Google Analytics vs the Rest: Which Analytics Tool Should You Actually Use?

Most of us add Google Analytics to a new site without thinking about it. It's free, everyone knows it, and every tutorial says to paste the snippet in.

But "everyone uses it" is not the same as "it's right for you."

Some people find GA4 heavy. Some don't love the privacy trade-offs. And if you're building a product instead of a blog, page views are not really the thing you want to measure.

So here's a side-by-side look at the main options: Google Analytics 4, Plausible, Fathom, Matomo, PostHog, Mixpanel and Amplitude. Plain words, no sales pitch.

Quick note on prices: I checked pricing in October 2026. Plans change a lot in this space, so use the numbers as a guide and look at the vendor's own page before you pay for anything.

First, there are two kinds of analytics

This part trips people up, so let's sort it out early.

Web analytics answers: How many people visited? Where did they come from? Which pages did they read? Think GA4, Plausible, Fathom and Matomo.

Product analytics answers: What do people do inside my app? Where do they drop off? Who comes back next week? Think PostHog, Mixpanel and Amplitude.

Some tools do a bit of both. But each one started in one camp, and you can feel it when you use them.

The quick comparison

Google Analytics 4: free, deep, and a bit of a maze

GA4 is what's left of Google Analytics. The old version, Universal Analytics, stopped processing data on 1 July 2023, and the old data didn't carry over.

GA4 works on events. A page view is an event. A click is an event. A purchase is an event.

That's flexible, but it's a new way of thinking if you grew up on sessions and bounce rate. A lot of people say the learning curve is steep, and I get why.

What you get for free is a lot: Explorations for digging into your data, predictive metrics, a tight link to Google Ads, and an export to BigQuery if you want to run your own queries.

The catch is limits. Here's what a standard (free) property gets compared to the paid 360 tier:

Speaking of 360, that's Google's enterprise plan. One write-up puts the starting price around $50,000 a year. Most small teams never get near it.

Heads up on privacy: GA4 sets cookies. For visitors in places like the EU you'll usually need a consent banner. Anyone who clicks "no" drops out of your numbers, and Google tries to fill the gap with modelled data.

Good for: sites that run Google Ads, or anyone who wants a free tool with deep reporting and doesn't mind the setup.

Not great if: you want something you can understand in ten seconds, or you'd rather not run a cookie banner.

Plausible: small, simple, privacy-first

Plausible is kind of the anti-GA4. One page, a handful of numbers, and you get the picture of your traffic almost right away.

The script is light and it doesn't use cookies.

Pricing depends on pageviews:

• Starter: $9/mo for one site, up to 10,000 pageviews

• Growth: for multiple sites and sharing dashboards with a team (about $19/mo at 100k pageviews)

• Business: adds funnels, user journeys, revenue tracking and an API

Pay yearly and you save two months. There's a 30-day trial with no card, but no free plan.

It's open source too. If you'd rather run it yourself, there's a self-hostable Community Edition. It can also import your Google Analytics data, so you don't start from zero.

Good for: blogs, docs sites, marketing sites, small SaaS landing pages.

Not great if: you need deep product analytics like per-user behavior and cohorts. It's narrow on purpose.

Fathom: the same idea, with flat plans

Fathom is the closest cousin to Plausible. Simple dashboard, privacy-first, and no cookie banner needed.

The pricing is easy to follow. It starts at $15/mo for up to 100,000 pageviews. Every plan has every feature. The only thing that changes is the pageview cap, and it tops out around $470/mo at 25 million pageviews.

There's no free plan, and it's a hosted product only. You can't self-host it.

How does it compare with Plausible? At very small traffic, Plausible's $9 is cheaper. Around 100k pageviews, Fathom's $15 beats Plausible Growth at $19. Plausible gives you more depth on its higher tier and is open source.

Good for: people who want a clean dashboard and a price they can predict.

Not great if: you want to self-host, or you need funnels and journeys.

Matomo: the "own your data" option

Matomo is the old-school open source answer to Google Analytics. It used to be called Piwik.

Its reports feel closest to classic GA, so the switch is easier on your brain than moving to a minimalist tool.

You have two ways to run it:

• On-Premise (self-hosted): free to download, no pageview cap. But it's your server, your updates, your problem.

