Most sites running Google Analytics 4 don’t actually need its complexity. If you mostly look at top pages, referrers, and weekly trends, Plausible covers that in a single screen and stops handing your visitor data to Google.
You lose deep funnels, GA4’s audience builder, and any integration that assumes a Google Tag Manager pixel. There’s no equivalent of Looker Studio yet, so custom reporting means the API.
Plausible Cloud starts at $9/month for up to 10K monthly views, or roughly $108/year. Self-hosted is free but adds a small VPS cost, around $5/month. Compared to GA4, the cost is in your time saved, not the line item.
Bloggers, indie SaaS, content sites, and anyone who already finds GA4 overkill. Setup is five minutes: drop in the script, point your domain. If you run paid ad attribution end-to-end, stay with GA for now.