The open-source Google Analytics alternative
Want product analytics without handing your data to Google? Pug is open source and self-hostable — own every event, no sampling, GDPR-friendly. Here’s an honest look at where Pug fits and where GA4 still wins.
- You want to own your data instead of sending it to Google
- You need analytics you can self-host for GDPR comfort
- You want full, unsampled event data
- You want free analytics with zero infrastructure to run
- You depend on Google Ads and BigQuery integration
- You want the most ubiquitous, mature web analytics
Pug vs Google Analytics, feature by feature
The short version: choose Pug to own and self-host focused product analytics. Google Analytics may be the better fit depending on what you need — the honest detail is below.
| Capability | Pug this page | Google Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Ownership & privacy | ||
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Proprietary |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No |
| Data stays on your servers | Yes | No |
| Not shared with an ad platform | Yes | No |
| Product analytics | ||
| Trends, funnels, retention | Yes | Yes |
| Full unsampled event data | Yes | Sampled (raw via BigQuery) |
| Unified person profiles | Yes | Limited |
| Autocapture (clicks, forms, rage/dead) | Yes | Partial |
| Cost & ecosystem | ||
| Price | Free (self-host) | Free |
| Google Ads & BigQuery integration | Not in Pug | Yes |
| Integration ecosystem | Focused | Vast |
| Practical | ||
| SDKs | Web, Flutter, Node | gtag.js + many |
| Maturity | Open beta | Mature |
Google Analytics capabilities reflect its publicly documented product; verify the latest on the vendor’s site.
Why look for a Google Analytics alternative
Your data, not Google’s
GA4 processes your visitors’ data on Google’s infrastructure. Pug is AGPL-3.0 and self-hostable — every event stays on your own servers, never shared with an advertising company.
Simpler GDPR posture
Self-hosting Pug keeps data inside your own infrastructure, which sidesteps the transatlantic-transfer questions that surround GA4 in the EU. (This is context, not legal advice.)
Full data, no sampling
Pug stores every event in ClickHouse and queries the raw data. GA4 samples larger reports and pushes you to BigQuery to get the unsampled events back.
Where Google Analytics is still the better choice
Pug is a focused tool, not a platform. If your team needs any of the following, Google Analytics is the better fit — these don’t ship in Pug:
- Completely free at almost any scale, with no servers to run
- Deep integration with Google Ads and Search
- Native BigQuery export and a vast ecosystem
- Ubiquitous, mature, and exhaustively documented
- Built-in marketing and attribution reporting
Focused product analytics, fully yours
Everything below ships today and runs the same whether you self-host or use the free cloud.
Autocapture out of the box
Page views, clicks, scrolls, form submits, plus rage and dead clicks — captured after one init(), then enriched with geo, device, and UTM on ingest.
Six insight types
Trends, Funnels, Retention cohorts, Segmentation, User-flow Sankey, and Top-K — all over raw events, filterable by any property.
Unified profiles
Anonymous events merge into one person on identify(). Traits like plan or email live on the profile and filter every insight, across devices.
Dashboards
KPI, line, area, bar, table, and Sankey tiles on one shared time window, with period-over-period comparison and threshold coloring.
Moving from Google Analytics to Pug
Pug’s model is straightforward: events with properties, a person per user via identify(), and traits that filter every insight.
SDKs available today are Web (TypeScript), Flutter (Dart), and Node — native mobile and React Native are on the roadmap. Point your tracking calls at Pug, identify users where you already identify them in Google Analytics, and anonymous history merges into a single profile. For setup steps and the API, see the SDKs page and the docs.
Google Analytics alternative — your questions
Is Pug a Google Analytics alternative?
Yes, for product analytics. Pug is open source and self-hostable, with trends, funnels, retention, user flows, and unified profiles. GA4 is free but Google-hosted and built around web and marketing analytics.
Is Pug more GDPR-friendly than GA4?
When self-hosted, your data stays on your own infrastructure rather than being processed by Google, which simplifies the GDPR picture. This is general context, not legal advice — review your own obligations.
GA4 is free — why switch?
GA4’s price is paid in data ownership, sampling, and complexity. Pug’s self-hosted edition is free too, keeps your data yours, and stores every event unsampled.
Does Pug sample my data?
No. Every event is stored in ClickHouse and queried in full. GA4 applies sampling to larger reports unless you export raw data to BigQuery.
Can Pug fully replace Google Analytics?
For product analytics, yes. For Google Ads attribution and the broader Google marketing ecosystem, GA4 still has the integration advantage — many teams keep GA for ads and use Pug for product behavior.
Own your product analytics.
Open source, self-hostable on one Go binary, and free during open beta. Start a project and see live events in minutes.