Free Google Analytics Plugins vs Site Kit
Before spending anything on analytics for WordPress, it is worth establishing what the free options already do, because one of them is made by the company that runs the analytics platform, installed on millions of sites, and provides the dashboard that most paid plugins are actually selling.
That is the honest starting point for this whole category. This article sets out what Site Kit does and genuinely does not, names the four things paid dashboards add, and makes the case for the half of Site Kit that most people ignore, which is more useful than the analytics half.
Verified August 2026. Plugin capabilities change; confirm current features before making a purchase decision.
What Site Kit does, and does not
It connects the services and shows summaries in wp-admin. Traffic, top pages, search performance and page speed data, in one place, without leaving WordPress. That dashboard is the product most paid plugins are charging for.
It sets up tracking without you touching code, which removes the main practical obstacle for non-technical owners.
It brings search performance data, which almost no paid analytics plugin does, and which answers questions traffic numbers cannot.
What it does not do: it will not tell you which author or category performs best, because that needs custom dimensions. Its e-commerce reporting is basic rather than detailed. It does not track form conversions. And its reports are summaries designed to send you to the full interface rather than replace it.
Those four absences are, almost exactly, the four things paid dashboards sell. Which makes the buying decision unusually clear: install the free one, find out whether you need any of the four, and buy only then.
The 6 options compared
1. Site Kit
Free, official, and the default recommendation for most sites.
Being made by the same company as the services it connects to means the integrations do not break when something changes at the far end, which is a genuine reliability advantage over third-party connectors. Setup is guided, the dashboard is comprehensible to a non-technical owner, and there is no licence to renew or tier to outgrow. The reservation people raise is that it connects several services and can feel like more than they wanted; the answer is to enable only the modules you need. The other consideration is that its reports are deliberately summaries, so a data-hungry user will still be opening the full interface, which is fine because that is free too.
- Price: Free
- wp-admin dashboard: Yes
- Search performance data: Yes
- Watch out for: Enable only the modules you want
2. GA Google Analytics
The minimal free option: it places the tracking code and does nothing else.
For somebody who reads reports in the analytics interface anyway, this is exactly the right amount of software. No dashboard, no admin widgets, no additional front-end weight beyond the standard tag, and nothing to configure beyond the property identifier. It is the lightest way to get tracking onto a site without editing a theme, and it has been maintained for years by a developer known for small, well-behaved plugins. Choose it over the official option when you specifically do not want a dashboard, do not want additional services connected, and value keeping your plugin footprint as small as possible.
- Price: Free
- wp-admin dashboard: No, by design
- Search performance data: No
- Watch out for: You read reports elsewhere
3. GTM4WP
Free, and the most capable data collection available at any price if you are comfortable in a tag manager.
It builds a data layer containing author, category, post type, publication date and full e-commerce detail, which is precisely the collection capability that the $199.50 tiers charge for. Everything then flows to whichever destinations you configure, so analytics, advertising platforms and anything else share one implementation rather than each having a plugin. For a developer or an agency, this is the correct architecture and it costs nothing. What it does not provide is any reporting inside WordPress, so pair it with the free official plugin if somebody non-technical needs to see numbers, which is a combination that covers almost every requirement for free.
- Price: Free
- wp-admin dashboard: No
- Search performance data: No
- Watch out for: Requires tag manager competence
4. Independent and self-hosted analytics
Free tiers that answer a different question: what if the analytics lived in your own database?
These record visits locally, report inside WordPress natively, and know about authors and categories without any dimension configuration because the data sits beside your posts. They also add little or nothing to page weight and send no visitor data to a third party. For a content site whose questions are “which articles work” and “which writers hold attention”, this frequently answers more than the major platform does, faster and with less setup. The limitations are depth, the absence of advertising integration, and database growth on a busy site. Worth evaluating alongside the free official plugin rather than treating as a fallback.
- Price: Free, with cheap paid tiers
- wp-admin dashboard: Yes, natively
- Search performance data: No
- Watch out for: Database growth and less depth
5. MonsterInsights and ExactMetrics
The paid dashboards, from one parent company, with matching ladders. $99.50 introductory at the entry tier, $199.50 for e-commerce and custom dimensions.
