Compare pricing, deployment, product fit, integrations, and capabilities side by side.
Website owners who want simple, privacy-focused analytics
Important considerations: Hosted use is donation-supported with a reasonable-use policy; high-volume or specialized deployments should be self-hosted.
All website owners, from small businesses to enterprises
Important considerations: GA4 has a steep reporting and consent-configuration learning curve; Analytics 360 pricing is not public and standard properties have lower limits.
| Attribute | GoatCounter | Google Analytics (GA4) |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | A lightweight, privacy-aware open-source web analytics service with cookieless visit counting, referrers, campaigns, browser and location reports, exports, and JavaScript-free tracking options. | Google's mainstream analytics platform for web and app measurement, built around GA4 events, attribution, advertising integrations, and BigQuery-connected reporting for larger deployments. |
| Pricing | Hosted service is donation-supported and free for reasonable public use; self-hosting is free and open source | GA4 standard is free; Google Analytics 360 is enterprise-priced via Google sales |
| Deployment | Self-hosted and hosted options | Vendor-hosted cloud |
| Best for | Website owners who want simple, privacy-focused analytics | All website owners, from small businesses to enterprises |
| Operator | Martin Tournoij Independent project | Google LLC Subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. |
| Company base | Ireland · European Union | Mountain View, United States · United States |
| Organization scale | 1 maintainers · operator, as of 13 Aug 2026 | 190,820 employees · parent company, as of 31 Dec 2025 |
| Recent direction | self-hosted expansion Recent official evidence shows a focus on self-hosted expansion. | marketing attribution Recent official evidence shows a focus on marketing attribution. |
| Key features |
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| Important considerations | Hosted use is donation-supported with a reasonable-use policy; high-volume or specialized deployments should be self-hosted. | GA4 has a steep reporting and consent-configuration learning curve; Analytics 360 pricing is not public and standard properties have lower limits. |
| Integrations | Ghost, Hugo | Google Ads, BigQuery, Shopify |
| Fact check | We checked this information against official vendor sources on 2026-08-27. | We checked this information against official vendor sources on 2026-08-08. |
This matrix shows capabilities recorded in our catalog. Not listed means we have not confirmed the capability here. Check the linked vendor sources for plan, deployment, and usage limits.
| Attribute | GoatCounter | Google Analytics (GA4) |
|---|---|---|
| AI insights | Not listed | Listed |
| App analytics | Not listed | Listed |
| Audience insights | Listed | Listed |
| Behavior analytics | Not listed | Listed |
| CCPA compliant | Listed | Not listed |
| Cohort analysis | Not listed | Listed |
| Cookieless | Listed | Not listed |
| Cross-device tracking | Not listed | Listed |
| Custom reports | Listed | Listed |
| Data export | Listed | Listed |
| Data ownership | Listed | Not listed |
| E-commerce tracking | Not listed | Listed |
| Enterprise | Not listed | Listed |
| Event tracking | Listed | Listed |
| Free plan | Listed | Listed |
| Funnels | Not listed | Listed |
| GDPR compliant | Listed | Not listed |
| Goals | Not listed | Listed |
| Integrations | Listed | Listed |
| Open source | Listed | Not listed |
| Privacy-first | Listed | Not listed |
| Real-time data | Listed | Listed |
| Retention analytics | Not listed | Listed |
| Revenue tracking | Not listed | Listed |
| Self-hosted | Listed | Not listed |
| User segments | Listed | Listed |