Google Analytics 4 is one of the most widely deployed analytics tools in the world – and one of the most complained about too.
The transition from Universal Analytics forced millions of users onto a platform that thinks and behaves very differently.
GA4's event-based model is more powerful than its predecessor in theory, but in practice, many teams find it harder to use, harder to query, and harder to trust. Add in data sampling on large exploration queries, a 14-month retention limit, privacy concerns under GDPR, opaque pricing, and a UI that frustrates marketers and developers alike – and it's easy to understand why so many teams are looking for alternatives.
Whether you're leaving GA4 for privacy reasons, because you've outgrown its free tier limits, or because you simply need more than web analytics, this guide covers the best GA4 alternatives available today.
The core difference is how each tool tracks activity.
Universal Analytics was session-based – designed for a time when desktop websites were the norm and cookies were uncontroversial. It's good at tracking sessions, pageviews, and traffic sources, with pre-defined reports that made it easy for marketing teams to do their jobs without data science support.
Google Analytics 4 is event-based – designed to track what people actually do, like clicking a button or completing (or abandoning) an action. Its model is more flexible and powerful, but it lacks many of the pre-defined reports UA users relied on, and its emphasis on exporting to Looker Studio or BigQuery is harder for teams without analytics support.
If event-based tracking is more powerful, why do so many people complain about GA4? Users tend to fall into one of three camps:
Users who miss pre-defined reports – GA4 removed many of the reports teams relied on. Things are harder to find, and there's no guarantee popular reports will return.
Teams without data science support – GA4 caters more to large enterprises and app developers. Its reliance on Looker Studio and BigQuery exports is a barrier for small business and marketing teams who don't have analytics engineers.
App developers who need more – Despite courting app developers, GA4 still falls short of alternatives that pulled users away from Universal Analytics in the first place. For many, it's too little, too late.
Some teams also avoid GA4 for privacy reasons. GA4 is not GDPR-compliant by default – it requires additional configuration including consent banners and Consent Mode v2. The 2023 EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework resolved the underlying data transfer concern, though the framework remains subject to legal and political uncertainty.
PostHog (that's us 👋) is an all-in-one developer platform that includes web analytics, product analytics, session replay, error tracking, experiments, user surveys, and more – pretty much everything you need to track user behavior in an app or website.
This means it's not just a GA4 alternative, but also a replacement for tools like Mixpanel, LaunchDarkly, and FullStory.
Typical PostHog users are engineers and product managers at startups and mid-size companies, such as ElevenLabs, Supabase, and Lovable.
Like GA4, PostHog is an event-based platform. It's priced per event captured, though it offers a generous 1 million events for free each month, so many users can use it for free.
PostHog gives you all the web analytics of GA4 and far more on top. Where GA4 is a marketing analytics tool, PostHog is a full product development platform. This means that, in addition to tracking user behavior, you can also use PostHog to run A/B tests, set up feature flags, record user sessions, and even survey users.
GA4 doesn't have any of these features built-in, so you'd need to integrate with other tools to get the same functionality.
Read our PostHog and Google Analytics comparison for an in-depth look at the differences
Bottom line
PostHog is the best GA4 alternative for engineering and product teams who need more than just web analytics. It covers everything GA4 does and adds a full stack of product tools, all with transparent pricing and a generous free tier.
Matomo is one of the most popular Google Analytics alternatives around. Like UA, it's based on a session-based tracking model, and it even allows new users to import data from an existing Google Analytics account.
It also shares some weaknesses inherent in Universal Analytics. While Matomo has added more advanced analytics features, it's better suits traditional website analytics than tracking desktop and mobile apps. Like PostHog, it's open source, so can be self-hosted if you prefer.
Matomo is session-based like Universal Analytics, making it a more natural migration path for teams who preferred the old Google Analytics model. It gives you full data ownership and GDPR compliance without the complexity of GA4.
Bottom line
Matomo is closest you'll get to a Universal Analytics-style experience. It's session-based and was explicitly conceived as European alternative to Google Analytics. It has plenty of features, too, though some may find the interface a little dated. It's especially well-suited to publishers, privacy-conscious organizations, and teams in regulated industries.
Kissmetrics is all about tracking marketing ROI. As a result, it doesn't track what Kissmetrics deems vanity metrics like bounce rate, time on page, exits, etc. It does, however, track most essential website metrics, and makes it easy to understand the impact of organic and paid marketing activity.
