Google Analytics

Short verdict: Google Analytics 4 costs $0 at 10,000, 100,000 or 1 million pageviews a month, and it links directly to Google Ads, Search Console and BigQuery. Your site pays in other ways. In our test the tag weighed about 153 KB compressed, took 216 ms of main-thread time and set 2 cookies. Google requires consent signals for visitors in the EEA, and explorations keep detailed data for 14 months at most. Pick it if you buy Google ads or want raw events in BigQuery. If you only need traffic numbers, a cookieless tool is lighter.

How we reviewed it: This page reviews GA4, the current Google Analytics; Universal Analytics data was deleted from July 2024. We did not create an account or send data to Google. On 21 October 2026 we loaded the documented gtag.js snippet, with a placeholder ID, on a test page in headless Chromium 141. Every request except the script download was blocked, so nothing reached Google, and we recorded what the tag downloaded, stored and tried to send. We also read Google's terms, limits, consent and API docs, the 360 billing notes, the MCP repository and 12 months of the status feed. Not tested: the logged-in reports, count accuracy, consent modeling and support. Prices are monthly in USD.

Disclosure: tailkits.com loads Google Tag Manager, and Umami Cloud, on every page. Google does not sponsor Tailkits, and links here carry no referral tag.

What Google Analytics costs and includes

What we found in Google's docs and our script test

Free at any volume, with the limits in the data

A standard property becomes "Large" at 25 billion events in 31 days, and Google then cuts its event-level retention to 2 months. Most sites hit these other limits long before that:

• Retention: funnels and explorations reach back 14 months at most.

• Sampling: explorations are sampled above 10 million events per query.

• Thresholds: rows with demographic or search-query data can be withheld.

• (other) rows: tables with many distinct values fold the rest into "(other)".

• BigQuery: the daily export is capped at 1 million events, and Google pauses it if you keep exceeding that.

Analytics 360 raises these limits: up to 50 months of retention, sampling only above 1 billion events, unsampled explorations, 10 times the API quota and an SLA. There is no plan in between.

What the tag does on a page

The snippet downloaded one script of 153-156 KB compressed (443 KB uncompressed) that ran for 216 ms on the main thread at 4x CPU slowdown. Plausible, Umami and Fathom need 1.3-2.4 KB and 11-15 ms. On load it set _ga and _ga_<ID>. It then tried two POST requests, to google-analytics.com and google.com. Both carried a client ID, the screen size and the browser version. All of this happened before any consent step, because the documented snippet sets no consent defaults. Route changes and outbound clicks are switched on in the property, so a placeholder ID could not show them; Google's docs say both work without code. Known bots are filtered automatically, but you cannot see how many.

Consent in the EEA is part of the setup

Google's EU user consent policy asks you to get consent for cookies "where legally required" from visitors in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland. Since March 2024, EEA visitors are left out of the audiences your linked ad products use, unless their consent is passed with Consent Mode v2 (ad_user_data, ad_personalization). In basic mode the tag waits for consent. In advanced mode it loads first and sends "cookieless pings" for visitors who decline. Google models those visitors only once a property collects 1,000 events a day from them for 7 days, which small sites never reach. This is Google's policy, not legal advice.

The reason to choose it: Google's ad and data stack

• Google Ads: key events become Ads conversions, and audiences go to campaigns.

• Search Console: linking adds query and landing-page reports covering 16 months, 48 hours behind.

• BigQuery: raw events export from the free tier. BigQuery's own fees apply beyond its free sandbox, which deletes tables after 60 days.

• AI: Ask Advisor, a Gemini assistant in the reports, is a beta for English-language properties.

Google's official MCP server is labeled experimental. It runs locally with a read-only scope, and its 7 tools read account details and run standard, funnel and realtime reports. Version 0.7.0 came out on 29 July 2026; the repository shows 3.5k stars.

Fine print in the docs

The demo account (the Google Merchandise Store) redirected us to a Google sign-in, so we did not open it. The often-quoted limit of 500 event names applies to app streams only; Google says web streams have none. An older Google page still lists an API quota of 25,000 tokens a day, against 200,000 on the current quota page.

Script weight, privacy and reliability

Main-thread time is the median of 5 cold loads on one machine on 21 October 2026. The 4x slowdown approximates a mid-range phone, where GA4's extra 150 KB and 200 ms compete with your own code during page load.

