Google Analytics alternatives: where to go and how to keep your history

Why move to Plausible. Everything fits on one screen: visitors, pageviews, sources, countries, devices, goals. No cookies, a tiny script, and hosting in the EU with European providers. The vendor says you don't need a cookie banner for it; check that against your own setup and legal advice. The code is open source.

Who it's for. Content sites, SaaS marketing sites, freelancers and agencies who want trustworthy numbers without training anyone.

Who it's not for. Teams that live in GA4 explorations and audience segments. There's no per-visitor journey or fine-grained attribution here.

The catch. Starter is $9 a month for one site and 10k pageviews; Growth is $14 for three sites; Business, at $19, adds the Stats API, funnels and revenue attribution. Price climbs with traffic.

How to migrate. GA4 import is included from Starter. It pulls pageviews, sources and channels day by day, up to your first Plausible-tracked visitor, so nothing gets counted twice. Set up your goals before you run the import, or past conversions won't show. Ecommerce revenue and exit pages don't come across.

Why move to Fathom. Every plan includes 50 sites and every feature: you only pay for pageview volume. For an agency running twenty client sites, that's one subscription instead of twenty GA4 properties and twenty consent setups.

Who it's for. Agencies, publishers with several properties, and businesses that want simple stats without running a server.

Who it's not for. A hobby blog. There's no free plan and the trial lasts 7 days.

The catch. $15 a month up to 100k pageviews, $25 up to 200k, $60 for a million. Custom events count toward the pageview allowance, and the trial asks for a card.

How to migrate. Drop Fathom's script next to GA4 and run both for a few weeks. If you go over your plan, Fathom keeps collecting and emails you before pausing dashboard access, so you won't lose data mid-switch.

Why move to Matomo. It's the alternative that feels most like Google Analytics: traffic sources, goals, ecommerce, funnels, segments, heatmaps as an add-on. Pick Matomo Cloud, hosted in Frankfurt, or the free self-hosted version on your own server. For a marketing team used to GA reports, it's the smallest culture shock.

Who it's for. Mid-size businesses, ecommerce, public-sector bodies and anyone asked to keep data in Europe without giving up detailed reporting.

Who it's not for. Someone who just wants yesterday's visit count. The interface is as dense as GA's.

The catch. Cloud starts at €29 a month (excl. tax) for 50k hits, and higher tiers go through sales. Self-hosting is free and unlimited, but updates, backups and the database are on you, and support is the community forum.

How to migrate. Matomo's Google Analytics importer (included in Cloud) brings back aggregated reports: pageviews and sources by day, but not the visitor log or segments on past data. Unique visitors aren't available for weeks or months, and GA4 goals arrive without names or revenue. Forum tip: if the import stalls, rerun it in short date ranges.

Why move to Umami. Umami is open source, light, and runs on a single database. On a small VPS it costs you only the hosting. The dashboard looks like Plausible's, a little more bare.

Who it's for. Developers, side projects and small teams with someone happy to babysit a server.

Who it's not for. Non-technical teams, or anyone who needs their GA history inside the new tool.

The catch. Umami Cloud's free Hobby plan stops at 100k events a month, one site and 6 months of retention. Pro is $20 a month for a million events, 20 sites and 2 years of data. Self-hosted, your export is a database dump.

How to migrate. There's no GA importer. Before switching GA4 off, export your standard reports to CSV (they aren't subject to the 14-month limit) and keep them alongside. Your history lives in a spreadsheet; Umami starts from zero.

Why move to PostHog. PostHog bundles web analytics, product analytics, session replay, A/B testing and feature flags. For a SaaS startup it replaces GA4 plus two or three other tools. EU hosting is available.

Who it's for. Product teams and SaaS companies that care what users do after signup.

Who it's not for. A brochure site that only wants visits. It's a lot of machinery for a page counter.

The catch. The first million events a month are free, no card. After that you pay per event, and identified events cost about four times more than anonymous ones on the first paid tier ($0.000198 vs $0.00005 per event). Watch what you send as identified.

How to migrate. No GA history import. Install PostHog, define your key events (signup, purchase, activation) with clean names from day one, and keep GA4 running for a month to compare.