One of its key features is the Populations report, which groups users into key cohorts, such as those who have recently activated trials, or are at risk of churning. You can also create custom funnel reports, and track user paths through your website.
Kissmetrics and GA4 serve different masters. GA4 is built for traffic and marketing attribution. Kissmetrics is built for understanding customers and driving revenue – it intentionally excludes "vanity metrics" like bounce rate and time on page, focusing instead on what actually drives growth.
Bottom line
Kissmetrics is a great platform for sophisticated marketing teams who want to track the impact of their work on revenue. It's overkill for basic website analytics use cases, but a good option for mature businesses looking for a robust alternative to Google Analytics.
While it can be used on websites, TelemetryDeck is primarily a privacy-minded analytics tool for mobile apps. As such, it uses an event-based tracking model – TelemetryDeck calls them signals. It has first-party SDKs for Swift (iOS, macOS etc. apps), Kotlin (Android and Java apps), and Javascript (Node and web apps).
TelemetryDeck makes it easy for app developers to track things like active users, OS version, app version, and basic user metadata like user location. It also supports basic retention and conversion funnel insights. TelemetryDeck doesn't collect any personally identifiable metadata, so you don't need tracking consent banners.
TelemetryDeck does far less than GA4 by design. It's intentionally lean – no user profiles, no revenue tracking, no ad attribution. What it offers is privacy-safe app analytics with zero compliance overhead, which is a compelling tradeoff for many indie developers and privacy-focused teams.
Bottom line
TelemetryDeck is a good option for those who want basic app analytics, but it falls short of feature parity with GA4. It's not a full GA4 replacement for teams that need revenue tracking, ad attribution, or user profiles – but it's a great fit for indie developers and privacy-first teams.
Plausible is a leader in the trend of lightweight, privacy-orientated analytics tools. It's easy to use and doesn't collect any personally identifiable information. This makes it ideal for complying with GDPR, but this comes at the cost of functionality.
Plausible can only track very basic website metrics like pageviews, session duration, and referrer information. This makes it useless for apps, and significantly less powerful than Google Analytics and other alternatives in this list.
But, if you just want basic website analytics, it gets the job done, and won't adversely impact the performance of your website thanks to its lightweight tracking script.
Plausible covers the basics of web analytics without the complexity. It's not a like-for-like GA4 replacement – it lacks user profiles, advanced segmentation, and the depth of reporting GA4 offers. But for teams who just want simple, trustworthy traffic data without GDPR headaches, it's hard to beat.
Bottom line
While it lacks many of the advanced features of GA4, Plausible is a good option for content and marketing teams who just want easy to use, basic website analytics.
Vercel Web Analytics is a privacy-friendly analytics tool included in all Vercel plans. Like Plausible, it tracks basic website metrics like pageviews, unique users, time on page, and referrers. It doesn't collect personally identifiable information, so can be used without cookie banners.
Other useful features include a Speed Insights tool for keeping track of your website's Core Web Vitals. You can also set up custom events to track conversions.
Vercel Web Analytics is a convenience product, not a GA4 replacement. If you're already on Vercel, it's worth enabling for basic traffic data. If you need more depth – funnels, user paths, retention, ad attribution – you'll need a dedicated analytics tool.
Bottom line
Vercel Web Analytics is a nice value-add for any front-end dev using Vercel's frontend-as-a-service. There's certainly no need to deploy another privacy-first analytics tool (e.g. Plausible, Fathom) if you're already using Vercel, though it falls a long way short of a genuine Google Analytics alternative. If you need more than what it offers, consider deploying PostHog or Matomo.
Piwik PRO is a commercial spinoff of Matomo – Matomo used be called Piwik. As such, there are some similarities between the two, such as session-based tracking and superficial UX similarities.
Piwik PRO's main differentiators are enterprise level support and the integration of a customer data platform (CDP). Like Matomo, it also puts an emphasis on privacy compliance by integrating a consent manager.
Piwik PRO is particularly strong for regulated industries and enterprise teams that need GDPR compliance, consent management, and EU data residency in a single package. It's less self-serve than GA4 but offers more control.
Bottom line
Unsurprisingly, Piwik PRO's roots in Matomo make it a popular choice for users who are familiar with Universal Analytics. It's less feature-rich than Matomo in some respects, but may be a better choice for larger organizations who require more support and scale.
