Abner vs Google Analytics
A detailed comparison for SaaS founders and privacy-conscious teams.
Overview
Google Analytics has been the default web analytics tool for over a decade. It is installed on millions of websites and most teams adopt it without questioning whether it is the right fit. But with the transition from Universal Analytics to GA4, many teams have found themselves struggling with a dramatically different interface, a new event-based data model, and growing concerns about data privacy.
GA4 was built to serve the needs of enterprise advertisers and marketers running complex attribution models across web and app properties. If you are a SaaS founder or a small team trying to understand your traffic and grow your revenue, most of GA4's complexity is overhead you do not need.
Abner is purpose-built for SaaS teams. It combines privacy-first web analytics with built-in SaaS metrics like MRR, churn, and LTV in a single, clean dashboard. No consent banners, no cookie warnings, no learning curve. This post breaks down the differences in detail so you can decide which tool is right for your team.
Privacy and compliance
This is where the two tools diverge most sharply. Google Analytics relies on cookies to identify and track users across sessions. In the EU, this means you are legally required to show a cookie consent banner under GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive. If a visitor declines cookies, GA collects nothing, which means your analytics data is incomplete by design. Several EU data protection authorities have ruled that sending visitor data to Google's US-based servers violates GDPR, putting sites that use GA in a difficult legal position.
Abner takes a fundamentally different approach. There are no cookies, no fingerprinting, and no persistent identifiers. IP addresses are hashed with a daily-rotating salt and never stored in raw form. Because Abner does not collect personal data as defined by GDPR, no consent banner is required. Your site stays clean, your visitors are not interrupted, and you remain compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and PECR by default.
For SaaS teams selling to European customers or operating in regulated industries, this is not a minor detail. Removing the consent banner also improves conversion rates since banner friction can reduce measurable traffic by 20-40%.
Setup and complexity
Setting up GA4 is a multi-step process. You need to create a property, configure a data stream, install the gtag.js snippet, define custom events, set up conversions, and configure data retention settings. If you are migrating from Universal Analytics, none of your historical data carries over. The event-based model is powerful but requires significant upfront investment to configure correctly.
Abner's installation is a single script tag:
<script defer data-site="YOUR_SITE_ID" src="https://www.abner.app/abner.js"></script>The script is under 2KB. Add it to your <head>, deploy, and data starts flowing within seconds. Abner automatically tracks pageviews, referrers, UTM parameters, devices, browsers, countries, and Core Web Vitals. There is no event model to learn, no data streams to configure, and no conversion setup required.
Dashboard and user experience
GA4's interface is notoriously difficult to navigate. Reports are split across multiple sections: Realtime, Lifecycle, User, and Explorations. Finding a simple metric like "how many people visited my pricing page this week" can require multiple clicks and familiarity with GA4's custom report builder. Many teams end up relying on Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio) to build dashboards that make GA4 data legible, which adds another tool to manage.
Abner's dashboard is a single page. Visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, session duration, top pages, referrers, countries, devices, and browsers are all visible at a glance. There are no nested menus, no report builder, and no training required. Your team can open the dashboard and immediately understand what is happening on your site.
Time range selection, filtering by page or referrer, and comparing periods are all built in. The interface is fast because the data model is simple and purpose-built rather than a general-purpose analytics warehouse.
SaaS metrics
This is the biggest gap in Google Analytics for SaaS teams. GA4 has no concept of recurring revenue, churn, or customer lifetime value. If you want to see your MRR alongside your traffic data, you need to connect Stripe to a separate tool like ChartMogul, Baremetrics, or ProfitWell and then mentally correlate the data across two dashboards.
Abner has built-in SaaS metrics. Connect your Stripe account with read-only access and Abner automatically computes:
- MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) with a breakdown of new, expansion, contraction, and churned MRR
- ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)
- Churn Rate by month
- LTV (Customer Lifetime Value)
- ARPU (Average Revenue Per User)
- Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate
- Net New MRR trends over time
Having traffic analytics and revenue metrics in one dashboard means you can directly see the impact of a blog post, a Product Hunt launch, or a pricing change on your actual business outcomes. No context switching, no CSV exports between tools.
Performance impact
Google Analytics' gtag.js script weighs approximately 45KB (gzipped), and it often loads additional modules for features like enhanced measurement, Google Ads integration, and debugging. This adds meaningful weight to your page, particularly on mobile connections. It can negatively affect Core Web Vitals scores, specifically Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Total Blocking Time (TBT), which are ranking factors in Google Search.