• Cloud: from about €29/mo, with a 21-day free trial. Data is stored in Frankfurt, Germany.

Good for: teams that need to keep data in their own hands, or anyone who misses the classic GA reports.

Not great if: you don't want to look after a server and you just need basic numbers.

PostHog: the all-in-one for people who build products

PostHog is a different animal. Instead of "how many visitors," it's about what people do inside your app.

It bundles product analytics, session replay, feature flags, A/B tests, surveys and error tracking in one place. It's open source, and self-hosting is free.

The free tier resets every month:

• 1 million analytics events

• 5,000 session recordings

• 1 million feature flag requests

After that, billing is usage-based, and each product is metered on its own. It has a web analytics view too, billed together with product analytics.

Watch out: session replay is what tends to push the bill up as you grow. Keep an eye on recordings, not just events.

Good for: developers and small product teams who want analytics, replay and flags without stitching three tools together.

Not great if: all you need is a page counter. It's more than you need.

Mixpanel and Amplitude: product analytics for bigger teams

These two are built for questions like "of the people who signed up, how many finished onboarding, and who was still around a month later?"

Funnels, retention, cohorts. That's their home turf.

Both have free plans. Mixpanel prices by events. Amplitude has long priced by monthly tracked users, and recent comparisons say its free plan includes session replay and feature flags.

The exact free limits for both have changed more than once, and the sources I found don't agree with each other. So check their pricing pages instead of trusting any blog post, including this one.

Good for: product teams with real traffic and someone who enjoys digging into data.

Not great if: you run a small content site. It's too much tool for the job.

Two quick honorable mentions

Umami is open source, and the self-hosted version has no pageview cap. Your limit is your server and database.

Cloudflare Web Analytics is a free, privacy-friendly option worth a look if your site already sits on Cloudflare and you only want basic numbers.

So which one should you pick?

Here's the simple version as a flow:

flowchart TD
    Start(["What do you need to know?"])

    Start --> Web["How many people visit,<br/>and from where?"]
    Start --> Prod["What do people do<br/>inside my product?"]

    Web --> W1["Want it simple and quick"]
    Web --> W2["Want GA-style reports<br/>and own the data"]
    Web --> W3["Run Google Ads,<br/>want free and deep"]

    Prod --> P1["Want analytics, replay<br/>and flags in one"]
    Prod --> P2["Want deep funnels<br/>and retention"]

    W1 --> R1["Plausible or Fathom"]
    W2 --> R2["Matomo"]
    W3 --> R3["Google Analytics 4"]
    P1 --> R4["PostHog"]
    P2 --> R5["Mixpanel or Amplitude"]

And if you'd rather think in situations:

The real cost isn't always on the price tag

"Free" and "cheap" hide different kinds of cost:

• GA4 costs you nothing in money, but it takes time to learn, and you'll likely need a consent banner.

• Plausible and Fathom are cheap at first, but the price climbs with your traffic.

• Self-hosted Matomo or Umami are free to download, but you pay in server costs and maintenance time.

• PostHog has a generous free tier, but replay and extra products can add up.

Switching without losing sleep

If you're moving away from GA4, don't flip a switch and delete everything.

Run the new tool next to GA4 for a few weeks. The numbers won't match exactly, because tools count visitors differently, and consent banners and ad blockers change what each one sees. That's normal. Look at the trends, not the exact digits.

If you pick Plausible, use its Google Analytics import so your history comes along.

Final thoughts

There's no single best analytics tool. There's only the one that answers the questions you actually have.

If I were starting a new blog tomorrow, I'd go with Plausible or Fathom and enjoy the clean dashboard. If I were building a product, I'd start with PostHog's free tier. And if I were running paid ads, I'd keep GA4 around.

Which one are you using right now? Tell me in the comments, I'd like to know if you've switched and whether you'd do it again.

Where to check the numbers

Prices and limits change often, so confirm on the official pages before you buy:

• Google Analytics 360 and standard limits: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11202874

• Matomo pricing: https://matomo.org/pricing/

• PostHog pricing: https://posthog.com/pricing

• PostHog's breakdown of what Google Analytics costs: https://posthog.com/blog/google-analytics-cost

• Plausible pricing: https://plausible.io/pricing

• Fathom pricing: https://usefathom.com/pricing