The short answer
For simple traffic stats without a cookie banner, choose Plausible ($9 a month), Fathom ($15) or Simple Analytics ($20, with a free hobby plan). For a full replacement with goals, ecommerce and your own data, choose Matomo, free to self-host or in an EU cloud. For funnels and retention in a product, choose Mixpanel, Amplitude, PostHog or Heap, which all have free tiers.
You can also keep GA4 for Google Ads and add a second tool for the question GA4 answers badly for them, whether that's privacy, simplicity, product usage or which marketing to scale.
Why teams look for a Google Analytics alternative
GA4 is free and connects to Google Ads, which is why it's on most websites. These are the reasons teams give for adding or switching to something else, from Google's own documentation and the regulators' decisions.
- History disappears from explorations. Standard GA4 keeps user-level and event data for 2 or 14 months, and that setting applies to explorations and funnel reports. Universal Analytics stopped processing data on July 1, 2023, and its reports were switched off from July 1, 2024.
- Sampling and thresholds. A GA4 exploration can be sampled once a query covers more than 10 million events, and unsampled explorations are a GA4 360 feature. Data thresholds also withhold rows, for example with demographics or search queries, and you can't adjust them.
- Consent and modeled data. With consent mode, GA4 fills the gap left by visitors who decline cookies with modeled data, but only on properties with at least 1,000 events a day from visitors who declined and 1,000 daily users who accepted. Smaller sites see the gap as missing traffic.
- European privacy rulings. In 2022 the Austrian, French and Italian data protection authorities found that sending Google Analytics data to the US broke GDPR transfer rules. The EU-US Data Privacy Framework has allowed those transfers since July 10, 2023, and the EU General Court upheld it on September 3, 2025, but many EU teams still prefer analytics that stays in the EU.
- Complexity. GA4 is built around events, and the reports most marketers need, such as revenue by source or a funnel, often mean building an exploration or a custom report.
11 Google Analytics alternatives at a glance
Prices are the lowest each vendor published on its own pages on October 21, 2026. Follow the links for current prices.
| Tool | Kind | Best for | Lowest published price | Free plan or trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plausible Analytics | Privacy-first web analytics | A simple, one-page dashboard of traffic, sources and goals, hosted in the EU | Starter $9/month for up to 10,000 monthly pageviews | 30-day trial, no card. Free self-hosted Community Edition |
| Fathom Analytics | Privacy-first web analytics | Simple privacy-first analytics for many sites on one plan | $15/month for up to 100,000 monthly pageviews, 50 sites | 7-day trial, card required. No free plan |
| Matomo | Full web analytics suite | The closest thing to GA, with your own data, self-hosted or in an EU cloud | Cloud Business from 29 a month before tax. Self-hosted is free | 21-day cloud trial, no card |
| Simple Analytics | Privacy-first web analytics | Privacy-first analytics with a free plan for hobby sites | $20/month for up to 100,000 monthly pageviews | 14-day trial, no card. Free hobby plan with 30 days of history |
| Clicky | Real-time web analytics | Real-time stats and a log of each visitor, on a small budget | Pro $9.99/month for 10 sites and 30,000 page views a day | Free plan (1 site, 3,000 page views a day). 21-day premium trial |
| Piwik PRO | Full web analytics suite | Regulated industries, such as healthcare, that need EU hosting and contracts | Business from €36/month for up to 2 million monthly actions, billed annually | 30-day trial, no card |
| PostHog | Product analytics with web analytics | Developer teams that also want session replay, feature flags and experiments | 1 million events a month free, then usage-based | Free tier, no card |
| Mixpanel | Product analytics | Funnels, retention and cohorts in a product or app | Free up to 1 million events a month. Growth is usage-based, for example $140/month for 1.5 million events | Free plan |
| Amplitude | Product analytics | Product and growth teams that want analytics, session replay and experiments together | Free up to 2 million events a month. Plus starts at $0 with a card, then usage-based | Free plan with no time limit |
| Heap | Product analytics | Capturing every click automatically, then defining events later | Free up to 10,000 monthly sessions. Paid plans not published | Free plan. 14-day trial |
| Adobe Analytics | Enterprise analytics | Enterprises with analyst teams and data across many channels | Not published. Quote only | Not mentioned |
The 11 alternatives, one by one
1. Plausible Analytics
Best for: A simple, one-page dashboard of traffic, sources and goals, hosted in the EU
Plausible shows the GA reports most sites actually open (visitors, sources, pages, countries, devices and goals) on one page. Plausible says it uses no cookies and no persistent identifiers and needs no cookie banner, and that data is hosted in the EU and never leaves it. It imports GA4 history as daily totals, keeps 3 years of data on Starter and 5 on Business, and puts ecommerce revenue attribution on the Business plan. The free Community Edition (AGPLv3) can be self-hosted but leaves out funnels and ecommerce revenue goals.
