Key facts
- GA4 is free to use, per support.google.com, and can export data to BigQuery for anyone who wants raw access beyond the standard reports.
- GA4's event-level data retention is set by you to either 2 or 14 months, per support.google.com; Google-signals data caps at 26 months on standard properties (50 months on GA 360). Standard aggregated reports are not affected by this setting and stay available regardless.
- Plausible's published plans start at $9 a month for its Starter tier, with a 30-day free trial that needs no credit card, per plausible.io.
- Plausible states it collects no cookies and no personal data, which is the basis for its own claim that a Plausible-tracked site does not need a cookie consent banner, per plausible.io's documentation.
- Plausible's code is public and auditable, and its documentation states you can self-host it instead of using its hosted, EU-based service; it also offers a Stats API, an Events API, and a Google Search Console integration for pulling data out.
The job: knowing where your visitors come from, without a data-science degree
A small business needs analytics to answer a short list of questions: where do visitors come from, which pages they land on, and whether they convert. GA4 and Plausible both answer those questions, but they are built for very different comfort levels with complexity.
GA4 is Google's free, deep, all-purpose analytics platform, built for anyone from a two-person shop to a global retailer, which means the interface and event model carry that same range of complexity. Plausible is a paid, deliberately narrow tool built to answer the basic questions on one screen, without the setup Google's platform demands.
Documented features, side by side
GA4's own documentation describes a full customer-journey model, tracking visits across a website and an app, with a data-sharing settings panel that lets you control what you share with Google, and a BigQuery export for anyone who wants to query the raw event data directly. Event-level retention is a setting you choose, 2 or 14 months, and Google-signals data caps at 26 months on standard properties.
Plausible's documentation centers on a single, simple dashboard, lightweight enough to load without a consent banner because it does not use cookies or collect personal data. It documents a Stats API and an Events API for pulling data out, plus integrations with Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager, WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Squarespace, Wix, and several developer frameworks. Its goal tracking covers signups, purchases, form completions, e-commerce revenue, file downloads, and outbound link clicks.
Pricing and where your data actually sits
GA4 costs nothing to run, per support.google.com, which is the biggest reason most small businesses default to it. The tradeoff is that your data sits inside Google's infrastructure, and the tool is built for Google's own advertising ecosystem as much as for a business owner who just wants a weekly report.
Plausible charges from $9 a month, per its published pricing, and describes itself as hosted in the EU and funded entirely by subscribers, not advertising. Its documentation also states the code is public and auditable, with the option to self-host instead of paying for the hosted version, which is a form of data ownership GA4 does not offer since GA4 only runs inside Google's own systems.
Choose GA4 when, choose Plausible when
Choose GA4 when cost matters most, you already run Google Ads or need to feed conversion data back into Google's ad products, or you want the BigQuery export for deeper analysis down the line.
Choose Plausible when you want a dashboard you can actually read at a glance without training, you'd rather pay a small monthly fee than manage cookie consent banners, or you want the option to self-host your analytics data instead of it living inside a single ad-tech company's infrastructure.
Related questions
GA4 is free to use, per Google's own support documentation. Google Analytics 360, a separate paid enterprise product with longer data retention (up to 50 months) and higher processing limits, exists for large organizations, but a small business runs GA4 itself at no cost.
GA4 documents a BigQuery export for raw event-level access. Plausible documents a Stats API and an Events API for pulling data programmatically, plus a straightforward download option in its dashboard. Both give you a path to your own data outside the vendor's own reports.
The $9-a-month starting price buys simplicity: no cookie banner to manage, one dashboard instead of a sprawling report interface, and a business model funded by subscribers rather than advertising data. For an owner who checks analytics for ten minutes a week, that trade can be worth more than the free price tag.
You choose 2 or 14 months for event-level retention, and Google-signals data caps at 26 months on a standard property, per support.google.com. Standard aggregated reports keep working past that window; only detailed, non-aggregated views like Explorations lose visibility into data older than your retention setting.
Sources
- Google Analytics Help: GA4 overview (accessed 2026-09-23)
- Google Analytics Help: Data retention settings (accessed 2026-09-23)
- Plausible: Docs (accessed 2026-09-23)
- Plausible: Pricing (accessed 2026-09-23)
desk research from vendor documentation; no affiliate relationship; where we have implemented a tool for clients we say so.
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