Cabin vs Google Analytics
Google Analytics can do a lot. But with all that power comes complexity: a maze of reports, explorations, funnels and segments. Throw in a consent banner and a heavy script download for every visitor, and it becomes a lot of machinery for a simple question.
You want to know which pages people read last week. In GA4 that's a report if you're lucky and an exploration if you're not, and the number at the end often arrives with a small icon beside it warning you that it's an estimate.
Most websites and businesses just want to know how many people visited, where from, and what they did, without routing their visitors through an ad company to find out. That's what Cabin is for.
Why people leave Google Analytics
Some people suggest that Google Analytics is illegal in Europe. It's not. But legal consent is the part that you need to be careful about.
GA4 sets cookies by default, and a cookie that recognises a returning visitor needs permission in the EU and the UK. So every person who declines your banner, dismisses it or simply ignores it is a person your analytics can't count. Google's answer is Consent Mode: a signal wired through every tag, telling Google what each visitor agreed to, with the gap filled in by modelled data. A statistical guess, rather than a count.
of data missing on sites with no consent banner
of data missing on sites with one
Those are an agency's numbers, not Cabin's: 60 comparisons of GA4 against systems of record across 33 accounts. The banner roughly doubles what goes missing.
Cabin sets no cookies, builds no fingerprint and creates no identifier of any kind, so there's nothing to ask permission for. No banner, no Consent Mode, no modelled gap. Everyone gets counted, whatever they click. There's a longer version of that argument in the banner you don't need.
Ad blockers take the other bite, and they block Cabin too. Block lists draw a hard line on anything that resembles tracking, and everyone has the right to block whatever requests they like, so that's fair enough. On paid plans you can serve Cabin from your own domain with a single CNAME record, which puts those visits back in your numbers without changing anything for the visitor.
Missing-data figures: Orbit Media Studios, 60 GA4 comparisons across 33 accounts.
Cabin's script is 70x lighter than Google Analytics. On Google's best day.
Cabin's gzipped script is 1.2 KB, and gzipped is the number that matters: those are the bytes that actually travel down the wire for every visitor. Google Tag Manager piles on another 30 to 50 KB before a single tag fires. Cabin's script is cached for 30 days, too. gtag.js, for 15 minutes.
per visitor, on their first page
That's the whole claim, and you can check it in one command. It's a smaller download, a faster load and less mobile data for every person who visits you, and it's small enough that it won't show up in your performance budget.
What Cabin won't do is turn that into "we've saved X tonnes of CO₂ across the web". The maths behind those numbers leans on kWh-per-gigabyte figures that credible sources disagree on by an order of magnitude, and the script is cached anyway. Here's the long version of why, including the dirty server region Cabin still runs on.
Measured gzipped, straight off the wire: Cabin 1,212 bytes. gtag.js was 85,948 bytes on 19 July 2026 and 148,838 on 16 August 2026, so 70x is Google on its best day, not its worst. Check either of them yourself with curl -s -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" <url> | wc -c.
Side by side
No cookies, no fingerprint, no identifier of any kind. Nothing is stored on anyone's device, so there's no consent banner to show.
Sets cookies by default, so EU and UK visitors have to be asked. GA4 itself is legal in Europe. Getting consent right, and keeping it right, is the work.
One line of HTML, live in about 30 seconds. Everything that matters sits on one screen you don't need training to read.
Set up a property, a data stream, then filters and events. Google runs courses on it, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Every visit counted, whatever anyone clicked, with no sampling and no modelling. Ad blockers still stop the script, so paid plans let you serve it from your own domain.
Loses the visitors who decline or dismiss the banner, and the ones running an ad blocker. Consent Mode fills part of that back in with modelled estimates.
Estimates the CO₂ of every page you measure, on paid plans. Cabin's own servers run on the cleanest grids available, and the numbers are published, including the region that looks bad.
No carbon reporting, and the heavier script adds a little to every page load.
30 days on Free, a year on Plus, and no limit on Scale. Worth knowing before you start on the free plan.
Event-level data expires after 2 or 14 months, your choice. Standard reports keep the aggregates beyond that, but explorations built on raw events stop going back.
An MCP server on every plan, including Free. Point Claude or ChatGPT at your dashboard and ask it questions, or let it add a domain for you.
