2nd edition of  “Google Analytics Alternatives” now released, February 2026!
Digital versions available starting at < $10 (depending on your location) from Gumroad.
Print version available for $30 at Amazon.

What’s the best alternative to Google Analytics?

There are literally hundreds of potential alternatives to Google Analytics, but at the same time there is no single alternative that matches exactly what GA can do. While we might think of GA as being the simple default of web analytics tools — it is anything but basic. It is the ubiquitous default tool, yet it has also has a wide range of abilities and can be used for many different tasks. With so many different use cases, giving one single answer for everyone is simply not possible.

To answer this question for our own unique use case, we first need to figure out which tracking and reporting functions are actually requirements. Maybe all we need is something super simple that counts visitors and pageviews and where they came from. Or perhaps we’re looking for a full product analytics suite to unify reporting across mobile app and web.

Next we’ll need to identify which products fit those requirements, and determine what the essential questions are to narrow that list of options. This can be a challenging task, and has lead many people to simply stick with GA rather than do this investigation.

My book on Google Analytics alternatives is designed to help you create a decision framework and help you answer these questions.

Alternatives to Google Analytics

The following are the 15 products evaluated in my book. All of these alternatives are widely deployed, with 1,000 or more installations among the top 1M websites. Each of these 15 is potentially the best for someone depending upon what they need. I also consider the possibility that GA4 may in fact be your best option going forward.

Comprehensive Web Analytics (most similar to Google Universal Analytics) including:
Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics,Matomo Cloud, Piano Analytics, and Piwik Pro.

Simplified Web Analytics (pageview-based like traditional web analytics, but with less data collected by design) including:
Clicky, Cloudflare Web Analytics, Fathom, Plausible Analytics, Statcounter, and
Umami.

Product Analytics (event-based, with an emphasis on product usage) including:
Amplitude Analytics, Heap, Mixpanel, and PostHog.

I selected these 15 products by choosing the most widely deployed tools that could potentially be used to replace GA.

About the Book

Who is it for?

The book is aimed at professional analysts with experience in GA3. It’s not highly technical, but it does assume the reader has knowledge of things like: third-party vs. first-party cookies, conceptually how tag managers work, basic analytics instrumentation, etc. It’s accessible to readers with a wide level of technical expertise.

What’s in it?

Part one is general background about web analytics, with a focus on establishing a decision making framework. For example, it defines what implicit vs. explicit event tracking is and when you might want one vs. the other. Part two is product evaluations of 15 different tools, including GA4.

These tools run the gamut from simple to complex. Cloudflare doesn’t even have events, versus PostHog which is an extremely broad tool with 34 different app. Both Cloudflare and PostHog show up on lists of “Google Analytics Alternatives”, but they are incredibly different.

To know what tool makes the most sense, first we need to understand scale and scope. Then we have to understand what tool fits in with our use case. This is the process my book helps you with!

Alternatively, you can also hire us to help your company make a good selection!

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