12 best Google Analytics alternatives in 2026, compared

If you want Google Analytics 4’s traffic reports without cookies or a consent banner, Plausible is the most direct replacement: no cookies, data stored in Germany by an EU company, about 2.5 KB of script and $19 a month at 100K page views. The right pick changes with the reason you are leaving GA4, so here is the short answer by situation, as of November 2026:

• Simple cookieless stats from an EU-owned company: Plausible.
• An agency reporting to many clients: Fathom.
• No visitor identifier at all, not even a daily hash: Simple Analytics.
• Free, with no server to run: Cloudflare Web Analytics, or Umami Cloud up to 100K events.
• Free and self-hosted: Umami for a light dashboard, Rybbit for session replay and error tracking, Matomo for GA4-level depth.
• A site already on Vercel Pro: Vercel Web Analytics.
• AI assistant traffic, crawler reads and payment revenue beside your visits: invisit, the tool we build.
• Revenue, MRR and LTV split by channel: DataFast.
• Product analytics on signed-in users: PostHog for replay, flags and experiments; Mixpanel for retention and cohorts.

Stay on GA4 if you buy Google Ads, need BigQuery or measure mobile apps. The last two sections cover when to stay and how to switch without losing your history.

What to look for in a Google Analytics alternative

Judge alternatives on seven points: price at your real volume, the free plan, cookies and consent, data location, script weight, depth, and self-hosting. Tools that look alike on a feature grid split apart on these.

• Price at real volumes. Vendors bill page views and custom events (Plausible, Fathom), hits (Matomo) or every data point (PostHog, Mixpanel), where one page view can send two or more. Each entry quotes the vendor’s own unit at 100K and 1M a month, billed monthly.
• Free plan. GA4 is free at any volume. Some free plans rule out commercial use (Vercel Hobby), cap history (Umami Hobby keeps 6 months) or exist only as software you host.
• Cookies and consent. GA4 sets _ga cookies for two years, and Google’s EU user consent policy requires consent for them where the law does. A tool that stores nothing on the device can usually skip the banner (what that takes).
• Data location. Where data is stored and who owns the providers. GA4 has no setting to keep data in the EU.
• Script weight. GA4’s gtag.js measured 155 to 179 KB gzipped; every tool here is lighter, from about 2 KB to 119 KB (why it matters).
• Depth. Funnels, a view of each visit, heatmaps, revenue, AI referrals and crawler reads.
• Self-hosting. Open source you can run yourself, or hosted only.

We checked every price and claim against the vendors’ own pages and docs on November 3, 2026, and measured each tracker the same way:

curl -s https://static.cloudflareinsights.com/beacon.min.js | gzip -9 | wc -c

Google Analytics alternatives compared: price, cookies, EU data and script size

Prices are monthly in each vendor’s own unit, so they are not one for one. Ranges run from the cheapest plan to the most complete self-serve plan. PostHog sends at least two events per page view, so 1M page views is about 2M events and $50. Vercel’s price includes the $20 Pro platform fee. Script sizes are our gzip measurements of each vendor’s current script, except Plausible’s, which is Plausible’s own figure.

1. Plausible: best for simple cookieless analytics from an EU company

Plausible is the best Google Analytics alternative when you want GA4’s traffic reports on one screen, without cookies, from a company whose providers are all European. Plausible is open source under AGPLv3 and run from Estonia.

Plausible bills page views plus custom events across a team’s sites. As of November 2026, Plausible’s pricing at 100K and 1M is $19 and $69 on Starter, $29 and $104 on Growth, and $39 and $139 on Business, the plan with funnels, revenue goals, custom properties and the Stats API. There is no hosted free plan; the trial is 30 days without a card.

Plausible deletes the salt behind its visitor hash every 24 hours (data policy) and keeps data at Hetzner in Falkenstein, Germany, with only EU-owned providers, CDN included (EU hosting). Plausible imports GA4 history, shows Search Console queries, emails scheduled reports, and since June 2026 has an AI Assistants channel.

Plausible’s limits are deliberate: no heatmaps, no view of a single visit, no web vitals and no crawler report (when not to use Plausible). Starter allows one site and one login, Business 10 of each, and the free Community Edition leaves out funnels and revenue goals.

