Web Analytics · Comparison
Google Analytics vs. Umami
Google Analytics and Umami 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.
Umami
Open-source, privacy-focused web analytics available self-hosted or as a managed cloud service.
Company facts
Headquarters
Mountain View, CA Google's main campus (Googleplex) is in Mountain View, CA. GA4 is a Google product.
San Francisco, CA Umami Software, Inc. is incorporated and headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Employees
190.8k Alphabet/Google had ~190,820 full-time employees at year-end 2025 per company reporting.
6 Small team; PitchBook reports 6 employees; LinkedIn shows 2-10 range.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
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$20 Umami Cloud Pro plan at $20/month (1M events, 2-year retention). Entry paid tier.
Offers Free Tier
GA4 standard is entirely free to use with no time limit. Google Analytics 360 is the paid enterprise tier.
Free Hobby cloud plan (100k events/mo, 1 site, 6-month retention) plus free MIT open-source self-hosted edition.
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 (Pro and above).
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
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1M Pro plan includes 1 million events/month. Umami meters all pageviews and custom events as 'events'.
Entry Plan Website Limit
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20 sites Up to 20 websites on the Pro plan ($20/mo), the entry paid Umami Cloud tier.
Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Realtime report shows active users in last 5 and 30 minutes, events, sources, and pages as they happen.
Real-time view shows new visits and events the moment they happen, with no batch-processing delay.
Custom Event Tracking
Custom events tracked via gtag('event', '<name>', {params}) or Google Tag Manager on any plan.
Custom events tracked via umami.track() JS call or data-umami-event HTML attributes.
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 tracks pageviews or events and reports conversion rate against total visitors in a date range.
Funnels
Funnel Exploration (in Explore) supports up to 10 steps with per-step drop-off rates, open and closed funnel modes.
Multi-step funnel analysis shows per-step user counts and step-to-step drop-off; supports URL, event, and wildcard steps.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Native ecommerce reporting includes revenue by transaction, purchase journey, checkout journey, and monetization overview.
Revenue tracking attaches monetary values (amount + currency) to events and reports ROI by page/source.
Heatmaps
GA4 has no built-in click/scroll heatmap feature. Heatmaps require a separate third-party tool (e.g. Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity).
Click and scroll heatmaps available since v3.1.0; must be enabled per-site in settings.
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
GA4 uses first-party cookies (_ga, _ga_<id>) by default. Cookieless operation is not a supported mode.
Umami does not use any cookies in the tracking code by design.
Consent Banner Required
GA4 sets cookies and processes personal data; GDPR/ePrivacy require a consent banner for EU users.
Umami states no cookie consent banner is required because no cookies or personal data are collected.
GDPR Compliant
Google states it operates as a GDPR data processor for GA4, with Data Processing Terms, ISO 27001, and consent tooling.
Vendor explicitly claims GDPR and CCPA compliance via cookieless, no-PII architecture.
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.
Umami Cloud offers EU server option; Cloud FAQ states servers are in both US and EU.
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
GA4 is a proprietary cloud service. No source code is publicly available.
Umami is fully open source under the MIT license with source on GitHub (37k+ stars).
License
proprietary GA4 is a closed-source cloud product. API client libraries are Apache 2.0 but the platform is proprietary.
MIT Umami is released under the MIT license.
Self-Hostable
GA4 is cloud-only with no self-hosting option. All data is sent to Google's servers.
Official self-hosting supported via Docker or Node.js with PostgreSQL; extensive documentation provided.
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.
24 mo Pro plan ($20/mo) retains data for 2 years (24 months).
Unlimited Data Retention
Free GA4 caps retention at 14 months for user/event-level data. No unlimited/forever retention option on any GA4 tier.
Pro plan retains data for 2 years; self-hosted deployments have unlimited retention controlled by the operator.
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.
No official Google Analytics import tool exists; community workarounds only.
Raw Data Export
Raw event-level data exportable to BigQuery (free sandbox available); daily and streaming export modes. Data API also available.
Cloud export to CSV (gzip) via UI; full API for JSON data retrieval; self-hosted users own the Postgres DB directly.
Platform & integrations
Has API
GA4 Data API (v1) enables programmatic querying of analytics data with runReport, runRealtimeReport, and more.
Full documented REST API for retrieving analytics data; available on both cloud and self-hosted.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
135.7 KB gtag.js baseline payload; varies with property configuration.
2.3 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
Official WordPress Plugin
Site Kit by Google is an official Google-published WordPress plugin that includes GA4 integration.
No official Umami-published WordPress plugin; only third-party community plugins exist.
Email Reports
GA4 admins can schedule up to 50 reports for email delivery (daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly) in PDF or CSV format.
Scheduled email reports (top pages + referrers summary) available on Pro and higher cloud plans.
Public Dashboard Sharing
GA4 reports cannot be shared publicly without a Google account. Share links require recipients to have GA property access.
Share URL generates a public, password-free read-only link to selected dashboard sections.
The verdict
Google Analytics Best for free WordPress and ecommerce reporting at scale
GA4's standard tier is permanently free with no time limit and ships an official Google WordPress plugin (Site Kit), native ecommerce and revenue reporting, 10-step funnels, and BigQuery raw-data export. Umami has no official WordPress plugin and its free Hobby tier caps at far lower volume, charging $20/mo for its paid plan.
Full profile Umami Best for cookieless, self-hosted, privacy-first tracking
Umami is cookieless and needs no consent banner, ships heatmaps, offers EU data residency, and is MIT-licensed and self-hostable for full data ownership. Its tracking script is 2.3 KB versus GA4's 135.7 KB, and dashboards share via a public link. GA4 uses cookies, requires a consent banner, is proprietary and cloud-only with no heatmaps or EU-only storage.
Full profileSources · 41 verified references
about.google linkedin.com macrotrends.net umami.is marketingplatform.google.com docs.umami.is + 6 more
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