Lowest published price: Starter $9/month for up to 10,000 monthly pageviews. Free plan or trial: 30-day trial, no card. Free self-hosted Community Edition. Vendor page
2. Fathom Analytics
Best for: Simple privacy-first analytics for many sites on one plan
Fathom is named in all 12 lists we read. It covers traffic, sources, pages and events, and you can attach a value and currency to purchase events, so revenue tracking is on every plan. Fathom says it uses no cookies, so no consent banner is needed for analytics. EU visitors' personal data is processed on European servers and stripped before the anonymized data reaches its US infrastructure. It imports both Universal Analytics and GA4 history at no extra cost, and keeps your full history while you subscribe.
Lowest published price: $15/month for up to 100,000 monthly pageviews, 50 sites. Free plan or trial: 7-day trial, card required. No free plan. Vendor page
3. Matomo
Best for: The closest thing to GA, with your own data, self-hosted or in an EU cloud
Matomo is the most complete like-for-like replacement: goals, ecommerce tracking on every plan, segments, a visitor log and, on Cloud Business, heatmaps and session recordings. Matomo says it never samples data. Cloud data is stored in Frankfurt, and the self-hosted Community edition is free under GPL v3, with paid plugins on top. Tracking without a consent banner depends on your country and on settings such as disabling cookies and anonymizing IPs. Its GA importer brings in aggregated reports, not raw visits.
Lowest published price: Cloud Business from 29 a month before tax. Self-hosted is free. Free plan or trial: 21-day cloud trial, no card. Vendor page
4. Simple Analytics
Best for: Privacy-first analytics with a free plan for hobby sites
Simple Analytics says it uses no cookies, needs no consent banner and never collects anything that could fingerprint a visitor. Data is stored in the EU, mainly in the Netherlands. It has events, goals and multi-step funnels, and its GA4 import brings in page views only. The free hobby plan covers 5 websites but keeps only the last month.
Lowest published price: $20/month for up to 100,000 monthly pageviews. Free plan or trial: 14-day trial, no card. Free hobby plan with 30 days of history. Vendor page
5. Clicky
Best for: Real-time stats and a log of each visitor, on a small budget
Clicky shows live visitors and a per-visitor log, with heatmaps from Pro Plus ($14.99 a month). Its default setup uses no tracking cookies, though Clicky doesn't claim you can drop the consent banner. Data is stored and processed in the US. Goals and revenue tracking are premium features.
Lowest published price: Pro $9.99/month for 10 sites and 30,000 page views a day. Free plan or trial: Free plan (1 site, 3,000 page views a day). 21-day premium trial. Vendor page
6. Piwik PRO
Best for: Regulated industries, such as healthcare, that need EU hosting and contracts
Piwik PRO is an analytics suite with EU-operated hosting in Sweden, 25 months of data on Business and a private cloud on Enterprise. Piwik PRO staff said on its community forum that the free Core plan would be discontinued in February 2026, and its plan pages now show only Business and Enterprise, so lists that call it free are out of date.
Lowest published price: Business from €36/month for up to 2 million monthly actions, billed annually. Free plan or trial: 30-day trial, no card. Vendor page
7. PostHog
Best for: Developer teams that also want session replay, feature flags and experiments
PostHog bundles web analytics with product analytics, session replay, feature flags and experiments, and you choose US or EU cloud hosting. It has a cookieless mode, but its own guide says that mode inflates weekly and monthly unique visitors and turns off session replay and surveys. Revenue comes from a Stripe connection or revenue events. PostHog has no direct GA import, and it advises against self-hosting.
Lowest published price: 1 million events a month free, then usage-based. Free plan or trial: Free tier, no card. Vendor page
8. Mixpanel
Best for: Funnels, retention and cohorts in a product or app
Mixpanel answers product questions (who signed up, came back and upgraded) better than traffic questions. EU data residency is available on every plan but must be chosen when you create the project. Data is kept for 2 years by default. GA4 history comes in through the GA4 BigQuery export and a warehouse connector, which Mixpanel warns can add to your bill.
Lowest published price: Free up to 1 million events a month. Growth is usage-based, for example $140/month for 1.5 million events. Free plan or trial: Free plan. Vendor page
9. Amplitude
Best for: Product and growth teams that want analytics, session replay and experiments together
Amplitude is a digital and product analytics platform with session replay and experimentation, and an EU data center option on every plan. The free plan keeps 1 year of history and Plus keeps 2. Revenue metrics sit on the Growth and Enterprise plans, which are custom-priced.
