Alternatives · 2026
Ranked, scored and explained. What each one does better, what you give up, and when staying put is the right call.
More people search for a way out of Google Analytics than for any other analytics question, and the reasons divide neatly into three. The interface became a specialist tool when GA4 replaced the session model, so the reports people used every week now take a custom exploration. The consent banner it requires costs you a share of your visitors before measurement even begins. And the data goes to an advertising company on terms it sets, with short default retention and no raw access without BigQuery export.
All six tools below solve at least two of those. Before you switch, one piece of advice that will save you an argument: run the new tool alongside GA4 for a month. The two will not agree, and the gap between them is the most useful thing you will learn all year.
When to stay put. Keep GA4 if you spend meaningful money on Google Ads. The conversion signal that smart bidding runs on comes from GA4 and nothing on this list can replace it. In that case the right move is not to switch but to add: keep GA4 for the ad platform, and run a lighter tool as the dashboard you actually open.
| Tool | From | Free tier | Cookies | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Absolutely Analytics | $9 per month | No free tier. A 30-day trial of the exact tier you picked | None, so no consent banner | 8.9 |
| Plausible Analytics | £9 per month | No, but the community edition is free to self-host | None, so no consent banner | 8.0 |
| Matomo | Free self-hosted; cloud from €22 | Yes, the entire on-premise product | Optional, and it runs cookieless if configured | 7.0 |
| Fathom Analytics | $15 per month | No. A 7-day trial | None, so no consent banner | 7.4 |
| Cloudflare Web Analytics | Free for everyone | The whole product is free | None | 6.9 |
| Umami | Free self-hosted and on cloud Hobby | Yes, 100,000 events a month on hosted cloud, plus free self-hosting | None | 7.5 |
The closest thing to a drop-in answer for a website rather than a product. A 1,270-byte script, no consent banner, bot traffic filtered before it reaches your bill, click and scroll maps included from $14, and a Google Analytics importer so your history comes with you.
From $9 per month. None, so no consent banner. Full review →
The safest switch, on track record. Six years old, 21,000 paying subscribers, EU-hosted, and a Google Analytics importer built for exactly this journey. Choose it over the above if vendor longevity outweighs heatmaps for you.
From £9 per month. None, so no consent banner. Full review →
The closest feature-for-feature replacement, and the only one that matches GA4 on depth. Self-host it and the raw data never leaves your infrastructure, with no sampling and no thresholding. You are taking on a PHP and MySQL application in exchange.
From Free self-hosted; cloud from €22. Optional, and it runs cookieless if configured. Full review →
The answer if you have many sites. Fifty domains on every plan from $15 makes it the cheapest per-site option here by a distance, though it has no funnels and no heatmaps.
From $15 per month. None, so no consent banner. Full review →
Free, and if your site is already proxied through Cloudflare it needs no client-side script at all. Too shallow to be your only tool, but there is no reason not to have it switched on underneath a better one.
From Free for everyone. None. Full review →
The open-source answer. Free to self-host on Node and Postgres, or 100,000 events a month free on its hosted tier. The easiest self-host in this group by a wide margin.
From Free self-hosted and on cloud Hobby. None. Full review →
Umami, if you want real analytics: 100,000 events a month free on its hosted tier, or free forever self-hosted under an MIT licence. Cloudflare Web Analytics is also free and needs no script at all on proxied sites, but it is a baseline rather than a replacement. Matomo is free if you host it yourself and by far the most capable of the three.
Not necessarily. Absolutely Analytics, Plausible and Matomo all ship Google Analytics importers. Export what you can from GA4 before you cancel anything, because GA4's own precedent, the Universal Analytics sunset, showed that historic data is discarded on a published schedule rather than kept indefinitely.
Any of the cookieless tools: Absolutely Analytics, Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics, Pirsch, Umami, GoatCounter and Cloudflare Web Analytics. Matomo can be configured cookieless too, though that is configuration you have to get right rather than a property of the design.
Mostly because cookieless tools count visitors who would have declined a consent prompt, and because they are blocked less often than GA4, which is the most blocked script on the web. GA4 also applies thresholding to low-volume rows and sampling in explorations. Expect the new tool to report more traffic, not less.
These are desk reviews and the ordering reflects my own weighted scoring, which is published in full. There are no affiliate links on this page and no vendor has paid to appear on it. Read the full Google Analytics 4 review, or send me a correction.