Plausible vs Google Analytics: what you actually trade away
You need to know which pages people read and where they came from. One option costs nothing and is the industry default; the other costs $9 a month and does far less. The interesting question is not which is better — it is what the free one actually costs you.
Summary
Google Analytics is free and Plausible is not, so on price the comparison looks settled before it starts. It isn't, because the two products are answering different questions. Google Analytics 4 is an event pipeline built to feed Google's advertising products, and it is priced accordingly — the money comes from elsewhere. Plausible is a page-and-referrer counter you pay for directly. If your reporting needs stop at 'which posts get read and who sends traffic', the free product is heavier than the job requires and you will spend real time on it. If you run paid acquisition and need audiences flowing into Google Ads, Plausible does not have a story for you at all.
What this comparison weighs
- What each product costs in money, and what it costs in setup and maintenance time
- How long your data survives — a limit that only bites once you want a year-on-year comparison
- What leaves your site, and whether you need a cookie banner because of it
- Where each one stops: the report you eventually want and cannot get
Which one, for whom
- A content site or documentation project with no paid acquisition
- PlausibleThe whole interface is one page, so there is nothing to configure and nothing to get wrong. Plausible states it does not use cookies, which for many operators removes the consent banner from the analytics side of the ledger — worth checking against your own legal advice before relying on it.
- Anyone running Google Ads or needing conversion data in Google's ecosystem
- Google AnalyticsThis is the case Google Analytics is built for, and no privacy-first tool substitutes for it. Plausible is not competing here.
- A team that will want to query raw event data later
- Google AnalyticsThe free tier exports to BigQuery, capped at 1 million events per day. That ceiling is generous for most sites and is a genuine capability the paid alternative does not match.
| Field | Plausible | Google Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Analytics | Analytics |
| Entry price | $9/mo | Free plan only |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Free trial | 30-day trial | No |
| Tagged for | Freelancers | Startups |
| G2 rating unverified | 4.7 / 5 | 4.5 / 5 |
| Capterra rating unverified | 4.8 / 5 | 4.7 / 5 |
Capability comparison
| Capability | Plausible | Google Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | ✗ | ✓ |
| Plausible offers a 30-day trial with no card, but no permanently free plan. | ||
| Raw event export to BigQuery | ✗ | ✓ |
| Google Analytics standard properties are capped at 1 million events per day; Analytics 360 raises this to billions. | ||
| User-level data retention beyond 14 months | Not recorded | ✗ |
| Standard Google Analytics retains user-level data for up to 14 months. Plausible does not publish an equivalent limit, so we have not established a comparable figure. | ||
| Advertising-platform integration | ✗ | ✓ |
| Cookie-free measurement | ✓ | ✗ |
| Plausible's own claim; not independently tested. Verify against your own compliance requirements. | ||
Where they differ
- Google Analytics 4 is described by Google as free of charge. Plausible has no free tier at all: it starts at $9/month for one site and up to 10,000 monthly pageviews, then $14/month for 3 sites and $19/month for 10.
- Data retention is where the free tier bills you instead. A standard Google Analytics property retains user-level data for up to 14 months; Analytics 360 goes to 50. If you want to compare this March against March two years ago, the standard property cannot answer — you have to have exported the data beforehand.
- Other standard-tier ceilings: 25 event parameters per event, 25 user properties per property, 30 key events, and BigQuery export capped at 1 million events per day. Analytics 360 raises these to 100, 100, 50 and 'billions' respectively.
- Plausible publishes no equivalent limits table because it collects far less: it is counting pageviews, referrers and a small set of custom events, not building a user-level event stream.
Trade-offs worth knowing before you commit
- The free product is free because your visitors' behavioural data has value to the company providing it. That is a defensible trade for many businesses and an unacceptable one for others. It is a decision about your relationship with your readers, not a feature comparison.
- Plausible's simplicity is also its ceiling. There are no funnels stitched across sessions, no audience export, no attribution modelling. If you outgrow it, you are migrating, not upgrading.
- Google Analytics 4's learning curve is the cost people underestimate. Nothing about it is intuitive if you knew the previous version, and 'why do these two reports disagree' is a recurring and genuinely difficult question.
- Plausible's $9 entry covers 10,000 pageviews. A site that grows past that moves up the pricing table, so the real comparison is against your traffic a year from now, not today's.
How hard is it to move?
Moving from Google Analytics to Plausible means your history stays where it is — there is no import path, so in practice you run both for a period and keep the old property readable. Moving the other way is trivial, because there is almost nothing to move. Neither product locks you in through data volume; the lock-in with Google Analytics is the reporting and integrations built on top of it.
Where this lands
For a site whose analytics question is 'what gets read and who links to us', Plausible is the better fit and $9 a month is a small price for never opening a configuration screen again. For anyone whose analytics feed advertising decisions, Google Analytics is not a preference — it is the system the rest of the stack expects. The one thing worth deciding deliberately rather than by default is the 14-month retention window: it is the free tier's real price, and you only notice it in month fifteen.
What this comparison does not cover
- Neither product has been run in production by us. This compares published pricing, published limits and documented behaviour.
- Plausible's cookie claims are taken from its own marketing and have not been independently tested. Verify against your own compliance requirements.
- Analytics 360 pricing is not published by Google and is not compared here.
Sources
- Plausible pricingchecked 6 Aug 2026
- Google Analytics product pagechecked 6 Aug 2026
- Google Analytics 4 property limits (standard vs 360)checked 6 Aug 2026
Who wrote this
How figures on this site are sourced, checked and labelled is set out in the methodology. If something here is wrong, send a correction — a link to the source that contradicts the page is the fastest way to get it fixed.
Head to head
Plausible
Plausible is web analytics reduced to what most sites actually need: one lightweight script, one readable dashboard, no cookies and no consent banner required for it. As an EU-hosted, open-source, subscription-funded product, its privacy stance is structural rather than marketing. It deliberately omits user-level funnels, session recordings and ad-platform integrations — sites that live on paid acquisition will miss those, while content sites rarely do.
Lightweight, privacy-first web analytics.
What we record about Plausible →Reported strengths
- Privacy-friendly
- Tiny script
- Simple to read
Reported drawbacks
- Fewer features
- No deep funnels
Google Analytics
Google Analytics 4 is the default measurement layer of the web, free at a scale no rival matches and wired directly into Google Ads and Search Console. Its event-based model is powerful once configured, but the migration from Universal Analytics left many users relearning basics, and reports that once took two clicks now take five. Privacy regulations add consent complexity in Europe. It remains the pragmatic default — with a steeper curve than its price suggests.
Free web analytics at massive scale.
What we record about Google Analytics →Reported strengths
- Free
- Ubiquitous integrations
- Powerful segments
Reported drawbacks
- GA4 learning curve
- Privacy/consent overhead