Google Analytics 4

Name: Google Analytics 4
Brand: Google Analytics 4

Free, event-based, ad-connected, and harder to use than anything it replaced

Google Analytics 4 is Google's free web and app analytics platform, built on an event-based data model rather than the session-and-pageview model of Universal Analytics, that reports traffic, acquisition channels, conversions (called key events), audiences, and modelled attribution, syncs conversions and audiences into Google Ads, and can stream raw event data into BigQuery at no licence cost.

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Overview

Google Analytics is the default answer to the question of how a small business measures its website, and it is free, which ends most procurement conversations before they start. GA4 replaced Universal Analytics in July 2023 and rebuilt the entire data model around events. Everything is an event: a pageview, a scroll, a purchase, a form submit. That change made GA genuinely more capable at cross-device and app measurement and simultaneously made it much harder to use, because reports that used to exist by default now have to be assembled in the Explore interface by someone who understands dimensions, metrics, and scope.

The reason to accept that difficulty is the ad ecosystem. GA4 is the measurement layer for Google Ads, and the link between them is where most of the real value sits: conversions defined in GA4 can be imported into Google Ads as bidding targets, audiences built from GA4 behaviour can be used for remarketing, and Google's data-driven attribution model redistributes credit across Google and non-Google channels using its own modelling. No privacy-first alternative can do this, because doing it requires exactly the cross-site identity work those tools refuse.

The costs are not on an invoice. GA4 requires a consent banner in the EU and UK because it sets cookies and processes personal data, and after the June 2026 consent changes, the ad_storage signal alone governs whether advertising data flows to Google Ads, so a badly configured banner now silently starves your campaigns. Standard GA4 caps event-level retention at 14 months, caps distinct event names at 500 per property, condenses high-cardinality reports into an unhelpful (other) row, and applies sampling to large explorations. The free BigQuery export removes the retention ceiling but adds a data engineering job nobody at a five-person company signed up for.

The honest position for a small business is that GA4 is worth keeping and rarely worth loving. If you spend money on Google Ads, you need it and there is no substitute. If you do not, the daily questions you actually ask (where did traffic come from, which pages convert, did the campaign work) are answered faster and with less compliance overhead by Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics, Pirsch, or Umami, and plenty of teams now run one of those as the everyday dashboard with GA4 left in place purely to feed Google Ads.

Best for

Any business that runs Google Ads and needs conversion import, audience remarketing, and data-driven attribution inside Google's own ecosystem, plus larger sites that want a free raw event export into BigQuery and have someone able to write the SQL.

Not the right fit for

Small teams who just want to know how many people visited and where they came from; GA4's interface buries that answer under an event model designed for enterprises and you will spend hours learning it for a number Plausible shows on load.
Anyone running a site in the EU or UK who does not want a cookie consent banner; GA4 sets cookies and processes personal data, so the banner is mandatory and the consent-declined traffic disappears from your reports.
Businesses with strict EU data residency requirements or a data protection officer who remembers the Schrems II rulings; GA4's transfer posture has been challenged repeatedly by European regulators and defending it is a paperwork exercise.
Teams who need reliable historical data beyond 14 months without engineering effort; standard properties delete event-level data at that ceiling and the only escape is running a BigQuery pipeline.
Businesses that need real-time operational dashboards or precise, auditable per-user attribution; GA4 samples, models, thresholds, and condenses high-cardinality data into (other), so the numbers are directional rather than reconcilable line by line.

How it works

1
You create a property, install the Google tag (usually through Google Tag Manager or a platform integration), and GA4 starts collecting events. Enhanced measurement automatically captures scrolls, outbound clicks, site search, video engagement, and file downloads without any custom code, which covers most of what a small site needs on day one.
2
Events carry parameters, and parameters become dimensions and metrics once you register them as custom definitions. The important ones get marked as key events (previously called conversions), which is what makes them eligible to import into Google Ads for bidding. Ecommerce measurement uses a specific set of recommended events with an items array, so a Shopify or WooCommerce integration is a much faster route than hand-building purchase tracking.
3
Reporting splits in two. The standard reports (Reports collection) answer acquisition, engagement, monetisation, and retention questions with fixed layouts. Explore is the free-form workspace for funnel exploration, path exploration, segment overlap, and cohort analysis, and it is where the learning curve lives, because Explore expects you to know which scope a dimension belongs to before it will give you a coherent table.
4
Attribution runs across a configurable lookback window using data-driven attribution by default, with last-click alternatives available in the attribution settings. Consent Mode governs what is collected from users who decline, and behavioural and conversion modelling fills gaps with estimates. The optional BigQuery export streams raw event rows to a warehouse where you can query them with SQL, unsampled and without the 14-month retention limit.