What the licence adds over the free official plugin is the four things listed earlier: detailed e-commerce reporting, custom dimensions for author and category, form conversion tracking, and reports substantial enough that you genuinely do not need to open the analytics interface. For a store or a publication where those matter, that is real value and the products deliver it competently. For a brochure site or a small blog, it is a subscription for a nicer version of a screen that already exists for free. Establish which you are before buying, and note that the introductory figures are not the renewal figures.
- Price: From $99.50 introductory
- wp-admin dashboard: Yes, the most detailed
- Search performance data: No
- Watch out for: Renewal pricing and the $199.50 gate
6. Analytify
The paid option that costs least to try. $99 for two sites with e-commerce included, $199 unlimited, $499 lifetime.
Its per-post statistics in the post list are the feature that most changes behaviour, because the number appears where you already work rather than on a dashboard you have to visit. That is worth more in practice than a more detailed report nobody opens. Including e-commerce at the entry tier and covering two sites makes it the cheapest way to get past the free options’ main limitation. If your month with the free official plugin ended with “I need store data” or “I want this in the post list”, this is the smallest purchase that resolves it. Verify your specific reports exist during the refund window.
- Price: $99 for two sites
- wp-admin dashboard: Yes, plus per-post stats
- Search performance data: No
- Watch out for: Smaller product; verify your reports
Comparison table
| Option | Price | Dashboard | Search data | Custom dimensions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Site Kit | Free | Yes | Yes | No |
| GA Google Analytics | Free | No | No | No |
| GTM4WP | Free | No | No | Yes |
| Self-hosted analytics | Free plus cheap tiers | Yes | No | Native |
| MonsterInsights / ExactMetrics | From $99.50 | Most detailed | No | At $199.50 |
| Analytify | $99 | Yes, per post | No | Verify |
The underrated half: search performance data
Most people install the official plugin for the traffic numbers and ignore the search data, which is the wrong way round. Traffic tells you what happened; search data tells you what people were looking for, which is what you can act on.
- Queries with impressions but few clicks tell you where a better title or description would earn traffic you are already eligible for. This is the highest-return report in the whole category and no paid analytics plugin provides it.
- Queries you rank for but never wrote about are commissioning briefs. If a page ranks incidentally for something, a page written deliberately about it will do better.
- Position changes over time show which content is decaying and needs updating, before the traffic drop shows up in your analytics.
- Page-level query lists tell you what a specific article is actually being found for, which is frequently not what you intended when writing it.
- None of this is in your analytics platform, which sees traffic after arrival and knows nothing about what was searched. The two datasets answer different questions.
- It is free, and it is already connected if you installed the official plugin, which makes ignoring it the most common wasted opportunity in WordPress analytics.
A reasonable monthly habit for most sites: look at ten queries with high impressions and low clicks, improve those titles and descriptions, and check the results next month. That is worth more than any dashboard upgrade discussed here, and it costs nothing.
Frequently asked questions
Is Site Kit enough on its own?
For most sites, yes. It provides the wp-admin dashboard paid plugins sell, plus search data they do not. Add a paid plugin only when it fails to answer a real question.
What do paid dashboards actually add?
Four things: detailed e-commerce reporting, custom dimensions for author and category, form conversion tracking, and reports deep enough to avoid the analytics interface entirely.
Does Site Kit slow my site down?
It installs the standard tag like everything else. Its admin components affect logged-in users only, so the visitor-facing cost is the tag itself.
Can I get custom dimensions free?
Yes, with a free tag manager plugin that exposes author, category and post type in a data layer. What the paid tier sells is the reporting, not the collection.
Should I run Site Kit and a paid plugin together?
Only with one of them installing the tracking code. Two tags means duplicated pageviews and inflated numbers, which is a common and confusing mistake.
Which free option is lightest?
A minimal snippet plugin, which adds nothing beyond the standard tag. A self-hosted analytics tool is lighter still, since it avoids the third-party tag entirely.
The verdict
Install Site Kit and use it for a month before buying anything. It provides the dashboard the paid plugins charge for, adds search performance data they do not, and costs nothing at any scale.
Then buy only the thing it failed to give you. Store data or per-post statistics point to Analytify at $99; author dimensions with a developer available point to GTM4WP, free.
If your questions are editorial, try a self-hosted analytics plugin instead, which reports by author and category natively and adds nothing to your page weight.
And use the search performance half. Ten queries a month with high impressions and low clicks, better titles written for them, results checked next month. That habit outperforms every dashboard upgrade in this comparison and costs nothing.