Choose Plausible for a blog, content site or small business that wants clean traffic numbers and EU ownership end to end. See Plausible vs invisit, plan by plan.

2. Fathom: best for agencies that report to clients

Fathom Analytics is the best pick for agencies: every plan includes at least 50 sites, email reports go to any address on a schedule, and each client gets a dashboard link of their own. Fathom is hosted, cookieless and Canadian, with one plan that has every feature.

Fathom bills page views, custom events and API requests against one allowance for all sites. As of November 2026, Fathom’s pricing is $15 a month up to 100K, $60 at 1M and $200 at 10M, and 50 extra sites cost $10 a month. There is no free plan, and the 7-day trial needs a card.

Fathom’s script measured about 2 KB gzipped. Email reports are unlimited, per site or as a roll-up, and share links take a password and an expiry date. Fathom imports GA4 page views (not events), shows Search Console terms and has an AI tab for assistant referrals.

Fathom’s limits: one login per account, so colleagues get share links instead of accounts; no funnels; and an event is a name plus an optional value, with no custom properties. EU visits are processed on EU servers, but Fathom stores the anonymized analytics in the US (data isolation).

Choose Fathom if you run many small client sites and report by email. See Fathom vs invisit.

3. Simple Analytics: best when no visitor identifier is acceptable

Simple Analytics is the strictest design in this list: no cookies, no local storage and no hash of the IP address, so it never identifies a visitor. If your data protection officer rejects even a daily-rotating hash, Simple Analytics is the tool that passes.

Simple Analytics bills page views and events. As of November 2026, its Simple plan costs $20 a month at 100K, $60 at 1M and $160 at 10M for one user, plus $20 a month per extra user. The free plan covers 5 sites with 30 days of history, a required badge and no events.

Simple Analytics is a Dutch company storing data in the Netherlands and Germany (subprocessors). It imports GA4 page views, sends email reports, and its script measured about 4.8 KB.

The cost of no identifier is precision. Simple Analytics counts a visitor for every page view arriving with no referrer or an outside one, so a person who arrives twice in a day counts twice (unique visits). Its multi-step goals are not tied to one session, and it has no per-visit path, heatmaps, web vitals or revenue reports.

Choose Simple Analytics for the most conservative reading of the GDPR, as in the public sector. See Simple Analytics vs invisit.

4. Cloudflare Web Analytics: best free option for basic traffic and Core Web Vitals

Cloudflare Web Analytics is free and needs only a Cloudflare account and one script tag; your DNS can stay where it is. It shows page views, visits, referrers, countries, devices and Core Web Vitals, and little else.

As of November 2026, Cloudflare’s docs list Web Analytics as free on all plans, and the limits page caps sites, not traffic: 10 per account for sites not proxied through Cloudflare.

Cloudflare says Web Analytics uses no cookies or localStorage and does not fingerprint visitors (product page). Like Simple Analytics, Cloudflare counts a visit when the referrer is not your own hostname, so there are no unique visitors. AI crawlers are a separate product, AI Crawl Control, free on every plan but only for domains proxied through Cloudflare.

Cloudflare’s FAQ lists the limits: no custom events, no UTM parameters, six months of data, and only the last 7 days unsampled before data is aggregated to around 10%. Ad blockers block the beacon, which measured 10,253 bytes gzipped. Web Analytics is not covered by Cloudflare’s EU Customer Metadata Boundary; the documented alternative is to exclude EU visitors.

Choose Cloudflare Web Analytics for a personal site, docs or side project where page views, referrers and page speed are all you read.

5. Umami: best free open-source analytics, self-hosted or in the cloud

Umami is the best free option if you can run a server: MIT-licensed, a Node.js app on PostgreSQL, with the same analytics as Umami Cloud, session replays and heatmaps included. Without a server, Umami Cloud’s Hobby plan is free up to 100K events.

Umami Cloud counts each page view and custom event as one event, and each stored property as one more. As of November 2026, Umami’s pricing has Hobby free to 100K events (1 site, 6 months of data), Pro at $20 for 1M (20 sites, 2 years) and Business at $200 for 10M, which adds heatmaps, replays and unlimited sites.

