A Google Analytics alternative for measuring your product

What GA4 is built to measure

Google Analytics 4 describes itself as a free tool to "understand the customer journey and improve marketing ROI." It measures websites and apps, connects with Google Ads, Search Ads 360, Display and Video 360, Google Cloud and Search Console, and uses machine learning to surface insights.

Out of the box, GA4 collects page views and, with enhanced measurement turned on, a fixed set of events: scrolls (the first time 90% of a page is visible), outbound clicks, site search, YouTube video plays, file downloads, and form_start and form_submit. Anything beyond that is a recommended event or a custom event you implement. Google's own help page notes that custom events generally do not show in standard reports, so you analyze them in custom reports or explorations.

That makes GA4 a very good tool for questions about traffic: which channels bring visits, which pages people land on, how campaigns in Google's ad products perform.

What Orwel measures instead

Orwel is an event analytics SDK for startups, developers and vibe coders. It starts where GA4 is thinnest: what people do inside the product you shipped.

• Feature adoption. You group events into features (for example "Export reports") and Orwel shows unique users, weekly usage and which features need attention. Read more about feature adoption.
• Conversion funnels. A journey is a set of milestones that ends in a conversion. Steps count in any order within the period, so a person who invites a teammate before creating a project still counts for both. See conversion funnels.
• Leads with context. When someone signs in or submits a form, Orwel ties their history to them. Each lead gets a score from 0 to 100, intent signals based on behaviour and the full session history. See lead scoring.
• Ad attribution. The SDK keeps first and last touch UTMs and ad click IDs (gclid, fbclid and others) and Orwel shows cost per qualified lead for Google Ads and Meta Ads. See ad attribution.

Autocapture covers page views, clicks, scroll, forms and errors. Custom events come from a semantic catalog of 257 ready events, and the dashboard generates the track() calls for you as a snippet, a typed TypeScript module or a prompt for your coding agent.

GA4 vs Orwel at a glance

Last checked October 21, 2026, against Google's Google Analytics page, the Analytics 360 page and Google's Analytics help center. Google does not publish a pricing page for GA4, because the standard product is free.

When to keep Google Analytics

You do not have to choose. GA4 and Orwel are separate scripts, so you can run both on the same site. Keep GA4 if:

• Your marketing team lives in GA4 reports and Google Ads audiences.
• You need app measurement. Orwel's documented SDK targets websites and web apps.
• You want long term traffic history and Search Console data in one place.
• Budget is zero. GA4 is free, and Orwel has a 14-day trial and then a paid plan.

Add Orwel when the questions change from "where did visits come from" to "did people use what we shipped, where did they drop off and which campaign brought leads that were worth it."

What Orwel does not do

Being clear about gaps saves you time:

• No session replay and no heatmaps.
• No A/B testing and no feature flags.
• It is not open source.
• It does not resolve anonymous visitors to companies by IP. People are identified when they sign in or submit a form.
• No free plan. The trial needs a card.

How to move from GA4 to Orwel

The safest path is to add Orwel next to GA4, compare for a few weeks, then decide what to keep.

1. Leave GA4 running. Orwel's docs do not describe a GA4 import, so let Orwel build its own history from day one.
2. Create a workspace and install the SDK. Sign up, copy the production API key (it starts with orwel_pk_) and install with npm, a script tag or your AI agent using npx skills add hyperlabs-ai/hyper-skills/orwel. Framework guides are on the install page.
3. Test with the development key. Use the orwel_dev_ key locally and in staging. Dev mode shows every request live, which table it was written to and why anything was rejected, and test leads never trigger emails or integrations.
4. Map your key events. Call orwel.identify({ email }) when a user signs in and orwel.conversion('lead', { email }) when a form is submitted. Many GA4 recommended event names, such as purchase, begin_checkout, add_to_cart and generate_lead, exist in Orwel's catalog with the same name.
5. Define features and journeys. In the dashboard, pick catalog events for each feature and the milestones for each journey. Copy the generated code into your service layer, right after each action succeeds.
6. Tag your ads. Keep auto tagging on for gclid and fbclid, add UTMs and always utm_id, then connect Google Ads and Meta Ads to see cost per qualified lead.
7. Compare and decide. Expect some differences in counts, because each tool defines sessions and filters bots in its own way.

Pricing

GA4 is free. Analytics 360 is the enterprise tier with unsampled results, faster data and service level agreements, and its price comes from Google sales.

Orwel has one Pro plan at 49 USD per month. Every month you pay on time the next one costs 2 USD less, down to 35 USD, or you pay 420 USD once a year. There are no caps on leads or visitors under fair use, and the first 14 days are free. Details are on the pricing page.