GA4 Alternatives Without Cookies: Full Comparison 2026
Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics, Umami, Matomo, and Gauss compared — pricing, cookie use, GDPR status, self-hosting, and what you actually lose vs GA4.
The best GA4 alternative without cookies depends on what you actually need: a simpler dashboard, no consent banner, self-hosted data, or specific integrations. This comparison covers six tools — Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics, Umami, Matomo, and Gauss — on the dimensions that matter for replacing GA4.
Why switch from GA4?
Three reasons come up most often:
- Consent banner drop-off. GA4 requires cookies, cookies require consent in the EU, and 20–60 % of visitors decline. You are missing a significant fraction of your data.
- Data ownership. GA4 sends your visitors' data to Google's servers. Many businesses — especially in regulated industries — need data that stays in their own infrastructure.
- Complexity. GA4 is powerful but steep. Setting up basic funnels and conversion tracking takes significant effort. Most small sites use 5 % of its features.
Comparison table
All pricing as of October 2026. Sources: each tool's official website.
| Tool | Cookie-free | Consent banner needed (EU) | Self-hosted option | Starting price | GA4 event compatibility |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plausible | Yes | No | Yes (community) | $9/mo (10k pageviews) | No |
| Fathom | Yes | No | No | $15/mo (100k pageviews) | No |
| Simple Analytics | Yes | No | No | $9/mo (100k pageviews) | No |
| Umami | Yes | No | Yes (open source) | Free (self-hosted) / $20/mo (cloud) | Partial |
| Matomo | Optional | Depends on config | Yes (primary model) | Free (self-hosted) / $23/mo (cloud) | Yes |
| Gauss | Yes | No | Planned | Beta (invite only) | Yes |
Plausible
Plausible is the most popular GA4 alternative in the privacy-first category. It is cookie-free by default, open source, and the community edition can be self-hosted.
What you get: pageviews, unique visitors, bounce rate, session duration, top pages, referrers, countries, devices, custom events, goals. The dashboard is intentionally simple — everything on one page.
What you lose vs GA4: no funnels, no user-level paths, no revenue reporting, no cross-day attribution. Custom events require manual instrumentation.
Best for: content sites, blogs, SaaS landing pages where you want a simple overview without configuration overhead.
Pricing: starts at $9/month for up to 10,000 monthly pageviews, scaling up. Self-hosted community edition is free but requires a server.
Fathom
Fathom is similar in scope to Plausible — cookie-free, simple dashboard, no self-hosting option. It differentiates on customer support and on a more generous pageview limit at the entry price point.
What you get: the same core metrics as Plausible. Custom events with numeric values (revenue tracking). Uptime-style SLA.
What you lose vs GA4: same as Plausible — no funnels, no deep user paths.
Best for: small businesses and freelancers who want cookie-free analytics without managing a server and don't mind paying a bit more for support.
Pricing: starts at $15/month for up to 100,000 monthly pageviews.
Simple Analytics
Simple Analytics leans further into simplicity than either Plausible or Fathom. It imports data from GA4 to help with migration, and it has a "mini websites" feature that shows a public stats page.
What you get: pageviews, referrers, browsers, countries, custom events. API access.
What you lose vs GA4: the simplest feature set of the tools listed here. No conversion funnels.
Best for: personal sites, small blogs, anyone who wants the minimum viable analytics with a clean UI.
Pricing: starts at $9/month for 100,000 monthly pageviews.
Umami
Umami is open source and self-hosted first. The free self-hosted option makes it attractive for developers who control their own infrastructure. It has a cloud offering as well.
What you get: pageviews, sessions, referrers, custom events. Multi-site support. Team access. API.
What you lose vs GA4: no revenue tracking out of the box, no funnel visualization in the standard UI.
Best for: developers and technical teams who want full data ownership and are comfortable running their own database (PostgreSQL or MySQL).
Pricing: free (self-hosted). Cloud starts at $20/month.
Matomo
Matomo is the closest feature-equivalent to GA4 in this list. It can run with or without cookies. With cookies, it requires a consent banner; without, you lose cross-day visitor stitching but no banner is needed.
What you get: nearly everything GA4 has — funnels, heatmaps (plugin), session recordings (plugin), revenue tracking, cohorts, custom dimensions, tag manager. GA4-compatible data import.
What you lose vs GA4 (cookie-free mode): cross-day attribution, user-level paths.
Best for: larger organizations that need GA4-level reporting depth and want data on their own servers. The feature set requires configuration time.
Pricing: free (self-hosted). Cloud starts at $23/month for 50,000 hits.
Gauss
Gauss is cookie-free and uses GA4's event vocabulary (page_view, generate_lead, purchase, etc.), so it works with existing GA4 event instrumentation without re-tagging. It focuses on the RU and TR markets alongside EN, with Yandex and VK as first-class traffic sources.
What you get: pageviews, sessions, referrers (including Telegram and VK), custom events with GA4 naming, conversion tracking, UTM attribution, multi-site dashboard.
What you lose vs GA4: cross-day attribution (same as all cookie-free tools). Currently in closed beta.
Best for: sites with Russian or Turkish audiences, teams already using GA4 event naming who want to switch without re-instrumentation.
Pricing: closed beta, invite only. Public pricing not yet announced.
How to choose
You want the simplest switch with zero server work → Plausible or Fathom. Both are mature, well-documented, and require only a script tag. Plausible is cheaper at low pageview counts; Fathom is better if support matters.
You need full data ownership and have a developer → Umami (self-hosted) or Matomo (self-hosted). Both are free to run on your own infrastructure. Matomo if you need GA4-level depth; Umami if you want something lighter.
You already have GA4 event tracking and don't want to re-tag → Gauss or Matomo. Both accept GA4 event names natively.
You have significant RU or TR traffic → Gauss. Telegram, VK, and Yandex are first-class referrer sources, not afterthoughts.
What all of them lose vs GA4
Every tool on this list — even Matomo — gives up cross-day visitor stitching in cookie-free mode. A visitor who comes back three days later is counted as a new visitor. Attribution for long consideration cycles (research → purchase over weeks) is not available.
If accurate multi-week attribution is a hard requirement, you are looking at server-side tracking with a hashed persistent identifier and explicit consent — which brings back the banner.
For most content sites and SaaS businesses, the trade is worth it: complete data on all visitors beats attributed data on the 60 % who consented.
Compare Gauss to Plausible → · See how Gauss handles GA4 events → · Try Gauss →