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Tally vs Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 is free, covers sites and apps, and connects to Google Ads. Revenue reaches it when your site sends a purchase event. Tally reads the payment from your provider and shows which visit it came from.

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01In short

Keep GA4 for advertising: it reports what Google Ads cost and what they returned, imports other networks' costs and exports to BigQuery, for free. Use Tally beside it or instead when you sell through Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy or Polar and want every sale, renewal and refund tied to its visit without writing purchase events, with numbers that aren't sampled or thresholded.

02Side by side

Google Analytics 4Tally
PriceFree; Analytics 360 is the paid enterprise tier, priced through sales. [1][2]From $9 a month for 10k events, after 14 days free with no card.
How revenue gets inYour site sends a purchase event with items and a transaction id; refunds are a refund event. They aren't sent automatically. [3][4]Read from Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy or Polar with a key, renewals, refunds and chargebacks included; nothing to send from your pages.
Server-side salesThe Measurement Protocol sends server events to augment browser tagging, not replace it. [5]Payments come from the provider's webhook, so a sale made with the tab closed still counts.
AdsWith Google Ads linked, cost and return on ad spend; non-Google ad cost can be imported. [6][7]Ad accounts aren't read; campaigns show up as sources and UTMs, with the revenue behind them.
Cookies and consentFirst-party _ga cookies with a 2-year default expiry; consent mode passes consent status but provides no banner, and models the gaps. [8][9]Per site: cookieless, one first-party cookie, or cookieless until your banner says yes. Nothing is modelled.
Sampling and thresholdsSampling may apply above 10 million events per query on standard properties; data thresholds withhold rows and can't be adjusted. [10][11]Every number is counted from your own events and payments.
RetentionEvent data retention of 2 or 14 months on standard properties; the setting affects explorations and funnel reports. [12]What was recorded stays in your account while you have it.
RealtimeThe Realtime report covers the last 30 minutes. [13]Live visitors on a globe or a flat map, with a sale alert when a payment is linked.
Raw dataBigQuery export, 1 million events a day in batch on standard properties; BigQuery bills storage and queries beyond the sandbox. [14]A REST API, a command line and an MCP server.

03Where Google Analytics 4 is better

  • Free of charge, for sites and apps alike. [1]
  • Google Ads cost and return on ad spend in the same reports, and imported cost from other ad networks. [6][7]
  • An export of raw events to BigQuery. [14]
  • Covers apps as well as websites across the customer lifecycle. [1]

04What Tally does differently

  • No purchase events to write: payments come from the provider, and so do renewals and refunds months later.
  • Each sale's receipt shows the visits behind it and what linked them, and coverage shows what isn't linked and why.
  • A setup page that checks the snippet live, and one tag of about 3 KB.
  • Peak hours, path to purchase and lifetime value by first source, built from the payments.

05Switching from Google Analytics 4

  • You can keep GA4 for ads and run Tally beside it: add Tally's tag to the head of every page and connect your payment provider.
  • Purchase events you send to GA4 aren't needed by Tally; it reads the payment itself.

06Questions

  • Can I run Tally alongside Google Analytics?

    Yes. They don't share names on the page, so both tags can run at once while you compare, or GA4 can stay for ads.

  • Does Tally need a cookie banner?

    Not in cookieless mode, which sets no cookie. Cookie mode sets one first-party cookie, which in the EU and the UK usually needs consent; consent-first mode waits for your banner.

  • Will Tally show revenue that GA4 missed?

    Tally counts every payment the provider reports, whether or not a purchase event fired in the browser, and says which ones it couldn't tie to a visit.

07Sources

Each statement about Google Analytics 4 comes from Google Analytics 4's own pages, read on November 9, 2026. Products change: check theirs before you decide.

  1. Google Analyticsmarketingplatform.google.com
  2. Google Analytics 360marketingplatform.google.com
  3. Google Analytics developers: measure ecommercedevelopers.google.com
  4. Google Analytics Help: recommended eventssupport.google.com
  5. Google Analytics developers: Measurement Protocoldevelopers.google.com
  6. Google Analytics Help: Google Ads metricssupport.google.com
  7. Google Analytics Help: cost data importsupport.google.com
  8. Google Analytics Help: cookie usagesupport.google.com
  9. Google Analytics Help: consent modesupport.google.com
  10. Google Analytics Help: data samplingsupport.google.com
  11. Google Analytics Help: data thresholdssupport.google.com
  12. Google Analytics Help: data retentionsupport.google.com
  13. Google Analytics Help: Realtime reportsupport.google.com
  14. Google Analytics Help: BigQuery exportsupport.google.com

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