A practical look at when Google Analytics 4 still earns its place and when Plausible, PostHog, Mixpanel or Hotjar answer your questions with less consent friction.
For years, adding Google Analytics 4 to a new website was less a decision than a reflex. It is free, it has no traffic cap, and it links directly to Google Ads. That reflex is worth questioning now. Since it replaced Universal Analytics in 2023, GA4 has proved harder to learn than its predecessor, several EU data protection authorities challenged its GDPR compliance in 2022, and the consent banner it typically requires is one many site owners would rather not show.
The alternatives have matured, but they are not interchangeable. Some replace Google Analytics for traffic reporting, some answer product questions it handles awkwardly, and some do a different job entirely. The useful question is not "Google or not Google" but what you need to know, who will read it, and what you are willing to ask visitors to consent to. This guide works through those criteria, then maps situations to tools.
Website analytics covers three distinct jobs.
Traffic reporting answers how many people came, from where, and which pages they read. Plausible does only this, on a single-page dashboard of visitors, sources, pages, locations, devices and goals. Google Analytics 4 does it too, with thinner standard reports than Universal Analytics had.
Product analytics answers what people did after they arrived: which onboarding step loses users, which features correlate with retention. Mixpanel and PostHog are built for this, with funnel, retention and flow reports tied to individual users. GA4's Explorations cover funnel, path and cohort analysis too.
Behavior analytics answers why a page underperforms. Hotjar produces click, move and scroll heatmaps, session recordings and on-site surveys, and is meant to sit alongside a traffic tool rather than replace one. PostHog also includes session replay and heatmaps, and Mixpanel added replay in 2024.
If you need the second job, you will probably run two tools whatever you decide about Google.
"Privacy-friendly" is a spectrum.
Plausible uses no cookies and collects no personal data, so it can typically run without a consent banner under GDPR. Its script is under 1 KB, the company is based in the EU, and the code is open source with a self-hostable Community Edition.
Google Analytics 4 offers consent mode and data deletion tools, but sites with EU visitors need to configure consent carefully.
PostHog offers US and EU cloud regions and a Docker-based self-hosted option, though it recommends its cloud beyond small volumes. Mixpanel ties events to individual users and Hotjar records sessions by design, so both need consent handling despite their GDPR tooling.
Retention differs too. GA4's standard tier keeps user-level data for 2 or 14 months, Hotjar retains data for 365 days, PostHog's free plan keeps one year, and Plausible reserves longer retention for its Business tier.
| Tool | Starting price | Free plan | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics 4 | Free; Analytics 360 on request | Yes, no traffic cap | Google Ads attribution, web and app together |
| Plausible | Approximately $9 per month for 10,000 pageviews | No; 30-day trial | Traffic dashboards without a cookie banner |
| PostHog | Free allowance, then usage-based | Yes, approximately 1M events per month | Analytics, replay and flags in one tool |
| Mixpanel | Free allowance, then per event | Yes, approximately 1M events per month | Funnel and retention analysis |
| Hotjar | Approximately $39 per month (Observe Plus) | Yes, up to 35 daily sessions | Heatmaps, recordings and surveys |
Plausible's tiers rise with pageviews and cap sites and team members at one, three and ten; annual billing gives two months free.
PostHog and Mixpanel both offer roughly 1 million events per month free, then charge per event with volume discounts. That covers many small products, though high-traffic consumer sites should model the cost first. PostHog's free plan is limited to one project, and billing limits can cap spend. Mixpanel includes unlimited seats on every plan, and its free allowance was cut to about 1 million events in 2024.
Hotjar bills by daily sessions and stops capturing once the cap is hit; Observe, Ask and Engage are priced separately, so adding surveys to heatmaps roughly doubles the bill.
GA4's costs are indirect: sampled Explorations above 10 million events per query, a daily BigQuery export capped at 1 million events, and analyst time.
Plausible and Hotjar install with a script or WordPress plugin and need little training. Google Analytics 4 has a steep learning curve, and much of its value sits in Explorations that take time to master. PostHog and Mixpanel need a developer to instrument events, and Mixpanel in particular needs a planned event taxonomy before reports become trustworthy. PostHog's breadth makes the interface dense for newcomers, and its SQL-based query layer suits teams comfortable with that.
On lock-in, ask what you can export, whether you can self-host, and what you would lose by leaving. Plausible and PostHog are open source and self-hostable, and Plausible includes a Google Analytics importer so historical traffic can follow you. Mixpanel's warehouse connectors read events directly from Snowflake or BigQuery, and GA4's free BigQuery export plays a similar role. The Google Ads link is what is hard to leave, and it is the honest reason many marketing teams keep GA4 running.
Whether you still need Google Analytics comes down to Google Ads attribution and combined web and app data. If either matters to you, keep it and configure consent carefully; if neither does, a smaller tool will probably answer your questions with less effort and, in Plausible's case, no banner.
Everything in the category sits under Analytics.
Prices and features referenced were reviewed in September 2026 and may change. Check the vendor's pricing page before you decide.
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