Feature breakdown

28 features in 5 modules

Collection and the event model

Everything is an event, which is both the strength and the source of the learning curve.

Event-based data model: Pageviews, clicks, purchases, and custom actions are all events with parameters, which unifies web and app measurement in a single property instead of the separate schemas Universal Analytics used.
Enhanced measurement: Scrolls, outbound clicks, site search, video engagement, and file downloads are captured automatically from the base tag without writing any tracking code.
Google Tag and Tag Manager: Deployment through the Google tag directly or via Google Tag Manager, which most agencies prefer because it keeps tag changes out of the site release cycle.
Measurement Protocol: Server-side event ingestion for backend conversions, offline events, and platforms where a browser tag cannot run.
Custom dimensions and metrics: Up to 50 custom dimensions and 50 custom metrics on a standard property, registered from event parameters before they appear in reports.
Ecommerce event schema: A recommended event set (view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout, purchase) with an items array, supported natively by Shopify, WooCommerce, and most ecommerce platforms.

Reporting and exploration

Fixed reports for the routine questions, Explore for everything else.

Standard reports: Acquisition, engagement, monetisation, and retention collections covering traffic sources, landing pages, key events, and revenue with limited customisation.
Explore workspace: Free-form exploration, funnel exploration, path exploration, segment overlap, cohort analysis, and user lifetime, assembled by dragging dimensions and metrics onto a canvas.
Realtime report: A live view of the last 30 minutes of activity, useful mainly for verifying that a new tag is firing.
Audiences and segments: Behavioural audiences defined from event and property conditions, reusable as report segments and exportable to Google Ads for remarketing.
Comparisons and filters: Side-by-side comparisons of segments (for example paid versus organic, or one country versus another) applied across standard reports.
Looker Studio connector: The free native connector is how most agencies actually present GA4 data to clients, because the GA4 interface itself is unpleasant to screenshot.

Attribution and advertising integration

The part no privacy-first alternative can replicate, and the real reason to keep GA4 installed.

Data-driven attribution: Google's default model distributes conversion credit algorithmically across touchpoints using its own modelling rather than a fixed rule, applied across Google and non-Google channels.
Rule-based attribution models: Last click and Google paid channels last click remain available in attribution settings; GA4 removed first click, linear, time decay, and position based from the reporting models in 2023, which is a genuine loss for anyone who wants to compare models.
Google Ads conversion import: Key events defined in GA4 can be imported into Google Ads as bidding targets, so campaign optimisation runs on site-side outcomes rather than platform-reported clicks.
Audience export to Google Ads: GA4 audiences sync to linked Google Ads accounts for remarketing and exclusion targeting.
Search Console and Merchant Center links: Organic query data and shopping feed performance surface inside GA4 alongside paid channels.
Consent Mode and modelling: Consent Mode v2 signals govern collection from users who decline; behavioural and conversion modelling estimate the missing traffic, and after the June 2026 change the ad_storage signal alone determines whether advertising data reaches Google Ads.

Data access, export, and retention

Free raw data, at the cost of running a warehouse.

BigQuery export: Raw event-level rows stream into BigQuery at no GA licence cost (you pay Google Cloud for storage and queries), unsampled and not subject to the 14-month interface retention limit; standard properties are capped around one million events per day.
Data API: A reporting API for aggregate data, used by dashboard tools, Supermetrics, Databox, and custom internal reporting.
Data retention controls: Event-level and user-level retention is set to either 2 months or 14 months on a standard property; aggregate standard reports persist beyond that but explorations do not.
Data import: Cost data, item data, user data, and offline event uploads can be joined to online behaviour via CSV or SFTP.
Data filters and internal traffic exclusion: Developer traffic and internal IP ranges can be filtered out at collection time rather than in reporting.

Administration and governance

Adequate for a small business, thin for anyone who wants guarantees.

