Web Analytics · Comparison
Google Analytics vs. Piwik PRO
Google Analytics and Piwik PRO 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.
Piwik PRO
Enterprise-grade, privacy-focused analytics and customer data platform with GDPR compliance.
Company facts
Headquarters
Mountain View, CA Google's main campus (Googleplex) is in Mountain View, CA. GA4 is a Google product.
Wrocław, Poland
Employees
190.8k Alphabet/Google had ~190,820 full-time employees at year-end 2025 per company reporting.
190 Vendor about page states 'nearly 200 people'; third-party sources (LinkedIn, Pitchbook) show ~159–160 as of late 2025.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
—
$40.38 Entry Business plan starts at €35/month; converted at 1.1537 EUR/USD (rate on 2026-06-10). No USD list price published.
Offers Free Tier
GA4 standard is entirely free to use with no time limit. Google Analytics 360 is the paid enterprise tier.
Free Core plan was discontinued March 2026; only a 30-day trial is available.
Free Trial Length (Days)
0 days No free trial needed — GA4 standard is permanently free. No paid plan exists at entry level.
30 days
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
—
2M Piwik PRO meters 'actions' (not pageviews); 2M actions/month on the entry Business plan.
Entry Plan Website Limit
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20 sites Business plan includes up to 20 domains at the base tier; price adjusts based on domain count.
Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Realtime report shows active users in last 5 and 30 minutes, events, sources, and pages as they happen.
Yes
Custom Event Tracking
Custom events tracked via gtag('event', '<name>', {params}) or Google Tag Manager on any plan.
Yes
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.
Yes
Funnels
Funnel Exploration (in Explore) supports up to 10 steps with per-step drop-off rates, open and closed funnel modes.
Yes
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Native ecommerce reporting includes revenue by transaction, purchase journey, checkout journey, and monetization overview.
Yes
Heatmaps
GA4 has no built-in click/scroll heatmap feature. Heatmaps require a separate third-party tool (e.g. Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity).
Heatmaps (click, scroll maps) are part of the Piwik PRO Analytics Suite via built-in Tag Manager; visualized through the official Site Inspector Chrome extension.
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
GA4 uses first-party cookies (_ga, _ga_<id>) by default. Cookieless operation is not a supported mode.
Cookieless tracking is a fully supported optional mode; can be enabled per site via Administration settings.
Consent Banner Required
GA4 sets cookies and processes personal data; GDPR/ePrivacy require a consent banner for EU users.
Default configuration uses cookies and requires consent. With cookieless/anonymous mode enabled, no consent banner is needed — but that requires explicit configuration.
GDPR Compliant
Google states it operates as a GDPR data processor for GA4, with Data Processing Terms, ISO 27001, and consent tooling.
Yes
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.
EU data residency is available; Business plan is hosted on EU servers in Sweden (Elastx). Enterprise offers 60+ Azure regions including EU.
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
GA4 is a proprietary cloud service. No source code is publicly available.
No
License
proprietary GA4 is a closed-source cloud product. API client libraries are Apache 2.0 but the platform is proprietary.
proprietary
Self-Hostable
GA4 is cloud-only with no self-hosting option. All data is sent to Google's servers.
Traditional on-premise/self-hosted deployment is no longer offered. 'Private cloud' (installation in customer's own Azure subscription) is available on Enterprise plans.
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.
25 mo
Unlimited Data Retention
Free GA4 caps retention at 14 months for user/event-level data. No unlimited/forever retention option on any GA4 tier.
No
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.
Historical GA data cannot be imported. A settings/configuration migration tool (GA3 + GTM) existed but was discontinued April 2025; no data import path exists.
Raw Data Export
Raw event-level data exportable to BigQuery (free sandbox available); daily and streaming export modes. Data API also available.
Raw session and event data available via Reporting API at no extra cost; daily CSV raw data export is a paid add-on.
Platform & integrations
Has API
GA4 Data API (v1) enables programmatic querying of analytics data with runReport, runRealtimeReport, and more.
Yes
Tracking Script Size (KB)
135.7 KB gtag.js baseline payload; varies with property configuration.
26.6 KB Compressed (over-the-wire) size of ppms.js (standalone analytics library). Full container including Tag Manager + Consent Manager is ~60.6 KB compressed.
Official WordPress Plugin
Site Kit by Google is an official Google-published WordPress plugin that includes GA4 integration.
Yes
Email Reports
GA4 admins can schedule up to 50 reports for email delivery (daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly) in PDF or CSV format.
Yes
Public Dashboard Sharing
GA4 reports cannot be shared publicly without a Google account. Share links require recipients to have GA property access.
Publicly shareable links available for dashboards and standard reports (not custom reports). Links are valid for 90 days and marked as an experimental feature.
The verdict
Google Analytics Best for free analytics and raw export to BigQuery
GA4 standard is permanently free with no trial clock, while Piwik PRO charges from $40.38/mo after a 30-day trial. It streams raw event-level data to BigQuery and exposes a Data API, so it fits teams wanting full-funnel tracking at zero cost plus a warehouse pipeline for custom analysis.
Full profile Piwik PRO Best for EU data residency and privacy-first tracking
Piwik PRO hosts data on EU servers and supports a cookieless mode that can drop the consent banner — neither of which GA4 offers (its EU traffic forwards to global servers). It also adds built-in heatmaps, public dashboard sharing, 25-month retention vs GA4's 14, and a 26.6 KB script against GA4's 135.7 KB.
Full profileSources · 41 verified references
about.google piwik.pro macrotrends.net marketingplatform.google.com support.google.com help.piwik.pro + 5 more
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