Matomo vs GA4: when to choose privacy-friendly analytics (and where Piwik PRO fits)

Matomo is an open-source analytics platform and the best-known alternative to Google Analytics 4. The big difference: with Matomo you own your data, reports are not sampled and you can keep the data in the EU or on your own server. GA4 is free and stronger as soon as you advertise with Google Ads, because audiences, conversions and modelling run directly in the Google ecosystem. So the choice depends on what weighs more: data sovereignty or ad steering.

This guide compares Matomo and GA4 on the points that matter for Belgian and Dutch companies, with a separate section on Piwik PRO, the third platform that often makes the shortlist. How GA4 itself works is covered in our guide to GA4. We cover the privacy side of GA4 in is Google Analytics GDPR compliant.

What is Matomo?

Matomo (formerly Piwik) is a web analytics platform you can use in two ways:

• On-Premise. You install Matomo on your own server. The community edition is free, with no limit on users or hits. You do pay for hosting, maintenance and updates.
• Matomo Cloud. Matomo hosts it for you. According to Matomo’s pricing page (checked on 6 October 2026), Cloud starts at 29 euro per month for 50,000 hits, and the data is stored in Frankfurt, Germany. That is the vendor’s price, not ours.

Matomo measures what you expect from an analytics tool: visits, sources, pages, goals, ecommerce, events, funnels. It also has its own Tag Manager, and you can load Matomo through Google Tag Manager if that is where you manage all your tags.

Matomo vs GA4: the comparison

A few of those rows deserve explanation.

Sampling. Matomo states that every report comes from the full dataset, while GA4 works with a sample in certain advanced analyses above large thresholds. For most B2B sites with limited traffic, sampling in GA4 hardly matters; for large sites or long periods it does. More on this in data sampling in Google Analytics.

Retention. In a standard GA4 property you can keep user data for 2 or 14 months. If you want year-on-year comparisons at user level, you hit that limit unless you export to BigQuery. In Matomo you decide yourself how long you keep data.

Google Ads. This is the deciding row for anyone who advertises. GA4 audiences for remarketing, the Google Ads connection and the modelling of missing conversions under Consent Mode v2 do not exist in Matomo. If Matomo is your only tool, you steer Google Ads on the Google Ads conversion tag alone.

Can you use Matomo without a cookie banner?

This is the argument you hear most often, and it is more nuanced than it sounds. Matomo itself says you can measure without consent only if the applicable law allows it and if you configure strictly: cookies off, IP addresses anonymised, no personal data in URLs or events, no User ID, an opt-out on offer and the data used for analysis only. Matomo names countries such as France and the Netherlands where such exemptions exist, and warns that consent remains mandatory elsewhere for client-side analytics.

For Belgium, the position of the Data Protection Authority is clear: analytics cookies are in principle not strictly necessary and therefore require prior consent. If you plan to measure cookieless without a banner, run it past your DPO or lawyer. We give you the technical setup, not legal advice. Also read cookie banner rules in Belgium.

And Piwik PRO?

Piwik PRO shares its origins with Matomo, but it is a separate commercial product with analytics, a tag manager, a CMP and a customer data platform in one suite. It targets organisations with strict requirements on privacy and hosting, such as healthcare, government and financial services.

Important if you are following old forum advice: according to Piwik PRO’s pricing page (checked on 6 October 2026) there is no longer a permanent free plan, only a 30-day trial. The Business plan starts at 36 euro per month for up to 2 million actions, with 25 months of retention and hosting in the EU (Sweden). Enterprise plans cost more. Again, these are the vendor’s prices.

Which one do you choose? A decision guide

1. Do you advertise with Google Ads or Performance Max? Then keep GA4, at least for audiences and conversions. You can run Matomo or Piwik PRO alongside it for your own, complete picture of the website.
2. Do you work in a regulated sector, or may data not leave the EU? Then Matomo On-Premise or Piwik PRO is the logical main tool.
3. Do you mainly want simple reports without depending on Google, and do you advertise little? Matomo Cloud is then often the quickest choice.
4. Running both? Make sure they use the same events and definitions, or you are comparing apples with oranges. A shared data layer in GTM is the foundation for that; see also event tracking.

In every scenario your CRM remains the source of truth for leads and revenue. Analytics tells you how visitors move; your CRM tells you who became a customer. How to connect the two is explained in how to set up lead tracking.

Common mistakes when switching

• Switching off GA4 while Google Ads relies on it. Your audiences and imported conversions disappear, and your bidding gets weaker.
• Loading Matomo twice. A WordPress plugin plus a tag in GTM gives you double visits.
• No consent connection. Matomo with cookies also has to wait for your cookie banner. With Cookiebot you connect that through GTM.
• Expecting the numbers to match. Two tools count visits differently (session definition, bot filter, consent). Compare trends, not absolute numbers.

How do you check that it works?

Open Matomo’s real-time report (Visits Log) and click through your site: every page and every goal should appear. Test in GTM Preview whether the Matomo tag only fires after consent (or cookieless, if that is your choice). After a week, compare the number of leads in Matomo, GA4 and your CRM. Big differences point to a setup error, not to a “better” tool.

Need help choosing or setting it up?

We set up both GA4 and Matomo, and often the combination. At Kaizo we built the full chain around GA4, Google Ads and Meta; read Kaizo’s setup. With a tracking audit we look at what you measure today and which tool fits. For the build itself there is our tracking specialist. Pricing on request.

For more on privacy-friendly measurement, read our guides on third-party cookies.

Frequently asked questions