Every Umami plan has funnels, journeys and retention; Pro adds revenue from Stripe, Paddle and four more providers, and an official MCP server. Umami also has an LLM channel for six assistants and opt-in web vitals, its script measured about 4 KB, and Umami Cloud has an EU and a US region.

Umami’s limits: properties make event-heavy tracking cost more than it looks, since umami.track('signup', { plan: 'pro' }) uses two events. Heatmaps on Cloud mean the $200 plan. The visitor hash salt rotates monthly by default, not daily (metric definitions), and self-hosting means your own updates and backups.

Choose Umami to own your data on your own server, or for a free hosted plan on one small site. See Umami vs invisit.

6. Vercel Web Analytics: best for sites already on Vercel Pro

Vercel Web Analytics is the simplest choice for a site already on Vercel Pro: one toggle, no new vendor, a script of about 2 KB, and events on your hosting bill. Vercel Web Analytics collects through routes on your Vercel deployment, so it does not work on another host.

Vercel bills page views and custom events pooled across a team. As of November 2026, Hobby is free up to 50K events a month, for non-commercial sites only. Commercial sites need Pro at $20 a month per deploying seat, with $20 of usage credit, and events cost $3 per 100K (pricing), so 1M events comes to $30 if the credit goes to analytics. Web Analytics Plus adds 24 months of data and UTM breakdowns for $10 a month.

Vercel counts visitors with a daily-resetting hash and no cookies, and Vercel Observability has an AI Traffic tab for crawler and assistant fetches.

Vercel Web Analytics’ limits: data is guaranteed for 1 month on Hobby and 12 on Pro, custom events carry 2 properties without Plus, and there are no funnels, per-visit views or revenue reports. Core Web Vitals need Speed Insights, a separate product, and Vercel’s DPA puts primary processing in the US.

Choose Vercel Web Analytics if your commercial site lives on Vercel and traffic counts are all you need. See Vercel Web Analytics vs invisit.

7. invisit: best for AI traffic, crawler reads and payment revenue beside your visits

invisit, the tool we build, is best when your questions are how much traffic AI assistants send, which crawlers read your pages, and what your traffic earned. invisit is hosted, cookieless web analytics with an MIT tracker and a proprietary backend.

invisit bills page views, custom events (automatic outbound-link and download events included), conversions and short-link clicks, and never bills bots, crawler reads or web vitals. As of November 2026, the free plan covers 20,000 events a month on 4 sites, commercial use allowed. Paid plans cost $14 for 100K, $49 for 1M and $199 for 10M a month (pricing).

invisit groups referrals from 19 assistants, from ChatGPT to Duck.ai, in an AI tab (AI assistant traffic), and @invisitdev/server records crawler reads, from search engines to fetches like ChatGPT-User. invisit reads payments, refunds, fees and net from Stripe, Paddle, Polar, Lemon Squeezy, Creem or Dodo Payments and charts them beside traffic (connect a provider). Funnels, visit timelines, heatmaps and web vitals are on every plan, and data is kept forever.

invisit’s limits: revenue is not attributed to sources or visitors, with no MRR, churn or LTV reports. There is no self-hosting, no session recordings, cohorts or A/B tests, no email reports, no history import, no Search Console and no mobile SDKs. Crawler reads need the server SDK, the 8.5 KB script is heavier than Plausible’s or Fathom’s, and Cloudflare, a US company, runs invisit’s DNS and CDN.

Choose invisit for a SaaS or product site that sells through a payment provider and wants AI traffic beside its visits. See invisit vs Google Analytics 4.

8. DataFast: best for revenue attribution by channel

DataFast is the best pick when you manage by revenue per channel: it ties each payment to the visitor who made it and splits revenue, MRR, LTV and churn by channel, campaign and page. That depth comes from a cookie and a visitor ID passed into your checkout.

DataFast bills page views, goals and payments across all your sites. As of November 2026, DataFast’s pricing is $19 at 100K and $69 at 1M on Starter (1 site, 1 member), and $39 and $139 on Growth (30 sites, 30 members). There is no free plan; the trial is 14 days without a card.

