Google Analytics pricing: All you need to know

Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics tool, providing website owners with insights into traffic and website performance.

But for many people it's unclear how much Google Analytics costs, how many versions there are and is it really free? In this article I'll try to answer all these questions.

Google Analytics pricing

Standard Google Analytics (and Universal Analytics, but we'll talk about that later in this article), like most of Google's services, is free. The free version is sufficient for most businesses, so most people stick with it. The free version of Google Analytics offers features such as conversion tracking, real-time traffic visualisation, flows and more.

However, it does come with a caveat - the free GA4 version is limited to 10,000,000 events per website per month. If you exceed this limit, you'll need to upgrade to Google Analytics 360, which costs $150,000 per year (or $12,500 per month).

When you upgrade to GA360, you get an increased page view limit and some advanced analytics features such as attribution modelling.

What features does Google Analytics 360 offer?

As Google Analytics 360 is quite expensive and is mostly used by large organisations, it mainly offers features used by large customers, such as advanced limits, automatic custom tables, deeper advertising insights, report customisation. Google Analytics 360 also gives you access to BigQuery exports, allowing you to scalably analyse petabytes of data.

The problem with Google Analytics and Google Analytics 360 is that it violates GDPR, and some countries (such as Sweden) are already fining people for using Google Analytics on their websites.

Why are there multiple versions of Google Analytics?

Google Analytics has gone through several iterations over the years. The original version was first launched in 2005 as Google Analytics, which was later rebranded as Universal Analytics in 2012. Universal Analytics offered more advanced features such as custom dimensions and metrics, multi-channel funnels and real-time reporting.

In 2019, Google announced the next generation of its analytics platform, called Google Analytics 4 (GA4). GA4 is a major rewrite of Universal Analytics, built on a completely new infrastructure. Some of the key differences in GA4 include being event-based rather than session-based, having more flexible data collection options, and using machine learning for insights.

Beginning 1 July 2024, Google will completely shut down Universal Analytics for all customers as part of the migration to GA4.

Google Analytics 360 is the paid version launched in 2011 for larger businesses. Google Analytics 360 includes features such as custom funnels, attribution modelling, audience analysis and segmentation, and access to the Google Marketing Platform. The 360 platform also allows for much greater data processing and integration with other data sources than the free versions.

In summary, the free core product of Google Analytics has gone through three major iterations (original, universal and GA4). Google Analytics 360 is the premium paid version aimed at large organisations.

Conclusions

Google Analytics is free, so it's tempting for most people to use it. The problem is that it massively violates GDPR, and it's even illegal to use in some EU countries. After Google announced that all customers would have to migrate to GA4, many people found it unusable.

In light of these events, it's important to consider alternatives that prioritise user privacy and GDPR compliance. Fortunately, such alternatives do exist, and Swetrix is one of them.

We are a cookie-less and GDPR-compliant Google Analytics alternative, giving you all the analytics insights you need without collecting any personal data. Check out our live demo to see for yourself :)

Unlike the tech giants, we charge an affordable price for our services, rather than offering them for free and then absurdly monetising the data. We offer a 14 day free trial (no need to add your payment details) and pricing starts at just $5 / month. Feel free to give us a try!