Google Analytics 4 vs Plausible Analytics

Google Analytics 4

The captured pages document an advertising workspace with cross-channel ROI and attribution reports, shareable reports, machine-learning insights and cross-device analysis across web and apps, with Search Console and Google Ads data named alongside and unsampled total-data reports stated for the premium tier. The standard traffic catalogue — pages, referrers, countries, devices, a real-time view, segments and date comparisons — is not described on these pages, so I cannot place the reporting level higher than midway.

Plausible Analytics

The documented dashboard covers pages, entry and exit pages, sources and referrers, UTM campaigns with automatic channel grouping, countries, regions, cities, devices and browsers, a real-time view refreshing every 30 seconds, saved personal and site segments, annotations, weekly or monthly embedded email reports, Search Console queries shown beside the traffic, and a consolidated view across sites — for a marketing site plus app plus docs subdomains that is most of what a growth team runs on. Custom dashboards are documented only through the Data Studio connector on the Business plan, and we found no public information on configurable channel grouping or a statement that reports are unsampled.

Google Analytics 4

Key events, Google Ads conversion tracking and remarketing, attribution models to evaluate, cross-channel ROI reporting and machine-learning predictions of future audience actions are all documented, with audience analysis across the full customer lifecycle spanning web and apps. For my campaign-click-to-paid-invoice question, though, the captured pages give no description of funnels with drop-off, e-commerce revenue and products, custom event properties or cohorts.

Plausible Analytics

Custom events with properties, pageview goals without code changes, automatic tracking of outbound links, file downloads, form submissions, 404s and scroll depth, three funnel types with per-step drop-off, revenue per step and date comparison, user journeys, and revenue attribution fully filterable by campaign and source — that covers most of the click-to-first-invoice chain I need, and funnels even keep the session across subdomains and a Stripe checkout. We found no public information on cohort or retention reports, on compared attribution models, on product-level cart and checkout tracking, or on sending conversions back to Google Ads or Meta server to server.

Google Analytics 4

Consent mode is documented in real depth: behaviour per consent type, cookieless pings with conversion and behavioural modelling when consent is denied, 34 named CMP partners, IP addresses of EU, Swiss and UK visitors never logged, EU collection domains, and per-region toggles for detailed location and device data and Google Signals. The default, though, assumes all consent granted, uses cookies and collects detailed data by default, with an opt-out browser plugin named — a consent-managed product rather than a consent-free one — and no position against named German law, external audit or privacy-policy wording is stated.

Plausible Analytics

Cookieless counting with the method published — a daily salt hashed with domain, IP address and user agent, salt deleted every 24 hours, raw IP and user agent never stored — plus a data policy listing exactly which fields are kept, open-source code anyone can audit, and an independent legal assessment confirming consent-free analytics under GDPR and PECR. We found no public information citing the German TDDDG paragraph or a CNIL ruling, and retention is described as the lifetime of the account rather than configurable per data type.

Google Analytics 4

A daily BigQuery export is covered by a service level agreement on the premium tier — exactly the nightly warehouse sync my funnel stack depends on — and total-data reports are stated as unsampled, with deletion of all remaining customer personal data within 180 days after the term documented in the data processing terms. We found no public information on a reporting API, CSV export of reports, the retention period for raw data, an import of historical analytics data or a self-hosted edition.

Plausible Analytics

For a nightly warehouse sync there is a scheduled raw event export delivered daily to S3-compatible object storage, plus a Stats API with filters, segments and revenue metrics and a separate Events API for collection — but the raw export is documented only on Enterprise plans with custom pricing, and the generally available exports are aggregated (one row per day per report, top 300 entries) or re-importable only into another Plausible site. The GA4 import is aggregate at day level, the self-hosted Community Edition is free under AGPLv3 with the vendor listing marketing funnels, user journeys, ecommerce revenue goals and SSO as excluded from that edition, and deletion on termination is documented with a settings export still possible after a subscription lapses.

Google Analytics 4

Set-up runs through the Google tag with Tag Manager templates and community CMP templates or gtag.js commands, a Google Analytics for Firebase SDK covers apps, and the content-security-policy domains to allow are published. Script size, plugins or guides for named CMS and shop systems, team roles, single sign-on and a public status page with uptime are not described on the captured pages.

Plausible Analytics

A header snippet documented with its size (135KB less JavaScript per visitor than Google Analytics, 54 times smaller), an official WordPress plugin with WooCommerce revenue tracking, an official GTM template, guides for Shopify, Webflow, Ghost, Docusaurus and more, automatic React/Vue/Angular routing, Swift and Android SDKs, a first-party proxy to bypass ad blockers, team roles with guest access at site level, SSO on Enterprise, and a public status page with historical uptime. We found no public information on white-labeling for agencies or a published SLA.

Google Analytics 4

Google Ireland Limited in Dublin, registered under Irish law, is the contracting entity, EU visitor traffic is collected over EU domains with IP lookups on EU servers, and a published data processing agreement with a subprocessor list and ISO 27001 certification exists. The processing terms, however, allow processing in any country where Google or its subprocessors maintain facilities, servers run worldwide, the parent is US-based Google LLC and US Cloud Act exposure is flagged — no EU data residency for the processing itself is committed.

Plausible Analytics

An Estonian entity, Plausible Insights OÜ, with a full imprint (registration number, VAT number, Tartu address), self-funded with no outside investors since 2018, hosting on named German infrastructure in Falkenstein on Hetzner, visitor data stated never to leave the EU, a subprocessor list naming Bunny (Slovenia), UpCloud (Finland) and Friendly Captcha (Germany), a DPA that applies automatically to all customers, and a documented self-hosted Community Edition that keeps the records on your own servers. We found no public information on ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certification, and the captured pages list some support and payment subprocessors without their locations.

Google Analytics 4

A free GA4 and a paid Analytics 360 positioned at large enterprises with enterprise-level support are the only pricing structure the captured pages show. No price for any tier, traffic band, site or user limit, add-on or minimum term appears on the pages we read, so an annual cost cannot be computed from public information.

Plausible Analytics

Starter at €9 /month with up to 10k monthly pageviews, Growth at €14 /month with 3 sites and 3 team members, Business at €19 /month with 10 sites, 10 team members, funnels, ecommerce revenue attribution and the Stats API, two months free on yearly billing, a 30-day trial without a credit card, and a free self-hosted Community Edition — the core tiers are computable for an annual budget. SSO and the scheduled raw event exports sit in an Enterprise tier quoted as "Contact us", and we found no public information on what happens when page views exceed a tier, on VAT treatment or on a minimum term.