You probably wanted pageviews, not a property ID

GA4 asks for a property, a stream, a container, consent mode, and a report you will not open twice. That stack exists because Google sells ads. Identity is the product. Pageviews are a side effect.

If you need audiences, remarketing, or BigQuery joins, keep GA. If you wanted to know whether /pricing moved after a tweet, you wanted a smaller tool.

What we will not match

We will not give you user-level journeys, cross-device stitching, or a 200-report catalog. We will not put an AI tab on the dashboard. We will not say “GDPR compliant” as if that were a sticker.

Pageviews live in EU Postgres. Beacons hit Vercel in Frankfurt. Sign-in with Google or X leaves that region — those companies are the identity provider. We will not pretend otherwise. We will give you live people, campaigns from the UTMs you already put on links, and a script small enough to paste without a tag manager.

Two tools, one week

Leave GA on. Add Cookie Free Analytics. After seven days, look at both totals. The difference is mostly consent and blockers. That is the useful number, not a migration project.