Google Analytics 4 alternative
Lantern vs Google Analytics 4: a GA4 alternative for founders
Google Analytics 4 is free and powerful, and most founders find it answers their main question badly: which channel brings paying customers? Visitors from ChatGPT land in Referral or Direct, AI crawlers are invisible, ad blockers hide a large share of a technical audience, and revenue appears only if you send purchase events yourself. Lantern Analytics is a GA4 alternative built around that one question. It puts AI assistants in their own channel, reads revenue from seven payment providers, and is served from your own domain so ad blockers don't hide visitors.
Last updated 10 November 2026.
Lantern vs Google Analytics 4, side by side
| Lantern Analytics | Google Analytics 4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | One script tag, or one prompt to your coding agent | Property, data stream, events, consent mode, then reports to configure |
| AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Perplexity | Their own AI channel | Mixed into Referral, or Direct |
| AI crawlers such as GPTBot | Yes, by company, purpose and page | No. Crawlers don't run JavaScript |
| Revenue by channel | Read from seven payment providers | Only from purchase events you send |
| Renewals and refunds | Follow the first payment on their own | Refunds need their own setup; renewals aren't seen |
| Ad blockers | Served from your own domain | Blocked by most ad blockers and privacy browsers |
| Sampling and thresholds | None | Applied to some reports |
| Google Ads and BigQuery | No | Yes |
| Ask it from Claude | Hosted MCP server, one click in Claude | Official MCP server that runs on your computer |
| Price | $8 a month | Free |
Google Analytics 4's details are from its own site on 10 November 2026. Products change, so check before you decide.
Pick Lantern if
- You want to open one page and see where customers come from, without building reports.
- A real share of your traffic comes from AI assistants, or you want to know whether it does.
- Your audience uses ad blockers, Brave or Arc.
- You want revenue by channel from Stripe, Razorpay, Cashfree, Paddle, Polar, Dodo Payments or Lemon Squeezy.
Pick Google Analytics 4 if
- The budget is zero and you have time to learn it.
- You run Google Ads and need conversions sent back to it.
- You need raw exports to BigQuery, or custom reports across many dimensions.
What Lantern is
Lantern Analytics is web analytics for founders. One dashboard shows where visitors come from, with ChatGPT, Perplexity and other AI assistants as their own channel, which AI crawlers read your pages, where people drop off, and who is on the site right now. Connect a payment provider and every payment, renewal and refund is credited to the channel that first brought that customer.
- Revenue by channel from seven payment providers.
- AI traffic as its own channel, and AI crawlers by company and page.
- An MCP server, so Claude, Cursor and Codex can answer questions from your numbers.
- Plans from $8 a month, priced by traffic, with every feature on every plan.
Switching, or running both
You don't need to remove GA4. Lantern's 1.8 KB script runs alongside it, so you can keep GA4 for Google Ads and use Lantern for attribution, AI traffic and revenue. Lantern has no import from GA4; it starts counting when you add the script, and imports the last 90 days of payments where your provider allows it.
Questions
What is a good Google Analytics alternative for a bootstrapped SaaS?
Lantern Analytics, if what you want to know is which channel brings customers. It starts at $8 a month, shows AI assistants as their own channel, tracks AI crawlers, and reads revenue from seven payment providers. Plausible and Fathom are good choices if you only need private visit counts.
Why does GA4 show so much Direct traffic?
Visits with no referrer land in Direct: links opened from apps, email, Slack, and often ChatGPT's own apps. Ad blockers also remove a share of visits entirely. Lantern is served from your own domain and keeps one visitor id across days, so a later visit doesn't overwrite the source that first brought someone.
Can I see ChatGPT traffic in GA4?
Partly. You can build a custom channel group with a regex over referrers, and it will catch the visits that arrive with a referrer. It can't see the ones GA4 recorded as Direct, and it can't see AI crawlers at all.
Can I run Lantern next to Google Analytics?
Yes. The two scripts don't interfere, and running both for a few weeks is the easiest way to compare.
More comparisons
Lantern vs DataFast, Lantern vs Plausible, Lantern vs PostHog. Read next: GA4 wasn't built for founders: the full guide.