Lowest published price: Free up to 2 million events a month. Plus starts at $0 with a card, then usage-based. Free plan or trial: Free plan with no time limit. Vendor page
10. Heap
Best for: Capturing every click automatically, then defining events later
Heap, now part of Contentsquare, records clicks and page views automatically, so you can define an event after the fact and still see its history. The free plan keeps 6 months of data. Growth is priced after you install the snippet, and Pro and Premier are custom.
Lowest published price: Free up to 10,000 monthly sessions. Paid plans not published. Free plan or trial: Free plan. 14-day trial. Vendor page
11. Adobe Analytics
Best for: Enterprises with analyst teams and data across many channels
Adobe Analytics is the enterprise option, sold as Select, Prime and Ultimate packages and priced on implementation scope, data volume, users and contract length. Adobe itself calls it a significant commitment. It belongs on the list as the step up from GA4 360, not as a lighter alternative.
Lowest published price: Not published. Quote only. Free plan or trial: Not mentioned. Vendor page
Cookies, hosting and GA import
What each vendor says about cookies and consent, where it stores data, whether you can host it yourself and whether it imports your Google Analytics history. "Not mentioned" means the vendor's own pages we read don't say. It doesn't prove the feature is missing.
| Tool | Cookies and consent | Where data is stored | Self-hosting | GA import |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plausible Analytics | Says no cookies and no banner needed | EU (Germany) | Yes, Community Edition (AGPLv3) | GA4, as daily totals |
| Fathom Analytics | Says no cookies and no banner needed | EU processing for EU visitors, anonymized data in the US | Only the older Fathom Lite | Universal Analytics and GA4 |
| Matomo | Can be set up without consent in some countries | EU (Frankfurt) or your own server | Yes, free (GPL v3) | Yes, aggregated reports |
| Simple Analytics | Says no cookies and no banner needed | EU (Netherlands) | Not mentioned | GA4 page views only |
| Clicky | No tracking cookies by default | US | No | Not mentioned |
| Piwik PRO | Not stated on its plan pages | EU (Sweden) | Not mentioned | Not mentioned |
| PostHog | Optional cookieless mode, with limits | US or EU cloud | Hobby deploy, unsupported | No direct import |
| Mixpanel | Not stated on its pricing pages | US, or EU if chosen at setup | No | GA4 through the BigQuery export |
| Amplitude | Not stated on its pricing page | US, or EU data center | No | Not mentioned |
| Heap | Not stated on its pricing page | Region-specific storage on Premier | No | Not mentioned |
| Adobe Analytics | Not checked | Not checked | No | Not checked |
"No cookie banner" claims are the vendors' own. Whether you need consent depends on your country and on what else your site loads, so check with your privacy counsel.
Which alternative fits you
| What you need | Tools to look at |
|---|---|
| Simple, privacy-first traffic stats with no cookie banner | Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics |
| The full GA feature set with your own data | Matomo, Piwik PRO |
| Free, self-hosted analytics | Matomo On-Premise, Plausible Community Edition |
| Analytics hosted in the EU | Plausible, Simple Analytics, Matomo Cloud, Piwik PRO |
| Funnels and retention inside a product or app | Mixpanel, Amplitude, PostHog, Heap |
| Real-time stats and visitor logs on a small budget | Clicky |
| Enterprise analytics across many channels | Adobe Analytics, or GA4 360 |
Where OneLence fits
OneLence helps marketing teams find growth opportunities, know what to do next, and grow more efficiently without simply spending more. It covers the GA reports marketers open most, tracks affiliate partners, sorts bots by type and adds a decision for each source.
- Traffic reports. Visitors, conversions and revenue by day; sources, channels, campaigns, keywords and affiliate partners; countries, regions and cities; pages and entry pages; browsers, operating systems and devices; a conversion funnel you set up; and live visitors from the last 30 minutes.
- Revenue from your store or billing. Orders and payments from Shopify, Stripe and WooCommerce, tied to the source that brought each buyer.
- Decisions. Scale, hold or stop for each source, with a confidence level, the evidence behind it and what's still missing.
- Affiliate partners. Each partner is recognized from their link, their affiliate network ID (Awin, Impact, CJ, Rakuten and others) or their coupon code, with visits, conversions and revenue for each partner and a scale, hold or stop call. See affiliate tracking.
- Bots, classified. Bots and crawlers are left out of visitor counts on every report, and their requests use a separate allowance rather than your plan's events. Where GA4 drops known bots without showing how many, OneLence sorts each bot into one of 12 types, such as AI assistants, AI training, search engines, SEO tools, link previews and uptime monitors, and you choose which types to keep. On Premium and Scale, the Bots app shows which bots visit and how often. See the bot directory.