Abner's tracking script is under 2KB. It is loaded with the defer attribute, executes after the DOM is parsed, and sends a single small payload per pageview using navigator.sendBeacon. There is zero measurable impact on your Lighthouse score or Core Web Vitals. For teams that care about site speed and SEO, this difference matters.
Data ownership and sampling
GA4 applies data sampling when you run ad-hoc queries or explorations on larger datasets. This means the numbers you see in custom reports may be approximations rather than exact counts. Google is transparent about this, but it can lead to confusing discrepancies between standard reports and explorations. Your data lives in Google's infrastructure, and while you can export it to BigQuery (on the free tier with daily limits, or on GA360 without limits), the data is fundamentally in Google's ecosystem.
Abner never samples your data. Every query runs against the full dataset. You always see exact numbers. You can export any view as a CSV file directly from the dashboard, and the API provides programmatic access to all of your data. Your data is yours. If you ever want to leave Abner, you can export everything and take it with you.
Pricing
Google Analytics is "free," but the cost is paid in other ways. You are giving Google access to your visitors' behavioral data, which feeds into their advertising ecosystem. You are also paying in compliance overhead: legal review of your cookie policy, implementation and maintenance of consent banners, and the risk of regulatory action. If you outgrow the free tier or need guaranteed SLAs and unsampled data, GA360 starts at $150,000 per year.
Abner starts at $19 per month. That includes privacy-first analytics, SaaS metrics, CSV export, API access, and the elimination of cookie consent banners. There is no hidden cost in the form of your visitors' data being used for advertising. You can start a free 14-day trial with no credit card required.
Side-by-side comparison
| Feature | Google Analytics (GA4) | Abner |
|---|---|---|
| Cookies | Yes, requires consent banner | None |
| GDPR compliant | Requires consent + legal review | By default, no consent needed |
| Script size | ~45KB+ | <2KB |
| Setup time | Hours to days | Under 1 minute |
| Dashboard complexity | Steep learning curve | Single page, everything at a glance |
| SaaS metrics (MRR, churn, LTV) | Not available | Built-in with Stripe integration |
| Data sampling | Yes, on ad-hoc queries | Never |
| Data export | BigQuery (with limits) | CSV + API |
| Core Web Vitals impact | Measurable impact | Zero impact |
| Pricing | "Free" / GA360 at $150K+/yr | From $19/mo |
| Data sent to third parties | Yes, to Google | No |
| Open source script | No | Yes |
Who should choose Abner
Abner is not trying to replace Google Analytics for everyone. If you are running a large e-commerce operation with complex attribution needs and a dedicated analytics team, GA4 (or GA360) may be the right tool. But for a large and growing segment of the market, Abner is the better choice.
SaaS founders who want traffic and revenue in one place
If you are running a SaaS business, you should not need two separate tools to understand how your site traffic translates into paying customers. Abner's Stripe integration gives you MRR, churn, LTV, and trial-to-paid conversion alongside your traffic analytics in one dashboard. When you ship a new feature or publish a blog post, you can see both the traffic spike and the revenue impact without switching tools.
Teams who do not want cookie banners
Cookie consent banners are ugly, they hurt conversion rates, and they create ongoing legal maintenance. If your analytics tool does not use cookies or collect personal data, you do not need a banner. Abner lets you remove that friction entirely. Your site loads clean, your visitors are not interrupted, and you are still fully compliant.
Developers who value simplicity
You should not need to read documentation for hours to understand your analytics tool. Abner's installation takes under a minute, the dashboard is self-explanatory, and the script has zero impact on your site's performance. If something more complex is needed, the API is well-documented and straightforward.
Teams selling to privacy-conscious customers
If your customers are in the EU, in healthcare, in education, or simply care about privacy, running Google Analytics on your marketing site sends the wrong signal. Using a privacy-first analytics tool like Abner demonstrates that you take data protection seriously, and it can be a genuine selling point.
Getting started
Switching from Google Analytics to Abner takes less than five minutes. Add the Abner script tag to your site, optionally connect Stripe for SaaS metrics, and you are done. You can run both tools in parallel during a transition period if you want to compare the data.
Start your free 14-day trial — no credit card required. If you have questions, check the installation docs or reach out to our team.