Replacing Google Analytics is mostly about doing things in the right order. Remove the tag too early and you lose history you cannot get back; skip the side-by-side period and you will not know whether a drop in numbers is real or just the new tool counting differently. These are the steps we recommend.
1. Write down what you actually use
Before looking at tools, list the reports you open in a normal month: visitors per day, top pages, traffic sources, campaigns, conversions, maybe revenue. Most site owners use a handful. That list decides which replacement fits, and it keeps you from paying for features you never open.
2. Export your history from GA4
Google Analytics keeps your data only while you use it, and some of it for less time than you might think:
- Explorations and funnels only reach back 2 or 14 months on the free version, depending on your retention setting (Google's documentation). The standard reports keep their aggregated figures longer.
- Universal Analytics data is already gone. Google deleted it from the week of 1 July 2024 (Google's announcement). If you did not export it then, it cannot be recovered.
Three ways to keep what is left:
- Download the reports you use as CSV or Google Sheets from the GA4 interface, one export per report, for the full date range you want to keep. Simple and enough for most sites.
- Use the Google Analytics Data API, or a spreadsheet add-on built on it, to pull larger date ranges. The free version allows 200,000 query tokens per property per day (quotas).
- Turn on the BigQuery export if you want raw events. It only exports data from the day you link it, so link it now if you might want it later; the free version exports up to 1 million events a day.
3. Choose the replacement
Compare tools on the things from step 1, plus three questions: will you need a cookie banner, where will the data be stored, and what will it cost at your traffic? Our price calculator ranks every tool for your traffic and number of websites, and the Google Analytics alternatives page compares them feature by feature.
Several tools can import your Google Analytics history, so your charts do not start from zero: Matomo, Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics, Pirsch and Swetrix import GA4 data, and PostHog can pull GA4 reports into its data warehouse. Imports differ in how much detail they keep, so read the tool's import documentation before relying on it.
4. Run both tools side by side
Install the new tool next to Google Analytics for two to four weeks. Expect the numbers to differ, often by a lot:
- Consent: Google Analytics in Europe usually only counts visitors who accept cookies. A cookieless tool counts everyone, so it often shows more visitors.
- Ad blockers: some blockers stop Google Analytics, some stop other tools, and the blocked share varies by audience.
- Definitions: tools count unique visitors and sessions differently. Compare trends over the weeks, not individual days.
If both tools move up and down together, you can trust the new one.
5. Rebuild your goals and events
Recreate the conversions and custom events you listed in step 1. Your UTM links keep working unchanged, and most tools report on them; Cloudflare Web Analytics is an exception with no campaign reports. If you use events heavily, check how the new tool counts them, since most count events against the same allowance as pageviews (our price study explains the differences).
6. Update your banner and privacy policy
If the new tool works without cookies, you may be able to remove analytics from your consent banner; our guide on cookie banners for analytics explains when. Update your privacy policy with the new provider, what it measures and where the data is stored.
7. Remove Google Analytics everywhere
Delete the Google Analytics tag from your site's code, and check Google Tag Manager for GA4 tags too: many sites load Google Analytics through Tag Manager, where it is easy to miss. Then run your site through our analytics detector, which reads your page and your Tag Manager containers, to confirm Google Analytics is gone and the new tool is there.
8. Keep the export somewhere safe
Store the files from step 2 with your other business records. A year from now, when someone asks how this quarter compares with the same quarter two years ago, that export is the only place the answer lives.