Why move to Mixpanel. Mixpanel does what GA4 explorations do badly: funnels, retention and cohorts that a non-analyst can build in a few clicks. Pricing is easy to predict.

Who it's for. SaaS and mobile apps that run on activation and retention metrics.

Who it's not for. SEO and traffic-source reporting. Mixpanel isn't built for that, so keep a web analytics tool alongside.

The catch. Free up to 1 million events a month, then $0.28 per 1,000 events. A sloppy tracking plan inflates that volume fast.

How to migrate. Mixpanel doesn't pull GA4 history through a direct importer. Write your tracking plan first (a list of events and properties), then wire it up. More detail in our Mixpanel review.

Why move to Simple Analytics. It's a Dutch, cookieless tool whose free plan covers up to 5 sites with unlimited pageviews under a fair-use policy. For a blog or portfolio, it's the cheapest way off GA4.

Who it's for. Personal sites, side projects, small nonprofits.

Who it's not for. A business that wants year-over-year numbers for free.

The catch. The free plan keeps only the last 30 days and requires a badge. Paid starts at $20 a month, plus $20 for each extra user, and rises with traffic.

How to migrate. The vendor suggests running it next to GA4 and comparing before you cut over. Keep your GA4 CSV exports: on the free plan, history stops at one month.

Why move to Piwik PRO. Piwik PRO combines analytics, a tag manager and a consent manager, hosted in Sweden. For a bank, an insurer or a hospital, that's one contract where GA4 needs three tools and a legal review.

Who it's for. Large companies and regulated sectors (healthcare, finance, government).

Who it's not for. Small businesses. The old free Core plan is gone, replaced by the paid Business plan.

The catch. Business starts at €36 a month (up to 2 million actions, 25 months of data), depending on domains and volume. Enterprise is quote-based.

How to migrate. Use the 30-day, no-card trial to set up the tag manager and rebuild your GA4 events one by one. The interface keeps GA concepts like sessions and goals, which helps your team get going.

In Admin, Data collection and modification, Data retention, check the setting. If it says 2 months, your explorations only see the last two months. Switch it to 14: it takes effect within 24 hours, but it won't bring back what's already gone.

Turn on the BigQuery export too if you want a raw copy. It never backfills, so every day without it is a day lost.

Standard reports (acquisition, pages, conversions) aren't subject to retention. Export them to CSV or Google Sheets, month by month, for as far back as you care about. That's your safety net if your new tool's importer misses something.

Write down your benchmark numbers for the year too: visitors, conversions, top 10 pages. You'll need them in step 5.

List your events, conversions, UTM conventions and every tool wired to GA4 (Google Ads, Search Console, Looker Studio, a CRM, a Make or n8n scenario). Plenty of GA4 properties track twenty events and use three.

Keep only what drives a decision. That short list is what you rebuild.

Add the new script without removing GA4. Recreate your goals and events and, if the tool supports it, proxy its script through your own domain so it gets blocked less. With Plausible, create goals before you run the GA4 import.

Check the script loads on every page, checkout and thank-you pages included. A single typo in the tag can kill tracking for days without any alert.

The two tools will never match. The new one often shows more visitors: it may not wait for consent and gets blocked less. Visitor, session and bounce definitions differ too.

What should match is the trend and the order of your top pages. If your top 10 or your conversions diverge sharply, look for a page missing the script or a goal set up wrong.

With Matomo or Plausible, run the importer. Both pull aggregated daily reports, not individual visits. In Matomo, if the import stalls, rerun it in short ranges. Plausible stops the import at its first tracked day to avoid duplicates.

Then compare one imported month with your step 2 CSV. If pages or sources are missing, treat the CSV as the reference for that period.

Remove the GA4 tag and anything that depends on it. Update your privacy policy and your banner: if your new tool collects no personal data and you're under EU rules, it may not need to wait for an "Accept" click. Get that confirmed by whoever handles privacy for you.

Don't delete the GA4 property yet. It stays readable as long as it exists, and it's free: keep it for a few months as an archive.