Property and account structure: Accounts contain properties contain data streams, with up to 2,000 properties per account, which is how agencies keep client data separated under one login.
Roles and data restrictions: Viewer, analyst, editor, and administrator roles plus no-cost-metrics and no-revenue-metrics restrictions for people who should see traffic but not money.
Google Signals: Optional cross-device reporting from signed-in Google users, subject to thresholding that hides small numbers, and no longer the controlling factor for Google Ads data as of June 2026.
Regional data controls: Granular location and device data collection can be disabled per region, which is the main lever available for European privacy concerns.
GA4 360: The paid enterprise tier lifts sampling, cardinality, and retention limits with an SLA, typically quoted from around $50,000 per year, which puts it firmly outside the small business bracket.

Use cases

4 documented

Ecommerce store spending $50,000 a month on Google and Meta

Both ad platforms report more revenue than Shopify does, and the founder cannot tell which campaigns to cut without a neutral source of truth.

GA4 ecommerce events give one site-side revenue number, data-driven attribution redistributes credit across Google, Meta, email, and organic, and conversion import lets Google Ads bid on actual purchases rather than platform-claimed ones. Meta's own numbers will still be higher, and GA4 is the argument for why.

Content site at 100,000 monthly pageviews

Needs to know which posts drive newsletter signups and which acquisition channels are growing, without paying for analytics.

GA4 handles the volume free with no pageview meter at all, Search Console linking brings organic queries in, and the Looker Studio connector produces a monthly report. The tradeoff is a consent banner and an interface that takes weeks to get comfortable with.

Agency reporting on a dozen client sites

Clients expect monthly performance decks and none of them will log into GA4 themselves.

One agency account holds every client property, Looker Studio or Databox pulls the numbers into branded dashboards, and the free tier means the analytics line item on every client invoice is zero.

SaaS marketing lead who wants long-range history

Year-over-year comparisons keep breaking because explorations only reach back 14 months.

The free BigQuery export preserves raw events indefinitely and unsampled, at the cost of Google Cloud storage charges and someone comfortable writing SQL. Without that person, the 14-month ceiling is permanent.

Pricing

from $0

Free at any traffic volume for the standard product, with usage limits rather than price tiers; the enterprise tier (Analytics 360) is quote-only and sold through Google Cloud sales.

Plan	Price	Includes
Google Analytics 4 (standard)	$0 forever, at any traffic volume	Unlimited pageviews and events at no charge Google Ads, Search Console, and Merchant Center linking Data-driven attribution and audience export Free BigQuery export (Cloud storage and query costs apply) 14-month maximum event-level data retention There is no traffic meter, which is why GA4 remains the default for high-traffic sites with no analytics budget.
Google Analytics 360	Custom annual contract, quoted through Google Cloud sales	Higher event, cardinality, and custom definition limits Unsampled reporting and longer data retention Contractual SLA and technical support Roll-up properties for multi-brand groups BigQuery export at higher daily volumes Widely reported to start around $50,000 per year, which is a different market from anything else in this category.

Plan

Price

Includes

Google Analytics 4 (standard)

forever, at any traffic volume

Unlimited pageviews and events at no charge
Google Ads, Search Console, and Merchant Center linking
Data-driven attribution and audience export
Free BigQuery export (Cloud storage and query costs apply)
14-month maximum event-level data retention

There is no traffic meter, which is why GA4 remains the default for high-traffic sites with no analytics budget.

Google Analytics 360

Custom

annual contract, quoted through Google Cloud sales

Higher event, cardinality, and custom definition limits
Unsampled reporting and longer data retention
Contractual SLA and technical support
Roll-up properties for multi-brand groups
BigQuery export at higher daily volumes

Widely reported to start around $50,000 per year, which is a different market from anything else in this category.

Billing notes

The standard product carries no licence fee at any traffic level, so a site at 100,000 monthly pageviews and a site at 100 million both pay nothing; the constraints are technical limits, not invoices.
The BigQuery export is free from Google Analytics but Google Cloud bills separately for storage, streaming inserts, and queries, and a busy ecommerce site can run tens of dollars a month once analysts start querying carelessly.
The genuine cost of GA4 is human: consultant time, tag manager configuration, and the hours a marketer loses to Explore. Agencies routinely charge more for a GA4 implementation than three years of a privacy-first tool would cost.
Analytics 360 pricing is negotiated per customer and reported in the $50,000 to $150,000 per year range depending on volume; there is no published rate card and no self-serve path to it.

