Is Beam a good replacement for Google Analytics?

Yes. Beam tracks pageviews, referrers, top pages, countries, browsers, and devices — without any cookies or data sent to Google. No consent banner required.

Does Beam require a cookie consent banner?

No. Beam is cookieless and collects no personal data, so no consent banner is required under GDPR, CCPA, or PECR.

Yes. Beam has a free tier covering 1 site and up to 50,000 pageviews per month. The Pro plan is $5/month for unlimited sites and up to 500,000 pageviews.

Comparison

Beam vs Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the default choice for millions of sites — but it comes with serious privacy trade-offs. Beam gives you the numbers you need without sending your visitors' data to Google.

Need implementation steps?

Use the dedicated Google Analytics migration checklist to remove GA tags, install Beam, and verify first pageviews/events.

Feature	Beam	Competitor
Pricing	Free / $5/mo	Free (data is the product)
Cookies used	None	Yes (1st-party by default)
GDPR compliant	Yes — out of the box	Requires consent banner + DPA
CCPA compliant	Yes	Requires configuration
Consent banner needed	No	Yes
Data ownership	Your data, your servers	Google owns and processes data
Script size	< 2 KB	~50 KB (GA4)
Setup complexity	One script tag	Tag Manager or gtag.js + config
Dashboard simplicity	Clean, focused metrics	Highly complex (steep learning curve)
Real-time data	Yes	Yes
Ad integration	Not applicable	Deep Google Ads integration

Google Analytics 4 is powerful, but that power comes at a cost. Every pageview your visitors generate is sent to Google's servers, where it feeds into their advertising infrastructure. Even with IP anonymization enabled, GA4 still requires a cookie consent banner in the EU under GDPR — meaning a significant share of your visitors will opt out and disappear from your data.

Beam takes the opposite approach. The tracking script collects only what you need — page paths, referrers, country, device type, and browser — without any cookies or persistent identifiers. There's no PII involved, so no consent banner is required anywhere in the world. Your analytics data stays on Cloudflare's infrastructure and is never shared with third parties.

For most site owners, Google Analytics offers far more complexity than they need. Beam's dashboard surfaces the metrics that actually matter — visitors, pageviews, top pages, referrers, and geographic breakdown — in a clean interface you can understand at a glance. If you're tired of wrestling with GA4's event model or worried about privacy compliance, Beam is a straightforward drop-in replacement.

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Beam vs Matomo

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