Comparison

Ripples vs Google Analytics

Google Analytics 4 is free, and if you only need traffic reporting it is hard to argue with the price. The gap is what happens after the click: GA4 can tell you a channel drove 40 signups, but joining that to what those people actually paid you in Stripe, and whether they were still around in month three, is a data project. Ripples ships that join as the product. Pick GA4 if you need free, broad, Google-ecosystem reporting. Pick Ripples if the question you keep asking is whether your marketing paid for itself.

Checked August 2026 No affiliate links We are biased, and we say where

Choose Ripples if

You want spend, revenue and retention in one place without building it
You bill through Stripe, Paddle, Polar or Lemon Squeezy
You are one person and GA4 has been open in a tab, unread, for a year

Choose GA4 if

You need free at any scale, on any kind of site
Google Ads conversion bidding is central to how you buy traffic
You want BigQuery export and unlimited custom reporting

Side by side

Ripples and GA4, row by row.

Prices are the published list prices as of August 2026. The last group is the one where GA4 may well beat us, and it is in the same table as the rest on purpose.

Feature and price comparison between Ripples and Google Analytics
Price
	Ripples	GA4
Entry price	Free until $1K MRR, then $9/mo	Free
What the price meters	100,000 visits and actions a month	Free up to 10M events a month, then GA360
Next tier up	$19/mo for 10 projects	GA360, from roughly $50,000 a year
Trial	No card, nothing gated	Not applicable
Revenue tracking on the entry plan	Included	Only if you instrument purchases yourself
Time to a useful number	One script tag, about 30 seconds	Property, data stream, events, conversions, audiences
Money and payback
Revenue from Stripe, Paddle, Polar or Lemon Squeezy	Yes	Manual, via Measurement Protocol
Revenue credited to the channel that brought the customer	Yes	Yes, if you send purchase events
Payback period, per channel	Yes	No
Google Ads spend imported	Yes	Yes, native Google Ads link
ROAS against real paid revenue	Yes	Yes, on click-day conversions
Retention
Retention curves	Yes	Cohort exploration
Retention split by acquisition channel	Yes	Possible in Explorations, with setup
Traffic
Real-time traffic, referrers and campaigns	Yes	Yes
AI assistant referrals as their own channel	Yes	Yes, default channel group since May 2026
Telegram Mini Apps and native apps	Yes	Firebase SDK
What Ripples deliberately does not do
Session replay	No	No
Heatmaps	No	No
Feature flags and A/B tests	No	No
Open source	No	No
Self-hostable	No	No

Prices and features change. If you find a row here that is out of date, tell us and we will fix it: a comparison page nobody can trust is worth less to us than no page at all.

The real difference

GA4 measures the click. The money arrives later.

GA4 is built around a session and a conversion event. That model works when the conversion is the purchase, which is why it fits ecommerce so well. Subscription software breaks it: the signup is free, the money shows up on day 4, the second payment on day 34, and the churn on day 61. None of those are the event GA4 optimised for.

You can close the gap. Send purchase events through the Measurement Protocol, keep a user_id join, export to BigQuery, and write the payback query yourself. Plenty of teams do. It is a week of work and it stays your job forever, which is a fine trade when someone is paid to do it and a bad one when that someone is you.

Ripples starts from the other end. Revenue comes from your billing provider rather than from an event you have to remember to fire, spend comes from the Google Ads API, and both are joined to the first touch that brought each person. Payback per channel is the default screen, not a query you write.

Being straight with you

Pick GA4 instead if any of this is you.

We would rather you found out here than after installing.

Free is the requirement

GA4 is free up to 10 million events a month. Nothing else in this category comes close, and if budget is the constraint that is the whole argument.

You buy on Google Ads conversion bidding

The native GA4 to Google Ads link feeds conversions back for Smart Bidding. Ripples reads your spend, it does not send conversions back to bid on.

You want raw data

The free BigQuery export gives you every event to query however you like. Ripples gives you the answers, not the warehouse.

You are not a subscription business

For a content site, a shop, or anything where the conversion really is the purchase, GA4 fits the shape of the problem.

There is a longer list of things Ripples deliberately does not do on what we don't do.

Questions

Ripples and GA4, asked plainly.

Is Ripples a Google Analytics alternative?

Yes, for subscription software. Ripples replaces GA4 for solo founders and small SaaS teams who care about which channels bring paying customers who stay. It is not a like-for-like GA4 replacement: there is no BigQuery export, no Google Ads conversion bidding link, and no support for the reporting depth a marketing team expects.

Can I run Ripples and Google Analytics at the same time?

Yes, and quite a few people do while they get comfortable. Both are a script tag, they do not conflict, and running them side by side for a month is a reasonable way to see whether the numbers agree.

Can Ripples import my Google Analytics history?

No. Ripples starts collecting the day you install it. Historical GA4 data stays in GA4, which is a reason to install early rather than a reason to wait.

Does Ripples use cookies like GA4 does?

Ripples uses a first-party identifier and no cross-site tracking, so there is no advertising profile being built. GA4 in its default configuration is a Google advertising product, which is the reason a good part of this category exists.

Is GA4 really free?

Yes, up to 10 million events a month, after which you are looking at Google Analytics 360 at roughly $50,000 a year. The cost of GA4 is not money, it is the configuration and the reporting time.

Sources

Checked August 2026. Google Analytics is a trademark of its owner and is not affiliated with Ripples. We take no affiliate commission from anyone on this page.