Google Analytics 4

Google's flagship analytics. Free at huge volume, deeply integrated with Ads, and a UX nightmare.

VISIT GOOGLE ANALYTICS 4

Key takeaway: Two things justify GA4 and neither is the dashboard: Google Ads attribution and free raw export to BigQuery at a volume nobody else gives away. If you buy paid search or already run a warehouse, keep it. If you do not, a privacy-first tool gives you better answers, a shorter privacy policy, and no consent gate distorting your totals.

Quick facts

  • CategoryEnterprise / Google
  • PricingFree
  • Starts atFree
  • LicenseProprietary
  • Created2020
  • GitHub starsclosed
  • Script size~50KB
  • CookielessNo
  • Self-hostNo

What it is

GA4 replaced Universal Analytics in 2023. Free at scale, native integration with Google Ads / Search Console, deep BigQuery export. The dashboard UX is widely criticised, confusing event model, unintuitive reports, weak default views. GDPR-compliance requires consent banners and EU-data-region configuration. Still the default for ad-driven sites.

Best for

  • Sites running Google Ads who need ROAS attribution and conversion tracking
  • Teams who need free analytics at very high volume (10M+ events/month)
  • Companies with BigQuery data warehouses who want native export

When not to pick it

Skip GA4 if you want a usable dashboard. Skip if you want to avoid cookie banners. Skip if you want privacy-first defaults; Plausible / Fathom win.

My take

GA4 is the right pick only when Google Ads attribution or BigQuery export is a hard requirement. For everyone else, Plausible / Fathom give better UX, no cookie banner, and a clearer story for stakeholders. The "free" benefit is real only at very high volume.

The Ads and BigQuery gravity well

GA4's real product is not analytics, it is the connective tissue between your site and Google's advertising stack. Conversions defined in GA4 flow into Google Ads for bidding, audiences sync back, and the attribution model is the one your ad spend is optimised against. Nothing outside Google reproduces that loop, which is why agencies keep installing it regardless of what else is on the page. The second lock-in is more benign: free raw event export to BigQuery, which used to be an enterprise-only feature. If your team writes SQL, that export is worth more than the interface, because it lets you ignore the interface entirely and model sessions and conversions the way your business actually defines them. Those two things are the case for GA4. Almost everything else about it is a reason to look elsewhere.

The dashboard tax and the consent problem

GA4's event model was a real improvement over Universal Analytics. The presentation of that model was not. Reports are exploratory rather than answering, default views bury the numbers people came for, thresholding hides rows without explaining itself, and modelled data fills gaps in ways that are hard to reconcile against server logs. Expect to spend real time on configuration before anyone trusts a figure. Then there is consent. GA4 sets cookies and processes identifiers, so without a properly wired banner and an EU data-region configuration, several European regulators have taken a dim view of it. Once the banner is up, your traffic numbers describe the consenting subset rather than reality, and that gap is not small. The tool people install for accuracy often reports less complete data than the cookieless one beside it.

Frequently asked questions

Is GA4 really free?

The standard product is free, including BigQuery export, and it stays free at volumes that would cost a lot elsewhere. A paid tier exists for very large organisations needing higher limits and a service-level agreement. The cost you do pay is configuration time, report confusion, and the consent infrastructure that has to sit in front of it in Europe.

Do I need a cookie banner for GA4?

In the EU and UK, effectively yes. GA4 sets cookies and processes identifiers, so it falls inside consent requirements, and Google Consent Mode expects a banner to signal against. That is the main reason teams switch: cookieless tools like Plausible, Fathom, or Cloudflare Web Analytics need no gate in front of measurement at all.

GA4 or Plausible?

Often both. Keep GA4 if you run Google Ads or export to BigQuery, because nothing else feeds that loop. Add or switch to Plausible for the numbers your team looks at weekly: readable reports, a script that does not hurt your Core Web Vitals, and totals that are not filtered through a consent banner first.

Links

Compare Google Analytics 4 side-by-side

Google Analytics 4 vs Plausible Analytics → Google Analytics 4 vs Matomo →

Similar tools you should also consider

Plausible Analytics

Privacy-first, cookieless web analytics. The honest GA4 alternative, 1KB script, EU-hosted.

Read the take →

Matomo

The veteran open-source GA replacement. Heavyweight feature set, GDPR-compliant, self-hostable.

Read the take →

Mixpanel

The product-analytics original. Funnels, retention, cohorts, the toolkit every PM learned on.

Read the take →

If Google Analytics 4 is your pick, the next conversation is short

The 30-min call is where your analytics choice becomes a real implementation, an event-tracking plan that fits your product, and a privacy story that does not need a 4-screen cookie banner.