vs Google Analytics

GA4 is free. The banner is not.

We count the landing, the source, and the named goal. Ads platforms still do conversion tags. Many sites run both. Google Analytics is a free ads product that happens to draw charts. Cookie Free Analytics is a 1 KB pageview counter that does not need a cookie, a consent popup, or a tag manager.

What they actually are

GA4 is an advertising and attribution suite. The charts are how Google makes the ads graph more valuable. That is a legitimate product. It is the wrong instrument for “how many people opened the article”.

When to pick them

You buy Google Ads and need native conversions, remarketing, or BigQuery export. Keep GA4 for that. We will not pretend to replace Google’s ads stack.

When to pick us

You want the visits the banner and the blockers threw away. Paste our script next to GA. Wait a week. The difference is the consent gap — not a 400,000-pageview case study we invented.

The honest bit

GA4 is free, has more reports than we will ever ship, and is the default in every marketing deck. We are not “GA but private”. We are a smaller, honest count.

Questions

Is Cookie Free Analytics a Google Analytics alternative?

For pageviews, sources, campaigns, and goals — yes. It is not an ads or attribution suite. Many sites run both: GA4 for campaigns that need Google, Cookie Free Analytics for the unblocked count.

Why are Cookie Free Analytics numbers higher than GA4?

Usually consent reject, ad blockers, and Safari defaults — not extra bots. We do not invent a case study. Compare a week of both.

Do I need a cookie banner for Cookie Free Analytics?

No cookie banner for this script. If you still load Google Ads, Meta, or GA4, keep the banner for those tags. Your counsel owns the final call.

Also compared: Plausible · Simple Analytics · Fathom · Matomo · Cloudflare Web Analytics · Umami · All 15