Value assessment: Free is an unbeatable price for what GA4 does at the ad-integration layer, and no competitor at any price can import conversions into Google Ads or run Google's data-driven attribution. Judged purely as a dashboard, though, GA4 is expensive in the currency that actually constrains a small business, which is attention: the interface, the consent banner, the 14-month retention ceiling, and the sampling all cost hours or accuracy that a $19 tool would have given back. The rational allocation for most small businesses is to keep GA4 installed for the Google Ads link and pay a small amount for something readable to look at daily.

Strengths & limitations

Strengths

Free at unlimited traffic volume, which no privacy-first competitor can match once a site passes a few hundred thousand pageviews a month.
The only analytics tool that can import conversions into Google Ads for bidding and export behavioural audiences for remarketing, which is decisive if paid search is a real channel.
Data-driven attribution across Google and non-Google channels, plus behavioural and conversion modelling that partially recovers consent-declined traffic.
Free raw event export to BigQuery gives genuinely unlimited retention and unsampled analysis for teams with SQL skills.
Universal integration support: every CMS, ecommerce platform, tag manager, and reporting tool assumes GA4 exists, so implementation help is never more than a search away.
Cross-platform web and app measurement in one property, which the session-based tools in this category do not attempt.
Enormous ecosystem of free training, certification, agencies, and Looker Studio templates, which lowers the practical cost of the learning curve.

Limitations

The interface is genuinely hostile to non-specialists; simple questions require Explore, and Explore requires understanding scope, cardinality, and dimension compatibility.
Requires a cookie consent banner in the EU and UK, and the traffic that declines disappears into modelled estimates rather than being measured.
Standard properties delete event-level data after 14 months, so year-over-year analysis in Explore breaks unless you run a BigQuery pipeline.
Sampling, thresholding, and the (other) row on high-cardinality dimensions mean numbers are directional; GA4 will not reconcile line by line with your order database.
GA4 removed first click, linear, time decay, and position based from its reporting attribution models, so model comparison now requires a dedicated attribution tool.
Ad blockers and privacy browsers block the Google tag more aggressively than smaller vendors' scripts, so GA4 systematically undercounts a technical audience.
European regulatory risk is a live topic rather than a settled one, and defending Google Analytics to a data protection officer costs time that Plausible or Pirsch would not.

Head-to-head comparisons

6 alternatives

Google Analytics 4 vs Plausible Analytics

from $9/mo (Starter at up to 10k monthly pageviews)

Plausible answers the questions a small business actually asks in one screen, needs no consent banner, and costs from $9 a month; GA4 answers far more questions, connects to Google Ads, and costs nothing. If you run paid search, keep GA4 and add Plausible as the readable daily dashboard. If you do not spend on Google Ads, Plausible replaces GA4 outright and removes the banner.

Full Google Analytics 4 vs Plausible Analytics comparison

Google Analytics 4 vs Fathom Analytics

from $15/mo (up to 100,000 pageviews)

Fathom is the pay-to-escape-GA4 product: a simple dashboard, no cookies, no banner, unlimited sites on every plan, and a GA import so history survives. GA4 wins only on price and ad integration. Choose Fathom if analytics is a reporting need; choose GA4 if analytics is an advertising input.

Full Google Analytics 4 vs Fathom Analytics comparison

Google Analytics 4 vs Simple Analytics

from $0 (free forever), then €20 per month

Simple Analytics positions itself as a cookieless layer that sits alongside GA4 rather than replacing it, arguing it recovers the 20 to 60 percent of traffic lost to consent denial and ad blockers. That framing is honest about the fact that most businesses will not delete GA4. Run GA4 for Google Ads, run Simple Analytics for the numbers you trust.

Full Google Analytics 4 vs Simple Analytics comparison

Google Analytics 4 vs Umami

from $0 self-hosted or on Cloud Hobby, then $20 per month (Cloud Pro)

Umami is MIT-licensed and self-hostable, so a technical small business can get funnels, retention, and UTM reporting for the cost of a small server and never send a byte to Google. GA4 gives more depth and the ad ecosystem for free but takes ownership of your data and your consent banner. Developers pick Umami; performance marketers keep GA4.

Full Google Analytics 4 vs Umami comparison

Google Analytics 4 vs Usermaven

from $84 per month (Growth, 250,000 events)

Usermaven is what GA4 would be if it were designed for marketers rather than data scientists: website plus product analytics, no-code event tracking, and multi-touch attribution on the $199 Scale plan. It costs real money and GA4 costs nothing, so the question is whether $84 to $199 a month buys back more time than it spends. For a marketing team without an analyst, it usually does.