Data and Admin APIs exist, but no native agent support. You build, authorise and host that integration yourself.
Free for one site and 10,000 pageviews a month. Plus is $14 a month for ten sites and 100,000 pageviews.
Free at almost any scale, which is the point worth thinking about: it's a free product from the world's largest advertising company.
Nothing to consent to
Cabin counts visitors using the browser's own cache rather than a cookie, so nothing is stored on anyone's device and no identifier exists to consent to. Your numbers stop depending on who clicked Accept.
How Cabin counts without cookiesAnalytics your AI can drive
Cabin speaks MCP out of the box, so the agent you already build with can pull a report or add a domain mid-conversation. No API to wire up, no glue code to host, and it's on the free plan too.
See MCP accessOne line, 1.2 KB
Small enough that it won't show up in your performance budget or your Largest Contentful Paint, and light enough that measuring your carbon footprint doesn't noticeably add to it.
Check your site's carbonSwitch to Cabin if...
- You want to know who visits and what they do, without a data-science project.
- You'd rather not run a consent banner or hand visitor data to an ad company.
- You care about a fast, light site with a low carbon footprint.
- You want your AI agent to read and manage your analytics for you.
- You look after sites for clients and want to hand them something they'll open.
Stay on Google Analytics if...
- You need funnels, session replay, heatmaps or A/B testing. Cabin has none of them.
- You run paid advertising and need attribution across campaigns and channels.
- You want raw event data in BigQuery to build your own reporting on top of.
- You need years of GA history inside the new tool on day one. Cabin can't import it yet.
The honest way to decide is not to decide yet. Leave GA4 where it is, add Cabin's line of HTML beside it, and give the two of them a fortnight. The numbers won't match. Most of the difference is the visitors Google Analytics never saw.
How switching actually goes
- 1
Leave GA4 exactly where it is
Nothing about adding Cabin touches your existing property, so there's no moment where you're measuring nothing. Turn GA off later, or never.
- 2
Add one line of HTML
Paste the script tag into your site, or point your AI agent at the docs and let it do it. Data starts appearing in about 30 seconds, and there's nothing new for your visitors to dismiss.
- 3
Compare them for a fortnight
The two numbers won't match, and the gap is the interesting part: it's mostly the visitors who declined the banner or blocked the tag. On a paid plan, a single CNAME record serves Cabin from your own domain and closes the ad-blocker half of that gap.
What doesn't come with you
Your GA history stays in GA. Cabin can't import it yet, so the honest plan is to leave the old property switched on and read it when you need last year's numbers. Free keeps 30 days of history, Plus keeps a year. Your goals, funnels and custom event definitions don't transfer either, because Cabin doesn't have most of them: custom events on paid plans are the closest thing.
“...more accurate reporting since the GA4 changeover.”
Tim Crook
Senior Frontend Engineer, London Review of Books
Common questions
Is Google Analytics illegal in Europe?
No. The 2022 rulings against it were overtaken by the EU-US Data Privacy Framework adequacy decision in July 2023, and GA4 is legal to use in Europe today. The part that takes real work is consent: GA4 sets cookies by default, so EU and UK visitors have to be asked, and everyone who declines or ignores the banner goes uncounted.
Do I need a cookie banner if I use Cabin?
Not for Cabin. It sets no cookies, builds no fingerprint and stores no identifier on anyone's device, so there is nothing to ask permission for. If you run other tools that do set cookies, such as ads or embedded video, you may still need a banner for those.
Can Cabin import my Google Analytics history?
Not yet. The practical approach is to add Cabin alongside GA4 and run both for a while, leaving the old property switched on for historical numbers. Cabin keeps 30 days of history on the free plan and a year on Plus.
How much does Cabin cost compared with Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is free at almost any scale, which is the point worth thinking about: it is a free product from the world's largest advertising company. Cabin is free for one site and 10,000 pageviews a month, and Plus is $14 a month for ten sites and 100,000 pageviews.
What can Google Analytics do that Cabin cannot?
Funnels, session replay, heatmaps and A/B testing, none of which Cabin has. GA4 is also stronger for paid advertising attribution across campaigns and channels, and it can export raw event data to BigQuery for custom reporting.
Comparing more than one? There's the same honest treatment of Cabin vs Plausible and Cabin vs Matomo, including the rows they win.