Free Website Analytics Tools 2026: GA4, Search Console, Clarity, Cloudflare
GA4 is powerful but hard to read. To learn how many people visit your site, where they come from, and what they do on the page, several free tools each cover one piece of the picture. Here's how to combine five free tools, plus one GA4 setting you must change.
Once a website goes live, business owners usually ask three questions:How many people visit? Where do they come from? What do they do once they arrive?
For most people, the first answer is Google Analytics (GA4). It's free and the most feature-rich, but the interface is complex, and many people install it and never open it again.
In fact, several free tools each answer part of these three questions, and some are far easier to understand than GA4. This article compares five free tools and explains how to combine them.
Five free tools at a glance
| Tool | What it answers | Difficulty | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | How often you appear in Google search, which keywords people use, and how many clicks you get | Medium | Free |
| Google Analytics(GA4) | Who visits, where they come from, which pages they view, and whether they convert | Hard | Free |
| Microsoft Clarity | How visitors scroll, where they click, and where they get stuck | Easy | Free |
| Cloudflare Web Analytics | How many people visit and which pages they view (the simplest option) | Easy | Free |
| Umami (self-hosted) | Similar to GA4 but simpler, with data stored on your own server | Requires hosting skills | Free software; you pay for hosting |
What each tool does
Google Search Console: Install this first if you want search traffic
It shows how many times your site appears in Google search results (impressions), how many clicks it gets, which search terms people use to find you, and which pages Google hasn't indexed.
If you want Google to bring you customers, Search Console matters more than GA4.GA4 only knows that someone arrived; Search Console knows how many people saw you on Google but didn't click. We explained the difference with real numbers in ourSEO audit of our own blog.
Google Analytics (GA4): The most complete, and the hardest
GA4 tracks which channel visitors come from (Google, Threads, LINE, ads), which pages they view, how long they stay, and whether they submit a form or place an order. For measuring ad performance and conversion rates, it's still the tool you need.
The downside is an unintuitive interface, and many reports have to be built yourself. We recommend checking just three places regularly:
- Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition: which channels visitors come from
- Reports → Engagement → Pages and screens: which pages get the most views
- Reports → Engagement → Events: whether form submissions and button clicks are happening
Microsoft Clarity: See how visitors actually use your site
Clarity is a free tool from Microsoft that offers two things GA4 doesn't:
- Heatmaps: where people click most on a page, and where they scroll before leaving
- Session recordings: replays of visitors' mouse movements and clicks on the page (personal data entered in forms is automatically masked)
If you want to know why people view your pricing page but don't fill out the form, watching a few recordings is usually more useful than a full month of GA4 reports.
Cloudflare Web Analytics: When you just want to know how many people visit
If your site already uses Cloudflare, you can turn it on in the dashboard; if not, you can still use it by pasting in a snippet of code. It answers only the most basic questions: how many people visit, which pages they view, and which sites referred them.
Its advantage is that itdoesn't use cookies(small files the browser stores on a visitor's device), so there's no need for a consent pop-up, and it won't slow your site down. If you only want to see whether traffic grew this month, it's much easier than GA4.
Umami: When you want to own your data
Open-source analytics software with a much simpler interface than GA4, storing data on your own server. The software is free, but someone needs to set it up and maintain it; there's also an official cloud version, which is paid.
Paid options
If you want something as simple as Cloudflare but with a few more features, and you don't want to host it yourself, consider a paid service:
- Plausible: from about US$9 per month, priced by pageviews
- Fathom: from about US$15 per month
Neither uses cookies, and both fit everything on a single page. But for most small websites, the free combinations above are enough.
Our recommended combinations
- Standard brand website → Search Console + Cloudflare Web Analytics. One covers search, the other covers visitor counts, with almost no learning curve.
- Measuring ad performance, or running forms or e-commerce → Search Console + GA4, plus Clarity to see where pages cause friction.
- Privacy-conscious, or avoiding Google → Cloudflare Web Analytics or Umami.
Our own website uses GA4 and Search Console, and we run scripts that regularly pull and compare numbers from both, so we don't have to log in and click through the dashboards every time.
The one GA4 setting you must change
By default, the free version of GA4keeps only 2 monthsof detailed data. Standard reports aren't affected, but when you use Explorations for custom analysis, data older than 2 months is no longer available.
Go to Admin → Data collection and modification → Data retention and change "Event data retention" to 14 months. That's the maximum on the free version, and it should be the first thing you change after installing GA4.
FAQ
How do I check website traffic?
For your own site: install Search Console for Google search traffic, and GA4 or Cloudflare Web Analytics for total visitors. For someone else's site: you can only estimate with third-party tools like Similarweb, which are often very inaccurate for small sites.
What's the difference between GA4 and Search Console?
GA4 measures when someone opens your web page, regardless of where they came from. Search Console measures when you're seen and clicked in Google search results, and counts an impression even if the person doesn't click through. The two numbers are never meant to match.
Do I have to install GA4?
Not necessarily. If you only want visitor counts and popular pages, Cloudflare Web Analytics is enough; you only need GA4 to track ad performance and form conversions. We do recommend Search Console for every website: it's free, and it's the only tool that shows your Google search keywords.
Does Microsoft Clarity slow down my website?
It loads an extra snippet of code, with minimal impact. Recordings automatically mask the contents of input fields, but it's best to mention in your privacy policy that you use this kind of analytics tool.
Do I need a cookie consent pop-up if I install analytics?
Tools that use cookies (like GA4 and Clarity) legally require consent when serving visitors in Europe. Taiwan's regulations aren't currently as strict, but disclosing which tools you use in your privacy policy is standard practice. Cookie-free tools like Cloudflare Web Analytics and Plausible avoid this issue entirely.
Know whether people are visiting, then decide what to change
The point of analytics isn't to watch numbers; it's to decide what to change next. When we build websites for clients, we set up Search Console and the right analytics tools as part of the job. To find out how visible your site is in Google and AI search, and why people aren't clicking, see our AI search visibility audit。
Paid service prices are based on public information checked in November 2026, in USD. Features and plans may change; refer to each tool's official website.