Full Google Analytics 4 vs Usermaven comparison

Google Analytics 4 vs Supermetrics

from €49 per month (Starter), or €39 per month billed yearly

These are complements, not competitors: Supermetrics pulls GA4 alongside Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, and dozens of other sources into Sheets, Looker Studio, or a warehouse from €49 a month. If your problem is that GA4's interface is unreadable rather than that GA4 is wrong, Supermetrics is the fix, and you keep the free property underneath.

Full Google Analytics 4 vs Supermetrics comparison

Implementation & onboarding

Setup time: Fifteen minutes for the base tag and enhanced measurement; days to weeks for a configuration you can trust, because key events, ecommerce parameters, custom dimensions, cross-domain settings, and consent mode all need deliberate work.
Learning curve: The steepest in this category by a wide margin. Standard reports are learnable in a session; Explore, attribution settings, and the event and parameter model genuinely take weeks, which is why a GA4 consulting industry exists.
Onboarding: Entirely self-serve with extensive free documentation, Google Skillshop courses, and a large agency ecosystem. There is no vendor onboarding for standard properties and no support channel beyond community forums.
Migration notes: Universal Analytics data was deleted by Google in July 2024, so there is no historical bridge left to build. Moving away from GA4 later means either accepting a fresh start in the new tool or having already run the BigQuery export; Plausible, Fathom, and Pirsch all offer GA importers that bring aggregate history across.

Platform, API & security

Platforms: Web appiOS and Android SDKs via FirebaseGoogle Tag ManagerMeasurement Protocol (server-side)Looker Studio connector
API: Data API for aggregate reporting, Admin API for property configuration, Measurement Protocol for server-side event ingestion, and a raw event export to BigQuery.
Compliance: GDPR (with consent required)CCPAGoogle Consent Mode v2Data Processing Terms and EU Standard Contractual Clauses
Data residency: Processing is global on Google infrastructure with no customer-selectable EU-only residency on standard properties; granular location and device data collection can be restricted per region, and European regulators have repeatedly questioned the transfer posture.
SSO: Google account authentication, including Google Workspace SSO; no SAML for third-party identity providers on standard properties.
Security notes: Cookies and client identifiers are set by design, which is why a consent banner is required in Europe. Google states it does not sell Analytics data, but the Google Ads and Signals links mean data flows into an advertising ecosystem, which is exactly the objection privacy-first alternatives are built around.

Support & resources

Channels: Community forumGoogle Skillshop trainingPartner and agency ecosystemDirect support only on Analytics 360
Documentation: Extensive official documentation and help centre, plus by far the largest body of third-party tutorials, courses, and agency guides of any product in this category.
Community: Very large: official Google Analytics community, Measure Slack, r/GoogleAnalytics, and a global network of certified partners.

Company

Founded: 2005
Headquarters: Mountain View, California, United States
Ownership: Public company (Alphabet Inc., NASDAQ: GOOGL)
Founders: Urchin Software Corporation (acquired by Google in 2005)
Employees: Not disclosed as a separate unit; Alphabet employs roughly 180,000 people
Funding: Not applicable; a product line inside Alphabet, originating from the 2005 acquisition of Urchin Software Corporation.

Timeline

2005Google acquires Urchin Software Corporation and relaunches the product as the free Google Analytics.
2012Universal Analytics introduces the session-based measurement model that defined web analytics for a decade.
2019App plus Web properties launch in beta, introducing the event-based model that becomes GA4.
2020Google Analytics 4 launches as the default property type for new accounts.
2023Universal Analytics stops processing data on 1 July, forcing the entire market onto GA4 and creating the opening that Plausible, Fathom, and their peers grew into.
2024Universal Analytics historical data is deleted in July, ending the migration grace period permanently.
2026Consent Mode changes take effect in June, making the ad_storage signal the sole control over whether advertising data reaches Google Ads and removing Google Signals from that decision.

Integrations

Google Ads (conversion import and audience export)
Google Search Console
Google Merchant Center
Google Tag Manager
BigQuery (raw event export)
Looker Studio
Display and Video 360 and Search Ads 360 (360 tier)
Firebase (mobile app measurement)
Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, Webflow, Squarespace, and effectively every CMS
Supermetrics, Databox, and every marketing reporting tool via the Data API

Frequently asked questions

10 questions

Is Google Analytics 4 really free?

