offers on-premise on Enterprise. For managed EU hosting: Plausible (Germany), Matomo Cloud (Frankfurt), Pirsch (Germany), Simple Analytics (Netherlands) and PostHog's EU cloud (Frankfurt). Fathom processes EU visits in the EU and stores anonymised data in the US.

Retention. GA4 standard: 2 or 14 months of event-level data. Plausible: 3 years (Starter, Growth) or 5 years (Business). Fathom: full history while subscribed. Matomo Cloud: 24 months raw, reports forever. PostHog: 1 year free, 7 years paid. Pirsch: unlimited. Simple Analytics free: 30 days.

Pricing model. Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics and Pirsch charge by traffic (Plausible, Fathom and Pirsch count custom events toward the pageview allowance; Simple Analytics counts data points). Matomo Cloud charges by hits, which include events. PostHog charges by event above a free million. GA4 standard is free.

Depth. Matomo and PostHog are the deep tools. Matomo matches GA on marketing reports and ecommerce; PostHog matches product analytics suites. Plausible's Business plan and Pirsch's Plus plan add funnels. Fathom and Simple Analytics stay deliberately simple.

Migration from GA4. Plausible, Fathom, Matomo and Simple Analytics document GA4 imports. Pirsch documents a Google Analytics import. PostHog documents a migration through the GA4 BigQuery export. Imports bring over aggregated history, not GA4's raw user-level data, so expect some reports (UTM detail, revenue, exit pages) to be missing from the imported period.

How to Choose: Decision Framework

Questions to answer first

1. Do you buy Google Ads and rely on GA4 audiences or conversions? If yes, keep GA4 for ads and consider adding a privacy-first tool for site reporting.
2. Do you need product analytics (funnels inside your app, retention, replay)? If yes, look at PostHog first.
3. Must the data stay on your own servers? Matomo On-Premise, Plausible CE or PostHog self-hosted.
4. How many sites and seats? Fathom includes 50 sites on every plan; Pirsch Standard includes 50 websites and unlimited members; Simple Analytics charges per extra user.
5. How much traffic, counted the way each vendor counts it? Pageviews for most, hits for Matomo, events for PostHog.

Red flags

• A vendor that cannot tell you where visitor data is processed and stored
• Pricing that counts events and pageviews together when you plan to track many custom events
• Assuming "no banner needed" applies to your country without checking
• Losing GA4 history: export or import it before the retention window deletes it

What to test in a trial

• Run the new tool alongside GA4 for the full trial and compare visitors, top pages and sources
• Set up your key goals and one funnel, if the plan supports it
• Check the GA import on a real property and note which reports are missing for the imported period

Worked cost example

Take a content and SaaS marketing site with 200,000 monthly pageviews on one domain. It tracks a handful of custom events, say 50,000 a month. Prices are the monthly prices listed above, in USD.

• Google Analytics 4: $0 for a standard property.
• Plausible Starter: Plausible counts pageviews plus custom events, so 200,000 + 50,000 = 250,000, which is over the 200k tier and lands in the 500k tier at $49/month. Yearly: $49 x 10 = $490.
• Fathom: pageviews plus custom events = 200,000 + 50,000 = 250,000, which is over the 200k tier, so $45/month.
• Matomo Cloud: at least 200,000 + 50,000 = 250,000 hits, which falls in the 300,000-hit tier at $85/month. Yearly: $85 x 10 = $850.
• PostHog: 200,000 pageview events + 50,000 custom events = 250,000 events, below the 1,000,000 free events, so $0.
• Simple Analytics: its plan data prices 100,001 to 250,000 data points at $30/month, so 250,000 costs $30/month for one user. Adding two colleagues: $30 + (2 x $20) = $70/month.
• Pirsch Standard: 250,000 counted events exceeds the 200k tier, so the 500k tier at $36/month. Yearly: $36 x 10 = $360.

Now scale it to 1,500,000 pageviews a month with no custom events, for one site and one user. Plausible Starter needs the 2M tier at $89/month. Fathom needs the 2M tier at $100/month. Pirsch Standard's next tier after 1M is 5M at $99/month. PostHog: 1,500,000 - 1,000,000 free = 500,000 billable events x $0.00005 = $25/month, before any identified-user charges. Simple Analytics prices 1,000,001 to 2,000,000 data points at $80/month. Matomo Cloud needs at least the 2 million-hit tier at $399/month.

The pattern is clear: the lightweight tools stay cheap at small scale, Matomo Cloud costs more per unit because a hit counts more than pageviews, and PostHog is cheapest if your traffic is mostly anonymous pageviews.

The Verdict: Final Recommendations

Plausible is our pick for most site owners leaving GA4. It covers the reports most sites use, imports GA4 history, keeps data in the EU, avoids cookies by design and publishes every price. The Business plan adds funnels and revenue attribution when you need them, and the Community Edition gives a self-hosted exit.

• Choose Fathom Analytics if you run many sites and want all features and 50 sites on one plan.
• Choose Matomo if you need GA-level depth, ecommerce reports and full control of where data lives.
• Choose PostHog if you are a product team and want web analytics, product analytics and session replay together, often free at moderate volume.
• Choose Simple Analytics if you want a free plan for a hobby site or the strictest data collection.
• Choose Pirsch if price is the deciding factor and you want unlimited retention and members.
• Stay on GA4 if Google Ads drives your business or you need free analytics for apps and websites at scale.

Conclusion

Leaving Google Analytics 4 is easier than it used to be. Every alternative here documents a way to bring GA history with you, though PostHog's route runs through BigQuery. The right choice depends on what you measure: a traffic dashboard for a content site, a multi-site bill for an agency, GA-style depth with ownership, or product analytics for an app.

Start with a trial of the one or two tools that fit your answers above, run them alongside GA4 for a few weeks, and import your history before GA4's retention window removes it. Check each vendor's privacy documentation with your own adviser before you remove a consent banner.