BusinessMCP

The Google Analytics alternative for teams that want answers, not a consent banner

Cookieless, first-party analytics with six attribution models and an AI business analyst that reads it — no banner required from us, free to 300 visitors.

Try BusinessMCP freeHow we do cookieless web analytics
Free plan available · No credit card
Price
GA4: free (Google Analytics 360 is enterprise-priced) · BusinessMCP: free to 300 visitors/mo, then from $19/mo
Switching gets you
Cookieless tracking that needs no consent banner from us, six attribution models instead of one, the companies behind your traffic, and an MCP endpoint so Claude or ChatGPT can query your numbers.
Stay with Google Analytics 4 if
You live in Explorations and BigQuery, need native Google Ads linking, or your traffic is far beyond what a $19–$499 plan should carry.
Pricing verified September 15, 2026
Feature comparison — pricing verified September 2026. Sources: public pricing pages + published teardowns.
 BusinessMCPGoogle Analytics 4
Entry priceFree (300 visitors/mo); paid from $19/moFree (360 is enterprise-priced)
Cookieless by defaultYesNo (first-party _ga cookie, 2 years)
Cookie banner required for analytics (EU)NoYes (Consent Mode v2 behind a banner)
Ad-blocker-resilient first-party scriptYes (serve it from link.yourdomain.com)No (needs a server-side GTM container you host)
Multi-touch attribution models6 (first, last, last non-direct, linear, U-shaped, time decay)Data-driven + last-click only (others removed Nov 2023)
Names the visiting companyYes (Starter, $19/mo)No
AI can query it (MCP endpoint)Yes (Claude/ChatGPT, free plan included)No native MCP (Data API / BigQuery)
Session replay + heatmaps in the same toolYes (Growth, $79/mo)No
Open source or self-hostedNoNo

The full picture

Google Analytics 4 is free, ubiquitous and genuinely powerful in the hands of an analyst: Explorations, a BigQuery export of every raw event, and native Google Ads integration are things almost nobody else gives away. This page is not about price. It is about what GA4 costs you in consent, complexity and answers.

GA4 stores a client ID in a first-party _ga cookie that lasts two years, which is why EU traffic needs a consent banner and Consent Mode v2 to be measured lawfully; five national data-protection authorities ruled against Google Analytics transfers between 2022 and 2023, and the EU–US framework that reopened the door is being challenged in court again. BusinessMCP is first-party and cookieless by design, keeps company-level rather than personal profiles, offers six attribution models where GA4 now offers data-driven and last-click, and exposes everything to an AI business analyst — plus your own Claude or ChatGPT through an MCP endpoint — from a free plan.

Why teams switch

The banner is the product tax

GA4 needs the _ga cookie to distinguish visitors, so EU traffic needs consent before it counts, and a share of your visitors will decline. Consent Mode fills the gap with modelled data. BusinessMCP sends no cookie and builds no personal profile, so it measures every visit under legitimate interest and you decide whether to show a banner at all.

The attribution models GA4 deleted

Since November 2023, GA4 offers data-driven attribution and two last-click models — first click, linear, time decay and position-based are gone. BusinessMCP computes first, last, last non-direct, linear, U-shaped and time-decay credit at query time over your whole session history, so switching models never needs a re-collection.

Retention and the free-tier ceiling

A standard GA4 property keeps event-level data for Explorations for 2 or 14 months, and very large properties are held to 2. BusinessMCP keeps sessions and daily rollups forever and raw events for up to 13 months, and the numbers are yours to export as CSV or pull through the API.

Ask a question instead of building a report

GA4 answers through the interface, the Data API or a BigQuery query you write. BusinessMCP ships an AI business analyst with your analytics, CRM, revenue and connected tools in context, and the same data is one Bearer key away from your own Claude or ChatGPT via MCP. The free plan includes 30 AI runs a month.

Who visited, not just how many

GA4 will never tell you which company was on your pricing page. On Starter ($19/mo) BusinessMCP resolves the company behind anonymous B2B visits from its own IP graph — roughly 20–35% of B2B traffic, as with every vendor — and hands the account to a CRM that ships in the same product.

Real data, not a mockup

What it looks like in BusinessMCP

Recorded on our own site, PII scrubbed — the same product you get on the free plan.

app.businessmcp.com/assistant

What can I help you grow today?

Pick a question our founder actually asked and watch the analyst pull the real numbers.

Try it on your data — free

A real conversation from our workspace, replayed.

Google Analytics 4 pricing, and what the free tier really includes

GA4 facts are from Google’s own documentation as of September 2026. The EU–US Data Privacy Framework (adopted July 2023) is under legal challenge; if it falls, the 2022 DPA decisions become the operative precedent again.

PlanPriceNotes
GA4 standard propertyFreeunlimited hits; Explorations, Data API, BigQuery export up to 1M events/day
Event-level data retention2 or 14 monthsstandard properties; 26/38/50 months are 360-only
Google Analytics 360Custom (enterprise)higher limits, SLAs, longer retention; sold through Google and resellers
Hidden costsConsent management + server-side tagginga CMP for Consent Mode v2 and, for ad-blocker resilience, a server-side GTM container you host

Sources: Google Analytics Help (data retention, attribution models, BigQuery export) and Google’s cookie policy, checked September 2026. GA4 itself costs nothing; the spend is in consent tooling, server-side tagging and analyst time.

