Why migrate from Google Analytics to Plausible?
GA4's redesign drove a lot of teams to look at alternatives. Plausible is the most popular of the privacy-first analytics tools (Fathom and Umami being the other two big names) and the sales pitch is honest: a single page of charts that answers "how much traffic do we have, where is it from, and what are people reading", and nothing else.
Three drivers come up in nearly every Plausible adoption:
- No cookies = no banner. Plausible doesn't set cookies and doesn't fingerprint visitors. Under GDPR + ePrivacy, that means you don't need a cookie consent banner for analytics. Banner- removal alone is often the business case.
- The dashboard fits one screen. GA4 buries everything behind Explorations + dimensional filters. Plausible's default view IS the report.
- Lighter on the page. Plausible's tracker is ~1KB gzipped vs GA4's ~50KB. On Lighthouse's "Reduce unused JavaScript" audit, swapping GA4 for Plausible reliably bumps the performance score a few points.
What you give up: event-level user journey replay, audience segmentation for ads, and (depending on your billing tier) unlimited custom events. Most teams don't actually use those features in GA4, but if you do -- stay on GA4 or pay for Mixpanel.
Before you start
- Decide hosted vs self-hosted. Plausible Cloud starts at $9/mo (10K pageviews); self-hosted is free but you run a Postgres DB + a ClickHouse instance.
- Inventory your existing GA usage. What reports does marketing actually look at every week? If the answer is "page views, top pages, top referrers, bounce rate" you're done -- Plausible has all of those. If anyone uses Audiences or Conversions tied to Google Ads, plan to keep GA4 in parallel for that flow.
- Decide what to do with historical GA data. Plausible can't import it. Either export GA's last few years to CSV and archive, or run both tools in parallel for 12 months until you have a full year of Plausible data.
Step-by-step migration
1. Sign up + add your domain
At plausible.io: Sign Up -> Add Site -> enter yoursite.com.
Plausible gives you a snippet:
<script defer
data-domain="yoursite.com"
src="https://plausible.io/js/script.js"></script>
If self-hosting, replace plausible.io with your install's
hostname.
2. Add the snippet to your <head>
Drop the <script> immediately above </head> on every page.
WordPress: paste into the theme's header.php or use the
official Plausible plugin (Settings -> Plausible Analytics).
Next.js (App Router): add to app/layout.tsx. Next.js (Pages
Router): add to pages/_document.tsx.
Verify in the Plausible dashboard within 1-2 minutes -- a "Live visitors" count should appear when you load your site.
3. Remove Google Analytics
Either delete the GA snippet (gtag.js, analytics.js, the GTM
container) or comment it out. If using Google Tag Manager, pause
the GA4 tag rather than removing GTM entirely -- GTM may still be
serving other tags.
If you have a cookie banner that blocks GA until consent, you can now remove the analytics-consent block (Plausible doesn't need consent under GDPR).
4. Configure goals (optional)
Plausible's "Goals" are the equivalent of GA Events. Two kinds:
- Pageview goals -- visiting a specific URL counts (e.g.,
/thanks/after a contact form submit). - Custom event goals -- send via JS:
plausible('Newsletter Signup');
Configure in dashboard: Goals -> Add Goal -> Pageview or Custom Event.
5. Set up the cleanup window
Run both tools in parallel for at least one week to compare numbers + spot anything missing in Plausible. Common discrepancy: GA4 and Plausible count "users" differently (GA4 deduplicates by ID over 30 days; Plausible deduplicates by hashed IP+UA per day). Pageviews should match within ~5%.
After a week, kill GA fully + remove the snippet from your codebase.
What doesn't migrate
- Historical data. No automatic transfer. Export GA via the Reporting API to CSV/BigQuery and archive separately.
- Custom dimensions / Audiences. Plausible has Custom Properties (less expressive than GA dimensions). Audience building for Google Ads requires keeping GA in parallel.
- Ecommerce reports. Plausible has revenue tracking via custom events but no out-of-the-box product/category reports. Shopify users typically pair Plausible with Shopify's native analytics.
Common pitfalls
- Forgetting to remove GA. Leaving both running doubles your
page weight + collects PII you don't need. Audit
View Source- the network tab after deploy.
- Over-counting via GTM. If GTM was your single source for GA4 + Plausible, removing the GTM container kills both. Either remove just the GA tag or move Plausible to a direct script.
- Privacy banner inconsistency. If your existing banner mentions Google Analytics, update or remove the line. Stale privacy text is a regulatory paper trail.
How BeaverCheck measures the difference
We've audited 1,809 sites running Google Analytics and 64 running Plausible. Average Lighthouse performance: GA sites 41 / 100, Plausible sites 57 / 100, a difference of +16 points.
The performance gap mostly reflects the script-weight difference. Run a free audit to see your current GA tag's contribution to your performance score.