DataFast connects Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Paddle, Shopify and WooCommerce, and its attribution guide matches payments to visits through checkout metadata, success URLs or the buyer’s email. Funnels show revenue per step and an AI channel groups assistant referrals. A server-side package records crawlers, with 100,000 requests included and $9 a month per extra million (bot traffic).

DataFast’s limits: the default script sets a year-long datafast_visitor_id cookie, and DataFast’s GDPR guide says you may need a cookie banner; the cookieless script added in April 2026 weakens attribution. DataFast’s DPA places most of its infrastructure outside the EU, including the US, and there is no raw event export, no heatmaps and no web vitals.

Choose DataFast if you need to know which channel brought paying customers and can pass a visitor ID into your checkout. See DataFast vs invisit.

9. Rybbit: best open-source analytics with session replay and AI bot reports

Rybbit is the open-source pick for product-analytics depth in a cookieless tool: funnels, journeys, retention, user profiles, error tracking and, on Pro, session replay. Rybbit is AGPL-3.0, self-hosted with Docker or hosted as Rybbit Cloud.

Rybbit Cloud bills events per organization, web vitals and autocaptured clicks included (billing). As of November 2026, Rybbit’s pricing is $19 at 100K and $69 at 1M on Standard (5 sites, 3 members, 3 years of data), and $39 and $139 on Pro (unlimited sites, session replay, 5 years). New sites get a 7-day trial, not a free plan, and an organization over its limit stops collecting until the month resets or it upgrades.

Rybbit Cloud runs on Hetzner in Germany and Finland (subprocessors). Its channels include AI, and a Bots page on Cloud shows which AI agents and crawlers read which pages and how many visits each operator sent back (Bots). Rybbit imports history from Plausible, Umami and Simple Analytics, and has Search Console and a hosted MCP server.

Rybbit’s limits: the visitor ID is a hash of IP address and User-Agent that persists across days unless you turn on User ID Salting, and Rybbit’s site settings docs say the unsalted ID may count as personal data under the GDPR. The Bots page sees only bots that run JavaScript unless your server forwards crawler requests. Several reports are Cloud only, there are no payment-provider revenue reports, and the script measured 11,753 bytes gzipped.

Choose Rybbit for replays and error tracking beside cookieless traffic, with the option to self-host.

10. Matomo: best full Google Analytics replacement you can self-host

Matomo is the closest thing to GA4 you can run on your own servers: Matomo On-Premise is free under GPL v3 with unlimited hits, with segments, goals, ecommerce, a tag manager and scheduled reports. Matomo Cloud adds session recordings, heatmaps, A/B tests, funnels and cohorts.

Matomo counts hits: page views, events, downloads, outlinks and other tracking requests, about 110 to 120 per 100 page views by Matomo’s estimate. As of November 2026, Matomo Cloud costs $42 a month for 100K hits, $204 for 1M and $975 for 5M, with 30 sites and 30 users. On-Premise premium plugins cost extra per year, such as Funnels at $239 for 1 to 4 users (marketplace).

Matomo imports Universal Analytics and GA4 history (GA importer), has official iOS and Android SDKs and an MCP server, and Matomo Cloud stores data on AWS in Frankfurt.

Matomo’s limits: the standard tracker sets first-party cookies, _pk_id for 13 months (cookie list). Turning them off takes one line, and the CNIL mode for consent-free tracking in France switches off the Visits Log, User ID, heatmaps and recordings. The core matomo.js measured about 22 KB, self-hosting needs PHP and MySQL, and at 1M Matomo Cloud is the most expensive hosted option here.

Choose Matomo if policy requires self-hosting, or you need GA-level depth without Google. See Matomo vs invisit.

11. PostHog: best for product teams that want replay, flags and experiments

PostHog is a product suite with web analytics inside: session replay, feature flags, experiments, surveys and error tracking run on one event stream. Pick PostHog when your website is the front door to a product and you want both on the same data.

PostHog bills every event: page views, page leaves, autocaptured clicks and web vitals. As of November 2026, PostHog’s pricing gives 1M events a month free, then $0.00005 each up to 2M, falling with volume. A page view sends at least two events by default, so 100K page views fit the free tier, 1M cost about $50 a month and 3M about $187. Seats are unlimited.

