Web Analytics · Comparison
Google Analytics vs. Simple Analytics
Google Analytics and Simple 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.
Google Analytics
Free web and app analytics platform by Google with audience and conversion insights.
Simple Analytics
Privacy-friendly, cookieless web analytics that requires no consent banner.
Company facts
Headquarters
Mountain View, CA Google's main campus (Googleplex) is in Mountain View, CA. GA4 is a Google product.
Amsterdam, Netherlands Dutch company (Simple Analytics B.V.); founders and operations based in Amsterdam.
Employees
190.8k Alphabet/Google had ~190,820 full-time employees at year-end 2025 per company reporting.
3 Very small team — founder Adriaan van Rossum plus a couple of team members as of 2024/2025.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
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$20 Self-Serve plan at $20/month (monthly billing); entry slider point is 100k pageviews. 2 months free with annual billing.
Offers Free Tier
GA4 standard is entirely free to use with no time limit. Google Analytics 360 is the paid enterprise tier.
Perpetually free plan available; analytics history limited to 30 days on the free tier.
Free Trial Length (Days)
0 days No free trial needed — GA4 standard is permanently free. No paid plan exists at entry level.
14 days 14-day free trial on paid plans; no credit card required.
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
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100k Self-Serve plan starts at 100,000 pageviews/month (adjustable up to 2.5M via slider).
Entry Plan Website Limit
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10 sites Starter plan covers up to 10 websites.
Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Realtime report shows active users in last 5 and 30 minutes, events, sources, and pages as they happen.
Live visitor stats; embeddable live-stats widget for your own site.
Custom Event Tracking
Custom events tracked via gtag('event', '<name>', {params}) or Google Tag Manager on any plan.
Custom events supported via sa_event() JS call, data attributes, and server-side API.
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.
Goals feature reports conversion rates for defined events or pageview paths.
Funnels
Funnel Exploration (in Explore) supports up to 10 steps with per-step drop-off rates, open and closed funnel modes.
Multi-step funnels supported via Goals; can chain events and pageviews with step-by-step drop-off.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Native ecommerce reporting includes revenue by transaction, purchase journey, checkout journey, and monetization overview.
Revenue values can be attached to events via metadata (e.g. revenue, order value) and reported in Goals.
Heatmaps
GA4 has no built-in click/scroll heatmap feature. Heatmaps require a separate third-party tool (e.g. Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity).
No heatmap feature — Simple Analytics is a minimalist analytics tool focused on traffic stats.
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
GA4 uses first-party cookies (_ga, _ga_<id>) by default. Cookieless operation is not a supported mode.
Tracking is cookieless by design — no cookies or persistent identifiers are set.
Consent Banner Required
GA4 sets cookies and processes personal data; GDPR/ePrivacy require a consent banner for EU users.
Vendor explicitly states no cookie or consent banner is required when using Simple Analytics.
GDPR Compliant
Google states it operates as a GDPR data processor for GA4, with Data Processing Terms, ISO 27001, and consent tooling.
Vendor states it fully adheres to GDPR and UK GDPR by not collecting personal data.
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.
Data stored in the Netherlands on Dutch-hosted servers (Worldstream, Leaseweb); never leaves the EU.
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
GA4 is a proprietary cloud service. No source code is publicly available.
Core SaaS product is proprietary; only the public tracking scripts are MIT-licensed open source.
License
proprietary GA4 is a closed-source cloud product. API client libraries are Apache 2.0 but the platform is proprietary.
proprietary Core analytics platform is proprietary SaaS; tracking scripts are MIT-licensed.
Self-Hostable
GA4 is cloud-only with no self-hosting option. All data is sent to Google's servers.
Cloud-only SaaS product; no documented self-hosting or on-premises option.
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.
36 mo Simple plan: 3 years
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.
Official Google Analytics 4 (GA4) import tool; heavily filtered for privacy.
Raw Data Export
Raw event-level data exportable to BigQuery (free sandbox available); daily and streaming export modes. Data API also available.
Export API provides raw event-level data export; CSV export and data warehouse integrations also available.
Platform & integrations
Has API
GA4 Data API (v1) enables programmatic querying of analytics data with runReport, runRealtimeReport, and more.
Stats API, Export API, and Admin API all documented.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
135.7 KB gtag.js baseline payload; varies with property configuration.
3.8 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
Official WordPress Plugin
Site Kit by Google is an official Google-published WordPress plugin that includes GA4 integration.
Official WordPress plugin at wordpress.org/plugins/simpleanalytics/ maintained by Simple Analytics.
Email Reports
GA4 admins can schedule up to 50 reports for email delivery (daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly) in PDF or CSV format.
Built-in weekly and monthly email reports; sent at 9AM in local timezone with top referrers summary.
Public Dashboard Sharing
GA4 reports cannot be shared publicly without a Google account. Share links require recipients to have GA property access.
Dashboards can be made fully public or shared via link; Simple Analytics publishes their own publicly.
The verdict
Google Analytics Best for deep funnel and ecommerce analysis at no cost
GA4 is free with no entry paid plan, where Simple Analytics charges $20/mo above its free tier. It offers native ecommerce reporting (purchase and checkout journeys) and up to-10-step funnel exploration, plus raw event export to BigQuery. The trade-off: it sets cookies, needs a consent banner, and keeps EU data only 14 months.
Full profile Simple Analytics Best for privacy-first tracking with no consent banner
Simple Analytics is cookieless and requires no consent banner, while GA4 sets first-party cookies and needs one. Data stays in the EU (Netherlands) versus GA4's global processing, the script is 3.8 KB against 135.7 KB, and retention runs 36 months versus 14. Dashboards can be shared publicly, which GA4 cannot. It costs $20/mo above the free tier.
Full profileSources · 41 verified references
about.google datarequests.org macrotrends.net simpleanalytics.com marketingplatform.google.com support.google.com + 7 more
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