- Visitors from AI assistants. On Premium and Scale, which visitors ChatGPT, Perplexity and other assistants send you, which AI crawlers read your pages, and which of those visitors convert. See OneLence AI visibility.
- Tracking and consent. A tracking script, a server-side events API, apps for Shopify and Stripe and a WordPress and WooCommerce plugin that can track server-side. It supports consent settings, including IAB TCF v2 and Global Privacy Control, and Shopify's customer privacy settings.
- Where you use it. In the OneLence web app, or by asking Claude or ChatGPT through the OneLence MCP server.
Plans have a flat monthly price. Pro ($119 a month) shows every source and gives a decision for each paid, partner and referral source, and Premium ($169) adds SEO opportunities and AI visibility. Every plan has a 7-day free trial, and you can run OneLence alongside GA4. Start the free trial, read OneLence vs Google Analytics 4 or compare the plans.
How we chose the tools
On October 21, 2026 we read 12 lists that rank in search results for "Google Analytics alternatives" and "GA4 alternatives", from Backlinko, Linkly, Analytify, Seline, Amplitude, RightBlogger, Popupsmart, Crazy Egg, Usermaven, Contentsquare, McGaw.io and Shane Barker, and counted how many name each tool. The 11 tools here are the ones named in at least 5 of the 12: Fathom in all 12, Matomo and Plausible in 11, Heap in 8, and the rest in 5 or 6. Umami (4 lists) and Pirsch (3) came next. Seven of the 12 lists are published by analytics vendors, and most of them rank themselves first, so we counted each list once and left their own products out.
OneLence publishes this page, so we kept it out of the tables and described it in its own section. Facts and prices come from each vendor's own website, documentation or help center, and GA4 facts from Google's help center, all read on October 21, 2026. We didn't test the tools hands-on.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best alternative to Google Analytics?
It depends on what you use GA for. For simple traffic stats without a cookie banner, Plausible, Fathom and Simple Analytics are the most recommended. For a like-for-like replacement with goals, ecommerce and segments, look at Matomo or Piwik PRO. For funnels and retention in a product, look at Mixpanel, Amplitude, PostHog or Heap. For enterprise needs, Adobe Analytics.
Is there a free Google Analytics alternative?
Yes. On October 21, 2026, Matomo On-Premise and Plausible Community Edition were free to self-host. PostHog and Mixpanel were free up to 1 million events a month, Amplitude up to 2 million and Heap up to 10,000 sessions a month. Clicky had a free plan for 3,000 page views a day, and Simple Analytics a free hobby plan that keeps 30 days of history. Piwik PRO discontinued its free Core plan in February 2026.
Which Google Analytics alternatives don't need a cookie banner?
Plausible, Fathom and Simple Analytics say they use no cookies and need no consent banner for analytics. Matomo can be configured to run without consent in some countries, and PostHog has a cookieless mode with trade-offs. These are the vendors' own claims, and the rules differ by country, so check with your privacy counsel.
Is Google Analytics legal in Europe?
In 2022 the Austrian, French and Italian data protection authorities found that specific websites' use of Google Analytics broke GDPR rules on transfers to the US. Since July 10, 2023, the EU-US Data Privacy Framework has allowed transfers to US companies that join it, and the EU General Court dismissed a challenge to it on September 3, 2025. Analytics cookies still need consent in most EU countries. This is not legal advice.
Can I import my Google Analytics data into another tool?
Some tools can. Plausible imports GA4 history as daily totals, Fathom imports Universal Analytics and GA4, Matomo imports aggregated reports, Simple Analytics imports GA4 page views, and Mixpanel loads GA4 data through the BigQuery export. Imports bring in reports or totals, not every raw visit, so keep GA4 running until the new tool has enough history of its own.
Why do my visitor numbers differ between GA4 and another tool?
Each tool counts differently. GA4 may model visitors who declined cookies, excludes known bots with a list you can't see or switch off, and is blocked by many ad blockers. Cookieless tools count visitors without a persistent identifier, and each tool defines a session in its own way. Running both side by side for a few weeks shows you the gap for your own site.
Is GA4 free?
Yes. Standard GA4 is free, with limits such as 30 key events, 2 or 14 months of exploration data and sampling above 10 million events per query. Google Analytics 360 raises those limits and is sold through Google sales or a Google partner, with no published price.
More comparisons
- OneLence vs Google Analytics 4
- How to track ChatGPT and AI traffic in GA4
- Marketing attribution software compared
- Bot directory: which crawlers visit your site and what blocking them changes.