Between December 2021 and 2023, regulators in Austria, France, Italy, Denmark, Norway and Sweden found website use of Google Analytics unlawful because data went to the US. Those cases concern transfers before the EU-US Data Privacy Framework of July 2023, which Google has relied on since 1 September 2023. The EU General Court upheld it on 3 September 2025; an appeal is pending, and on 31 July 2026 the European Data Protection Board asked the Commission to review it after a US Supreme Court ruling on FTC independence.

Analytics has a row on the Google Ads status dashboard, which shows no uptime percentage. Its feed from 24 October 2025 to 8 October 2026 holds one Analytics incident: a "Service outage" from 00:41 to 02:52 UTC on 29 September 2026. All three updates were posted on 30 September, about 22 hours after it ended. The free tier has no SLA; 360 promises 99.9% for collection and 99% for reporting.

Google publishes no official npm package for the browser tag. The Data API client @google-analytics/data is at 7.3.0 (12 October 2026), unpacks to 4.06 MB and had 1,158,814 downloads from 28 September to 4 October 2026.

What you still have to set up

• Consent. For the EEA, UK and Switzerland, add a consent banner that sets Consent Mode v2 defaults before the tag fires.

• Retention. Set event data retention to 14 months. Third-party guides report a 2-month default.

• Key events. Mark signups or purchases as key events (30 per property) and send ecommerce events for revenue.

• Filters. Exclude internal traffic and, since 21 September 2026, allowlist your hostnames against spam.

• Links and access. Link Search Console, Google Ads and BigQuery, and give teammates roles.

Pros and cons

Pros

• $0 at 1 million pageviews a month, with no event cap in the terms.

• Direct links to Google Ads, Search Console and BigQuery.

• Funnel, path and cohort explorations at no cost.

• Single-page-app page views, outbound clicks and downloads tracked without code, per Google.

• An official read-only MCP server and 200,000 Data API tokens a day.

Cons

• 153 KB of script and 216 ms of main-thread time in our test, about 20 times Umami's 11 ms.

• 2 cookies and Google's EEA consent requirements; small sites get no modeling for visitors who decline.

• Explorations keep 14 months at most, are sampled above 10 million events, and thresholds hide some rows.

• No SLA or uptime figure on the free tier, and the September 2026 outage was posted 22 hours late.

• Analytics 360 prices are unpublished, with nothing between free and that contract.

How Google Analytics compares

• Plausible costs $19 a month for 100,000 pageviews and $69 for 1 million. Its 1.3 KB script set no cookies, and data stays in the EU; funnels and revenue need its Business plan. Choose it for a simple dashboard without Google.

• Umami is free on Hobby up to 100,000 events and $20 at 1 million. Its 2.4 KB script sets no cookies, and it can be self-hosted under the MIT license. Choose it to own your data.

• PostHog is free for 1 million pageviews alone, but $50 with its default page-leave event. It adds session replay and feature flags, with a 104 KB script. Choose it for product analytics in an app.

See all analytics tools, including Fathom and DataFast.

Who should use Google Analytics

Use GA4 if you advertise on Google, want Search Console and Ads data next to your traffic, or want raw events in BigQuery without an analytics bill, and can run a consent banner with Consent Mode v2. Look elsewhere for a light cookieless script, a dashboard you can read without training, more than 14 months of detailed history or an uptime commitment.

FAQ

Is Google Analytics free?

Yes. Standard GA4 costs $0 with no time limit, no card and no event cap in Google's terms, so it is free at 10,000, 100,000 or 1 million pageviews a month. The paid Analytics 360 adds higher limits, 50-month retention and an SLA, but Google does not publish its prices.

Does Google Analytics 4 need a cookie banner?

For visitors in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, Google's own policy says yes where the law requires consent for cookies. In our test the standard snippet set 2 cookies on load. Since March 2024 Google also expects Consent Mode v2 signals before EEA visitors can be used in linked ad products. We are not lawyers; check your own situation.

How long does GA4 keep data?

Event-level data used in explorations and funnels is kept for 2 or 14 months on the free tier, and up to 50 months on Analytics 360. Google says aggregated standard reports are not affected by this setting. Set retention to 14 months right after setup.

Can Google Analytics keep data in the EU?

No. Google says traffic from the EU, UK and Switzerland is collected on servers in those regions and IP addresses are dropped before logging, but the data is then processed in Google's global infrastructure. Transfers of EEA data to the US rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. There is no EU-only hosting option.

Does Google Analytics have an MCP server?

Yes. Google's official Google Analytics MCP server is labeled experimental and runs on your own machine with a read-only scope. Its 7 tools read account and property details and run standard, funnel and realtime reports; it cannot change settings.