Web Analytics · Comparison
Google Analytics vs. Matomo
Google Analytics and Matomo compared across Company facts, Pricing, Analytics capabilities, Privacy & compliance, Data ownership & deployment and Platform & integrations — every fact sourced and re-verified from each vendor's public material.
Google Analytics
Free web and app analytics platform by Google with audience and conversion insights.
Matomo
Open-source, privacy-first web analytics platform available self-hosted or in the cloud.
Company facts
Headquarters
Mountain View, CA Google's main campus (Googleplex) is in Mountain View, CA. GA4 is a Google product.
Wellington, New Zealand InnoCraft Ltd (Matomo's maker) is headquartered in Wellington, New Zealand. Team is distributed globally.
Employees
190.8k Alphabet/Google had ~190,820 full-time employees at year-end 2025 per company reporting.
52 Approximately 52 employees as of late 2025, distributed across 5 continents.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
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$26 Matomo Cloud Business plan; USD list price (EUR list is €29/mo).
Offers Free Tier
GA4 standard is entirely free to use with no time limit. Google Analytics 360 is the paid enterprise tier.
Matomo On-Premise is free to self-host under GPL-3.0 with no usage limits. Matomo Cloud has no perpetual free plan (21-day trial only).
Free Trial Length (Days)
0 days No free trial needed — GA4 standard is permanently free. No paid plan exists at entry level.
21 days Matomo Cloud offers a 21-day free trial with full feature access. No credit card required.
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
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50k Entry Cloud plan starts at 50,000 hits/month. Matomo meters 'hits' (pageviews + events), not pure pageviews.
Entry Plan Website Limit
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30 sites Matomo Cloud plans (including entry) support up to 30 websites. On-Premise has no website limit.
Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Realtime report shows active users in last 5 and 30 minutes, events, sources, and pages as they happen.
Matomo provides a real-time visitor dashboard showing live activity, current visitor count, and pages visited.
Custom Event Tracking
Custom events tracked via gtag('event', '<name>', {params}) or Google Tag Manager on any plan.
Matomo supports custom event tracking via JavaScript API (trackEvent), data attributes, or Tag Manager.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Any event can be marked as a key event (conversion); GA4 reports key-event counts and rates by source, medium, and campaign.
Matomo supports goal/conversion tracking with configurable goals and conversion rate reporting.
Funnels
Funnel Exploration (in Explore) supports up to 10 steps with per-step drop-off rates, open and closed funnel modes.
Matomo includes multi-step funnel analysis with step-to-step drop-off reporting, included in Matomo Cloud.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Native ecommerce reporting includes revenue by transaction, purchase journey, checkout journey, and monetization overview.
Matomo tracks ecommerce orders and revenue with native integrations for WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, and more.
Heatmaps
GA4 has no built-in click/scroll heatmap feature. Heatmaps require a separate third-party tool (e.g. Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity).
Matomo includes heatmaps (click maps, scroll maps) via the Heatmap & Session Recording feature, included in Matomo Cloud.
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
GA4 uses first-party cookies (_ga, _ga_<id>) by default. Cookieless operation is not a supported mode.
Matomo supports a fully cookieless tracking mode. When configured cookieless, no cookies are set on visitors.
Consent Banner Required
GA4 sets cookies and processes personal data; GDPR/ePrivacy require a consent banner for EU users.
When configured cookieless with privacy settings, Matomo does not require a consent banner. France's CNIL confirmed Matomo is consent-exempt under proper configuration.
GDPR Compliant
Google states it operates as a GDPR data processor for GA4, with Data Processing Terms, ISO 27001, and consent tooling.
Matomo explicitly claims GDPR compliance and is CNIL-approved. Matomo Cloud data is stored in the EU with no transfer to the US; On-Premise stores data in your country of choice.
EU Data Residency
EU traffic is initially collected on EU servers but is then forwarded to Google Analytics processing servers globally; data is not stored exclusively in the EU.
Matomo Cloud stores 100% of analytics data and backups in the EU. On-Premise data residency is customer-controlled (your country of choice).
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
GA4 is a proprietary cloud service. No source code is publicly available.
Matomo On-Premise is open source under GPL-3.0. The Cloud version is built on the same open-source core.
License
proprietary GA4 is a closed-source cloud product. API client libraries are Apache 2.0 but the platform is proprietary.
GPL-3.0 Matomo core is GPL-3.0. Premium plugins use a separate proprietary license.
Self-Hostable
GA4 is cloud-only with no self-hosting option. All data is sent to Google's servers.
Matomo On-Premise is the flagship self-hosted edition, freely downloadable and installable on any PHP/MySQL server.
Data Retention (Months)
14 mo Free GA4 properties can choose 2 or 14 months retention for user/event-level data; 14 months is the maximum on the free tier.
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Unlimited Data Retention
Free GA4 caps retention at 14 months for user/event-level data. No unlimited/forever retention option on any GA4 tier.
Matomo Cloud retains aggregated report data indefinitely with no time-based aging. On-Premise users own the DB with no limit.
Google Analytics Import
GA4 cannot import historical Universal Analytics analytics data. Data Import covers external business data (cost, item, user, offline events) only — not migrating legacy GA report history.
Matomo has an official Google Analytics importer supporting both Universal Analytics and GA4 data imports.
Raw Data Export
Raw event-level data exportable to BigQuery (free sandbox available); daily and streaming export modes. Data API also available.
Matomo provides raw visit/action-level data export via the Reporting API and dedicated raw data endpoints. Self-hosted instances have direct DB access.
Platform & integrations
Has API
GA4 Data API (v1) enables programmatic querying of analytics data with runReport, runRealtimeReport, and more.
Matomo has a comprehensive Reporting HTTP API for programmatic data retrieval covering all reports and raw data.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
135.7 KB gtag.js baseline payload; varies with property configuration.
61.1 KB Served uncompressed by Matomo Cloud.
Official WordPress Plugin
Site Kit by Google is an official Google-published WordPress plugin that includes GA4 integration.
Matomo maintains an official WordPress plugin ('Matomo Analytics') published on wordpress.org by the Matomo team.
Email Reports
GA4 admins can schedule up to 50 reports for email delivery (daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly) in PDF or CSV format.
Matomo supports scheduled email reports (daily, weekly, monthly) in PDF, HTML, or CSV format.
Public Dashboard Sharing
GA4 reports cannot be shared publicly without a Google account. Share links require recipients to have GA property access.
Matomo supports public dashboard access via anonymous user feature (no login required). Token-based share links also available.
The verdict
Google Analytics Best for free analytics at scale with BigQuery export
GA4's standard tier is permanently free with no trial clock, where Matomo Cloud starts at $26/mo (free only if you self-host). It ships raw event-level export to BigQuery and a lighter footprint is not its edge here, but its no-cost ceiling and Google-scale backing fit teams that want full funnels, ecommerce, and conversion tracking without a subscription.
Full profile Matomo Best for privacy, data ownership, and self-hosting
Matomo is open source (GPL-3.0) and self-hostable, so you own the data outright; GA4 is proprietary and cloud-only. It runs cookieless with no consent banner required, keeps 100% of data in the EU, retains it indefinitely, and adds heatmaps and a GA importer GA4 lacks. Its 61.1 KB script is also lighter than GA4's 135.7 KB.
Full profileSources · 41 verified references
about.google matomo.org macrotrends.net leadiq.com marketingplatform.google.com support.google.com + 7 more
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