Yes. The standard product has no licence fee at any traffic volume, so a site doing 100,000 monthly pageviews and one doing 100 million both pay nothing. What you get instead of a bill is a set of technical limits: 500 distinct event names per property, 50 custom dimensions, 14-month maximum event-level retention, sampling on large explorations, and high-cardinality data collapsed into an (other) row. Analytics 360 lifts those limits and is reported to start around $50,000 a year.

Do I need a cookie consent banner for Google Analytics?

In the EU and UK, yes. GA4 sets cookies and processes personal data, which triggers consent requirements under GDPR and ePrivacy. That is the entire reason Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics, Pirsch, and Umami exist: they count visitors without cookies or personal data and therefore argue that no analytics banner is needed. With GA4 you also lose the traffic that declines, replaced by Google's modelled estimates.

Can a small business just use free GA4 instead of paying for analytics?

You can, and if you run Google Ads you probably should keep it regardless. The question is what your time is worth. GA4 will answer more questions than any paid alternative in this category, but it will take an afternoon to answer the ones a privacy-first dashboard shows on load, and it comes with a consent banner and a 14-month retention ceiling. The common compromise is GA4 for the ad integration plus a $9 to $19 tool for daily reading.

What attribution models does GA4 support?

Data-driven attribution is the default, distributing credit algorithmically across touchpoints, with last click and Google paid channels last click available as alternatives. GA4 removed first click, linear, time decay, and position based from its reporting models in 2023, so if you want to compare models side by side you need a dedicated attribution tool such as Attribution, Dreamdata, or HockeyStack.

How long does GA4 keep my data?

Event-level and user-level data on a standard property is retained for either 2 months or 14 months, set in the admin panel, and 14 months is not the default so most properties are quietly set to 2 until someone changes it. Aggregate standard reports persist longer, but explorations do not. The BigQuery export is the only way to keep raw history indefinitely.

Is the BigQuery export worth setting up?

If you have someone who writes SQL, yes: it is free from the Analytics side, streams unsampled raw event rows, escapes the 14-month retention ceiling, and standard properties get up to roughly a million events a day. If nobody on the team writes SQL, it is a pipeline you will configure once and never query, and Google Cloud will still bill you for storage.

Why do GA4's numbers not match Shopify, Meta, or my other analytics tool?

Several reasons at once. Ad platforms attribute on their own view-through and click windows and each claims full credit; GA4 applies its own attribution across all channels; consent declines and ad blockers remove traffic from GA4 that Shopify still records; and GA4 samples and thresholds large reports. Treat GA4 as a consistent internal trend instrument, not a reconciliation source for your order database.

How does GA4 compare to Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics, Pirsch, and Umami?

Those tools show traffic, sources, and conversions on one page, need no consent banner, keep data in the EU in most cases, and cost between nothing (self-hosted Umami) and about $20 a month. GA4 is free, far deeper, and uniquely able to feed Google Ads. The clean rule: if paid search matters to your business, keep GA4 in place; if it does not, one of the alternatives is a straight upgrade in daily usability and compliance posture.

What changed with Consent Mode in June 2026?

As of 15 June 2026, the ad_storage consent signal alone determines whether advertising data flows into Google Ads, and Google Signals no longer plays a part in that decision. Practically, a consent banner that is misconfigured or overly conservative now starves your Google Ads conversion data directly, so anyone running paid search should audit their banner's consent signals rather than assume the old setup still works.

Who owns Google Analytics and how did it start?

It is a product line inside Alphabet. Google acquired Urchin Software Corporation in 2005 and relaunched its product as the free Google Analytics. Universal Analytics arrived in 2012, GA4 launched in 2020, Universal Analytics stopped processing data in July 2023, and its historical data was deleted in July 2024.

Editorial verdict

GA4 is not a good product and it is still the right default for most small businesses, which is an uncomfortable thing to write. It is free at any volume, it is the only tool that can push conversions and audiences into Google Ads, and its data-driven attribution has no free equivalent. Against that: a hostile interface, a mandatory consent banner in Europe, a 14-month retention ceiling, sampling, and an attribution model list that got shorter rather than longer. Keep it if you spend money on Google Ads, because nothing else closes that loop. If you do not, install Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics, Pirsch, or Umami instead and enjoy getting your afternoons back.

Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.