Web Analytics · Comparison
Plausible Analytics vs. Google Analytics
Plausible Analytics and Google Analytics 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.
Plausible Analytics
Open-source, privacy-first web analytics — a lightweight, cookieless Google Analytics alternative.
Google Analytics
Free web and app analytics platform by Google with audience and conversion insights.
Company facts
Headquarters
EU (remote-first)
Mountain View, CA Google's main campus (Googleplex) is in Mountain View, CA. GA4 is a Google product.
Employees
10
190.8k Alphabet/Google had ~190,820 full-time employees at year-end 2025 per company reporting.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
$9 Starter plan at $9/mo (monthly billing); 10k pageviews, 1 site
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Offers Free Tier
Plausible Community Edition (CE) is a free self-hostable open-source version
GA4 standard is entirely free to use with no time limit. Google Analytics 360 is the paid enterprise tier.
Free Trial Length (Days)
30 days 30-day free trial on all paid plans, no credit card required
0 days No free trial needed — GA4 standard is permanently free. No paid plan exists at entry level.
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
10k Starter plan includes up to 10k monthly pageviews
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Entry Plan Website Limit
1 sites Starter plan covers 1 site; Growth allows up to 3, Business up to 10
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Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Real-time dashboard updates every 30 seconds
Realtime report shows active users in last 5 and 30 minutes, events, sources, and pages as they happen.
Custom Event Tracking
Custom event tracking available via JS snippet, CSS class, or Events API
Custom events tracked via gtag('event', '<name>', {params}) or Google Tag Manager on any plan.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Supports pageview goals and custom event goals with conversion rate reporting
Any event can be marked as a key event (conversion); GA4 reports key-event counts and rates by source, medium, and campaign.
Funnels
Funnel analysis is a Business plan feature ($19/mo+)
Funnel Exploration (in Explore) supports up to 10 steps with per-step drop-off rates, open and closed funnel modes.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Revenue tracking (monetary values on events) is a Business plan feature ($19/mo+)
Native ecommerce reporting includes revenue by transaction, purchase journey, checkout journey, and monetization overview.
Heatmaps
No
GA4 has no built-in click/scroll heatmap feature. Heatmaps require a separate third-party tool (e.g. Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity).
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
No cookies or persistent identifiers used by default; daily-rotating anonymous hash only
GA4 uses first-party cookies (_ga, _ga_<id>) by default. Cookieless operation is not a supported mode.
Consent Banner Required
No cookie banner needed — Plausible collects no personal data and sets no cookies
GA4 sets cookies and processes personal data; GDPR/ePrivacy require a consent banner for EU users.
GDPR Compliant
Yes
Google states it operates as a GDPR data processor for GA4, with Data Processing Terms, ISO 27001, and consent tooling.
EU Data Residency
Data stored in Falkenstein, Germany on Hetzner servers; CDN via Bunny (Slovenia)
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.
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
Community Edition (CE) is AGPLv3; cloud product is built on same open-source codebase
GA4 is a proprietary cloud service. No source code is publicly available.
License
AGPLv3
proprietary GA4 is a closed-source cloud product. API client libraries are Apache 2.0 but the platform is proprietary.
Self-Hostable
Plausible Community Edition (CE) is officially supported for self-hosting
GA4 is cloud-only with no self-hosting option. All data is sent to Google's servers.
Data Retention (Months)
36 mo Starter and Growth plans retain 3 years (36 months) of data; Business/Enterprise retain 5+ years
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.
Unlimited Data Retention
Starter/Growth: 3-year retention; Business: 5-year retention
Free GA4 caps retention at 14 months for user/event-level data. No unlimited/forever retention option on any GA4 tier.
Google Analytics Import
Official GA4 import supported (up to 5 GA4 properties); Universal Analytics (UA) not supported
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.
Raw Data Export
CSV/ZIP exports available on all plans; Stats API on Business plan; raw event-level export requires Enterprise
Raw event-level data exportable to BigQuery (free sandbox available); daily and streaming export modes. Data API also available.
Platform & integrations
Has API
Stats API is a Business plan feature; Events API (for sending data) available on all plans
GA4 Data API (v1) enables programmatic querying of analytics data with runReport, runRealtimeReport, and more.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
1.2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
135.7 KB gtag.js baseline payload; varies with property configuration.
Official WordPress Plugin
Official WordPress plugin maintained by Plausible
Site Kit by Google is an official Google-published WordPress plugin that includes GA4 integration.
Email Reports
Weekly (every Monday) and/or monthly (1st of month) email reports; analytics embedded in email
GA4 admins can schedule up to 50 reports for email delivery (daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly) in PDF or CSV format.
Public Dashboard Sharing
Shared links (optionally password-protected) and fully public dashboards supported
GA4 reports cannot be shared publicly without a Google account. Share links require recipients to have GA property access.
The verdict
Plausible Analytics Best for privacy-first, consent-banner-free EU analytics
Plausible tracks without cookies and needs no consent banner, where Google Analytics uses first-party cookies and requires one. It keeps data in the EU, is open-source under AGPLv3, and is self-hostable via Community Edition. Its tracking script is 1.2 KB versus 135.7 KB. Pick it to avoid cookies, keep data in the EU, or own the stack.
Full profile Google Analytics Best for free ecommerce reporting and raw BigQuery export
Google Analytics is permanently free with no entry-tier price, where Plausible's Starter plan starts at $9/mo. It ships native ecommerce/revenue reporting and funnel exploration, and exports raw event-level data to BigQuery. Pick it for no-cost ecommerce analytics at scale and raw-data export without a paid plan.
Full profileSources · 41 verified references
plausible.io about.google macrotrends.net marketingplatform.google.com support.google.com developers.google.com + 3 more
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