Clicktag: a free MonsterInsights alternative that needs no GA4

MonsterInsights is a WordPress wrapper for Google Analytics, so it still requires a GA4 property and starts at $99.50 in year one ($199.00/year at renewal) for its Plus plan. If you want a free MonsterInsights alternative that skips GA4 completely, Clicktag tracks your WordPress site with one 4 KB script, sets no cookies, and syncs 16 months of Google Search Console history at clicktag.app.

What MonsterInsights actually is (and what it costs)

MonsterInsights does not collect analytics on its own. It is a WordPress.org plugin (with 2+ million active installations for MonsterInsights Lite) that puts Google's tracking tag on your pages and pulls GA4 numbers into wp-admin. You still have to set up and run a Google Analytics property behind it.

MonsterInsights Lite is free, while the paid plans are sold on an annual subscription with a 50% first-year discount on the MonsterInsights pricing page:

• Plus: $99.50 for the first year ($199.00 list price), 1 site.
• Pro: $199.50 for the first year ($399.00 list price), 5 sites.
• Elite: $299.50 for the first year ($599.00 list price), 5 sites.
• Agency: $399.50 for the first year ($799.00 list price), 25 sites.

The Plus plan lists unlimited pageviews and users, and every plan includes 1 year of updates.

Other WordPress plugins to compare

Two other WordPress options are worth comparing first:

Google Site Kit is Google's own WordPress plugin (version 1.190.0, with 5+ million active installations). Google states that "The Site Kit plugin is free and open source, and will remain so." It connects Search Console, Analytics, PageSpeed Insights, AdSense, Google Ads, Tag Manager and Sign in with Google to a WordPress site. Because it connects to GA4, you are still using Google Analytics under the hood, just without paying a plugin vendor for the bridge.

Jetpack Stats is a WordPress stats tool that does not run on Google Analytics. Jetpack's own pages disagree on who gets it for free: its free vs. paid support page (updated September 25, 2026) says "Jetpack Stats is available for free - any type of site, any amount of traffic, and we keep your full history", while the Jetpack Stats product page shows a "Name your price" tier for personal sites and a paid tier at EUR 7.95/month billed yearly.

The support page lists views, visitors, top posts and pages, referrers, clicks, search terms, authors, downloads, video plays, insights, subscribers and country-level locations in the free version. Paid Stats is priced by monthly views and adds UTM stats, devices, and region and city locations. Jetpack Stats does not honor Do Not Track by default unless you add add_filter( 'jetpack_honor_dnt_header_for_stats', '__return_true' );.

How Clicktag compares to MonsterInsights and Site Kit

Clicktag is a standalone Google Analytics alternative, not a GA4 connector. You sign in with a Google account at clicktag.app, paste one script into your site's header, and read your stats in its web dashboard instead of wp-admin.

Prices and limits checked on October 29, 2026, on each vendor's official pricing or help pages.

What you get with Clicktag on a WordPress site

Clicktag is free, with no credit card and no paid tier today. One account holds up to 50 websites, and every feature is included on all of them:

• One 4 KB script: latest.js loads asynchronously, uses no cookies and no local storage, never stores IP addresses, and drops Do Not Track requests automatically.
• Core reports: visitors (counted with a daily salted SHA-256 hash whose salt is deleted shortly after each UTC day ends), pageviews, pages, entry pages, sources, countries (from the browser's time zone), devices, browsers, operating systems, UTM source, UTM medium, UTM campaign, and median time on page (for pageviews of 5 seconds or more). You can apply up to 12 filters at once.
• Search Console analytics that outlive Google's 16-month window: connect Google Search Console from site settings -> Integrations -> Connect Google Search Console. Clicktag backfills 16 months of clicks, impressions, CTR, average position, queries and pages, then refreshes the trailing 10 days every 6 hours and keeps the synced history in Clicktag. It also overlays Search Console clicks directly onto the google.com visits measured by the tracker so you can see how many search clicks actually land on your pages.
• AI traffic and AI crawler analytics: visits from ChatGPT (utm_source=chatgpt.com), Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Copilot show up as their own sources. And if your WordPress site is proxied through Cloudflare (any plan, including Free), you can connect a read-only Cloudflare token to see hits from GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Googlebot in the Crawlers tab, with 30 days imported on connect and a sync every 15 minutes.
• Goal tracking, funnels and retention: set up to 50 goals per site (page views or custom events, including past data) and 2 to 6 step funnels completed on the same UTC day. Weekly retention cohorts run for up to 12 follow-up weeks using the browser's HTTP cache without cookies.

Clicktag gives a WordPress site traffic stats, goals and Search Console data from one 4 KB script, without a GA4 property or a paid plugin.

Adding Clicktag to WordPress

On a self-hosted WordPress.org site, you don't need an analytics plugin at all. Copy your script tag from Site settings > Installation in Clicktag (it includes your data-hostname and data-verify attributes) and drop it into wp_head using a lightweight code-snippets plugin or your child theme's functions.php.

If you use WordPress.com, note that installing plugins requires a paid plan (Personal, Premium, Business or Commerce), so a free WordPress.com site must upgrade before it can install one.

Once the tag is in the homepage HTML that your server sends, Clicktag verifies the site, and new hits show up in the Live tab within about a second. You can inspect a public demo dashboard with synthetic sample data first if you want to see the layout before touching your theme.

Clicktag or MonsterInsights: which to pick

Pick Clicktag if you want WordPress analytics without GA4, cookies or a yearly renewal: $0 for up to 50 sites, goals and funnels, and scheduled email reports to up to 25 recipients per site, all at clicktag.app. MonsterInsights Plus renews at $199.00 a year for 1 site.

MonsterInsights (or Site Kit) fits if you want stats in a wp-admin widget, already rely on GA4 ecommerce tracking or bounce rate, or want file download and link tracking without code. Clicktag records those clicks when you send them with window.tt_event(name, metadata, callback).

FAQ

Is Clicktag really free, and what are its limits?

Yes. Clicktag is free with no credit card required and no paid plan today. Its limits are per account and per site, not pageview tiers: up to 50 websites, up to 50 goals per site, email reports for up to 25 recipients per site, and up to 10 active Stats API management keys (tt_mk_).

Does Clicktag track WooCommerce revenue or form submissions automatically?

No. Clicktag does not have revenue or ecommerce tracking, and latest.js does not record form submissions, file downloads or outbound clicks automatically. You can track custom actions by calling window.tt_event(name, metadata, callback) in the browser or sending a JSON POST to /events from your backend.

Can I import my old Google Analytics data from MonsterInsights?

No, Clicktag does not support Google Analytics imports or CSV uploads (only Simple Analytics history can be imported). However, when you link Google Search Console, Clicktag backfills up to 16 months of your search clicks, impressions, queries and pages.

How does Clicktag's Search Console integration handle public dashboards?

If you mark a Clicktag site public (is_public), visitors can view your web traffic stats without a key, but Search Console endpoints and tabs remain owner-only (or visible to people you explicitly share the site with). Google Search Console data never appears on public dashboards.

What does Clicktag leave out?

Clicktag does not include session recordings, heatmaps, bounce rate, A/B tests, feature flags, individual visitor profiles or white-label dashboards, and it is not open source or self-hostable. You can share a site view-only with up to 25 people by email. It also does not report utm_term or utm_content as report dimensions, and event metadata cannot be grouped or filtered in reports.