Fathom is another leading privacy-focused analytics tool that's similar in scope to Plausible. It's ideal for small and medium-size marketing websites, but it lacks the deeper features typical Google Analytics users will demand.
For a deep dive, check out PostHog vs Fathom Analytics too.
Like Plausible, Fathom is intentionally simple. It provides clean, unsampled web analytics data without the privacy concerns or interface complexity of GA4. It's not for teams that need advanced segmentation, user-level data, or ad attribution – but it's excellent for what it does.
Bottom line
There isn't much to choose between Fathom and Plausible. Again, if you want lightweight website analytics without the feature bloat of Google, you can't go wrong with Fathom.
Counter is a free and open source analytics tool that operates a "pay what you want" model. It's by no means a feature-complete alternative to GA4, but it's ideal if you want to track basic website activity like visits, referral data, and user properties (device, platform, browser etc.).
Counter's creators can offer it for free because it only collects aggregated data, reducing the complexity and load on the server, while also improving data privacy. To count unique users, Counter uses a combination of techniques including the browser's cache, sessionStorage, and referrer inspection.
Counter is about as minimal as analytics gets. It does just enough to answer "how many people visited my site and where did they come from?" For personal projects, blogs, and indie developers who don't need anything more, it's a compelling free alternative.
Bottom line
Counter is a great choice if you have basic needs. It does most of the things the popular privacy-first analytics tools offer, but does so for free. The simple interface is easy to understand, though it doesn't allow you to drill down deeply into individual page performance like Fathom or Plausible.
Here's a quick guide based on what you need:
For engineering and product teams who need more than web analytics:
For a familiar Universal Analytics-style replacement:
For revenue and marketing analytics:
For privacy-first lightweight web analytics:
For app developers:
For teams already on Vercel:
For early-stage startups:
Here's the (short) sales pitch.
We're biased, obviously, but we think PostHog is the best GA4 replacement if:
It's completely free to get started – no credit card required. Our AI setup wizard handles configuration in minutes, or check out our docs to do it yourself.
Common reasons include: GA4 is harder to use than Universal Analytics, data sampling affects accuracy on large exploration queries, the 14-month data retention limit on the free tier is restrictive, privacy concerns and GDPR compliance are complicated under GA4, and many teams need more than web analytics – session replay, feature flags, error tracking – that GA4 simply doesn't offer.
PostHog offers the most complete free tier: 1 million analytics events, 5,000 session replays, 1 million feature flag requests, and 1,500 survey responses per month. Plausible and Fathom are both paid but have free trials. Counter is completely free.
For lightweight web analytics, Plausible and Fathom are the strongest options – both are cookieless, GDPR-compliant by default, and collect no personally identifiable information. TelemetryDeck is the best option for app developers who need privacy-safe analytics without consent banners. PostHog and Matomo both support EU hosting, cookieless tracking, and HIPAA compliance for teams with more advanced requirements.
See our guide to GDPR-compliant analytics tools for a full breakdown.
PostHog is the best option for early-stage companies. Beyond the generous free tier, startups can apply for PostHog for Startups to get $50,000 in additional credits. One platform that covers analytics, replays, feature flags, and more from day one means you don't have to swap tools as you scale.
PostHog is built for developers – SQL access, MCP server for AI coding tools, open-source codebase, extensively documented APIs, and SDKs for every major platform. TelemetryDeck is a good lightweight option for app developers who prioritize privacy.
PostHog includes session replay with console logs, network monitoring, a DOM explorer, and performance metrics – tightly integrated with analytics.
For standalone session replay, see our guide to the best session replay tools.
Matomo and Plausible both support importing data from Google Analytics. PostHog doesn't directly import GA4 data, but you can run both tools in parallel during a transition period and use PostHog's historical migration docs for guidance.
No. GA4 does not include session replay. If you need session replay alongside web analytics, consider PostHog (which integrates replay with analytics, feature flags, and error tracking) or Hotjar (now part of Contentsquare).
No. GA4 does not offer native feature flags or A/B testing. Google Optimize (GA4's A/B testing product) was shut down in 2023. For feature flags and experimentation tightly integrated with analytics, PostHog is the best alternative.
See our guide to the best LaunchDarkly alternatives for more options.
The top web analytics tools in 2026 include:
See our full guide to the best web analytics tools for more options.
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