Where BusinessMCP is NOT the right choice

An alternatives page you can trust has to cut both ways. Honestly:

  • Google Analytics 4 is free at any traffic volume and ships Explorations plus a BigQuery export. BusinessMCP has no exploration builder and no warehouse export — the Free plan caps at 300 unique visitors a month and there is no Google Ads native linking.
  • If you only want a pageview dashboard, Plausible ($9/mo) and Fathom ($15/mo) are cheaper for pure analytics, and both offer a public shareable stats page that BusinessMCP does not have.
  • BusinessMCP is not open source and cannot be self-hosted. Matomo and Umami can run entirely on your own server for a $0 licence, which is the right answer for a strict data-residency policy or a zero-vendor stack.
  • Raw events are retained for up to 13 months (sessions and daily rollups are kept for the life of the account). Plausible advertises three-to-five-year retention on paid plans and a self-hosted Matomo keeps whatever you keep.
  • Product-analytics features — feature flags, user-cohort funnels, experiments on app events, error tracking — belong to PostHog or Mixpanel. BusinessMCP measures websites and the business behind them, not in-app product usage.

Frequently asked questions

Is Google Analytics 4 GDPR-compliant?

GA4 can be run in a compliant way, but only with valid consent and Consent Mode v2 behind a banner, EU data controls, and a transfer basis that currently rests on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. Between January 2022 and March 2023 the Austrian, French, Italian, Danish and Norwegian authorities each found specific Google Analytics deployments unlawful after Schrems II. BusinessMCP is cookieless and company-level, which is the conservative posture for EU traffic.

Does BusinessMCP replace GA4 for free?

Up to 300 unique visitors a month, yes — the free plan includes cookieless analytics, goals, the CRM, 30 AI runs a month and your own MCP endpoint. Above that, paid plans run $19 to $499 a month. GA4 stays free at any volume, so if the money matters more than the banner, GA4 wins on price.

What attribution does GA4 offer compared with BusinessMCP?

GA4 offers data-driven attribution plus paid-and-organic last click and Google-paid-channels last click; first click, linear, time decay and position-based were removed in November 2023. BusinessMCP computes first, last, last non-direct, linear, U-shaped and time-decay credit at query time and lets you compare all six side by side.

Can I keep my GA4 history?

Yes. BusinessMCP imports GA4 history at day level (sessions, users, key events) through your Google account and shows it as a labelled “before you had us” series. It is Google’s definitions, not ours, so it is never merged into the first-party totals.

Do ad blockers affect BusinessMCP the way they affect GA4?

Less. The tracker is first-party and can be served from your own subdomain, which most blocklists do not touch, whereas googletagmanager.com and google-analytics.com are blocked by almost every list. No client-side script is immune, which is why BusinessMCP also accepts server-side events and Stripe revenue.

Other honest alternatives

Plausible

Open-source, cookieless dashboard from $9/mo; the simplest GA4 replacement if you only need pageviews and goals.

Compare

Matomo

The closest feature match to GA4 — and free if you self-host it.

Compare

PostHog

Free to 1M events a month; the right choice when what you measure is a product, not a marketing site.

Compare

How to migrate

  1. 1

    Install the BusinessMCP snippet alongside GA4 — both are one script tag and they do not conflict.

  2. 2

    Import your GA4 history (day-level sessions and users) so the “before” period is on the same chart; the import keeps Google’s definitions and is labelled as such.

  3. 3

    Recreate your key events as goals with a lead or conversion role and connect Stripe for revenue; the six attribution models work from day one over the sessions BusinessMCP has seen.

  4. 4

    Once the numbers reconcile for a few weeks, decide whether GA4 stays on for Google Ads linking or comes off with the banner.

Sources & verification

Every price on this page traces to a public source, last verified September 15, 2026. Spotted a change? Tell us and we'll re-verify.

  1. [1]Google: GA4 data retention options (2 or 14 months on standard properties)
  2. [2]Google: GA4 attribution models (first click, linear, time decay, position-based removed Nov 2023)
  3. [3]Google: BigQuery export for GA4 (1M events/day on standard properties)
  4. [4]Google: how Google uses cookies (the _ga cookie lasts 2 years)
  5. [5]noyb: EU DPAs order a stop to Google Analytics (Austria, France, Italy, EDPS)
  6. [6]Sleek Analytics: Is Google Analytics GDPR-compliant in 2026? (May 2026 teardown)
  7. [7]Google: consent mode reference (analytics_storage denied, ad_user_data / ad_personalization)

Keep reading

Cookieless web analytics, explainedConsent Mode, without the mysteryMarketing attribution: the models GA4 deletedWebsite tracking laws by countryCookieless analytics tools compared

Companies running MCP servers with us

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