PostHog’s free tier includes 5,000 session recordings a month, and PostHog adds an EU Cloud in Frankfurt, a free managed proxy, an official MCP server, SQL over raw events and an AI channel type.

PostHog’s limits: by default posthog-js sets a first-party cookie for 365 days and uses localStorage (persistence). Cookieless mode needs settings in code and in the project, and turns off replay and surveys for visitors without consent. The main script measured about 119 KB gzipped, AI crawlers appear only from forwarded server logs billed as events, and the MIT hobby self-host is unsupported.

Choose PostHog for a product team that needs replay, flags and experiments more than a light traffic dashboard. See PostHog vs invisit.

12. Mixpanel: best for product analytics on signed-in users

Mixpanel is product analytics built on user profiles: Insights, Funnels, Retention and Flows over events tied to the people who did them, across web and mobile apps. Pick Mixpanel when your question is which signed-in users came back in week four, not where today’s visitors came from.

Mixpanel bills every event across your projects, page views included. As of November 2026, Mixpanel’s pricing is free up to 1M events a month; past that, Growth costs $259 at 2M and $1,176 at 10M on monthly billing. On the Free plan, queries pause once a month passes 1M events. Seats are unlimited.

Mixpanel adds cohorts, session replay (10K a month free), experiments, feature flags, warehouse sync and GA4 import through BigQuery.

Mixpanel’s limits: the JavaScript SDK keeps a first-party cookie for 365 days by default, so EU sites usually put it behind a banner. Data is stored in the US unless you create the project with EU residency, which cannot be changed later (EU residency). The SDK measured about 33 KB gzipped, there is no AI channel or web vitals, and events are deleted after 2 years.

Choose Mixpanel for a product team analysing retention of signed-in users across web and apps. See Mixpanel vs invisit.

When should you stay on Google Analytics 4?

Stay on Google Analytics 4 when your analytics feeds Google’s own products, or when you need its depth free at any volume. GA4 is the better choice in five cases:

• You buy Google Ads. GA4 key events become Ads conversions, and GA4 audiences flow to Google Ads for remarketing (Ads linking).
• You read Search Console queries beside landing pages (Search Console linking). Plausible, Fathom, Umami Cloud, Rybbit Cloud and DataFast show Search Console data too.
• You want every raw event in BigQuery. The free GA4 export sends up to 1M events a day (BigQuery Export).
• You measure iOS and Android apps in the same property as the website.
• You want cohort and path explorations and predictive audiences without paying anything.

If you stay, the costs stay too. GA4’s _ga cookies last two years, so EU and UK sites need consent (Google’s cookie list), explorations keep event-level data for 2 or 14 months (data retention), and gtag.js measured 155 to 179 KB gzipped. You can also keep GA4 for ads behind its banner and run a cookieless tool for everyday traffic. Our GA4 comparison covers each point.

How do you switch from Google Analytics 4 without losing data?

Export your GA4 history first, then run the new tool next to GA4 for two to four weeks before you remove gtag.js. Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics and Matomo import GA4 history directly and Mixpanel imports it through BigQuery; invisit and most of the rest cannot.

1. Export what you want to keep. GA4 downloads reports as CSV or Google Sheets, up to 100,000 rows each (export reports), and the Data API pulls aggregated data for past dates. BigQuery Export holds raw events only from the day you link it.
2. If your new tool imports GA4, run the import while you still have the property.
3. Install the new tracker next to gtag.js; both can run on the same pages.
4. Rebuild each GA4 key event as a goal, conversion or custom event in the new tool.
5. Compare both for two to four weeks. Expect different numbers: behind a banner GA4 has full data only for visitors who accept, cookieless tools count without asking, and each tool filters bots its own way.
6. Remove gtag.js, then the consent banner, if nothing else on the page sets cookies.

Before you remove gtag.js

• The reports you rely on are exported, or BigQuery Export is linked.
• GA4 history is imported, if your new tool can import it.
• Every key event is rebuilt in the new tool and firing.
• Both tools have run side by side for two to four weeks.
• Google Ads conversions have a new home, or GA4 stays for ads only.
• No other tag on the page sets cookies before the banner goes.