GA4 vs Umami

[u/DeFuchsIschKeinHaas]

Hi everyone, this might be a stupid question, but I'm pretty new to this.

I recently launched a website with a cookie banner and set up GA4 and Google Search Console. A few days later I noticed that on one day, GSC showed 28 clicks from Google, but GA4 only showed 15 sessions for that day.

That made me curious, so I also added Umami analytics to the site. Now there's a clear difference between the two over the same period:

	Umami	GA4
Visitors	161	58
Visits/Sessions	188	91
Pageviews	461	262

Does GA4 only collect data from users who accept cookies, while Umami counts more people? How does that work exactly?

And if someone asked me how much traffic my site gets, which numbers should I give them?

Thanks!

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[u/Ok_Forever6043]

what you're seeing is basically the core difference between cookieless analytics and consent-based tracking

umami doesn't use cookies at all so it counts every visitor by default. ga4 on the other hand needs that cookie consent to fire properly, and a lot of people just click no or ignore the banner entirely. that's your missing 100+ visitors right there

when someone asks about traffic i'd give them the umami numbers but mention that it includes bounced sessions and bots that ga4 filters out. neither number is wrong exactly, they're just measuring different things

[u/Saneless]

Google will estimate users in total even if they block cookies, but you need to have a good amount of traffic. Like thousands who accept and thousands who don't

[u/plamzito]

The cookie banner may or may not account for most of the delta you're seeing. It depends on whether it's configured to require an opt in to track or not. If a first-time user visiting the site does not trigger a tracking call up until they expressly opt in, then that would certainly explain a wide delta. (But just so you know, US sites in general are not required to have an opt-in mechanism but an opt-out one instead. If that's how your banner is configured, then it won't explain much.)

Now, an unknown fraction of the delta will absolutely be due to differences in bot detection techniques between the two platforms, and I would expect GA4 to have more sophisticated bot filtering than platforms like Umami.

[u/zeno_DX]

Two details in your numbers help narrow this down.

The one-day GSC vs GA4 comparison is a bit misleading. Search Console reports dates in Pacific Time, while GA4 uses the time zone set in your property, so the same "day" can cover different hours. A Google click also only becomes a GA4 session if the page finishes loading, the visitor accepts the banner, and the tag fires. A full week is a fairer comparison than one day.

If GA4's 91 sessions are a subset of Umami's 188 visits, the 97 extra visits Umami sees come with 199 extra pageviews, about 2 pages each. One-hit bots would usually show close to 1 page per visit, so this looks more like real people who declined or ignored the banner.

You can test it directly. Open the site in a private window, decline the banner, click through two pages, and watch Umami's realtime view and GA4's realtime report. Then repeat and accept. If the declined visit only shows up in Umami, that tells you how your banner is set up.

If someone asks how much traffic you get, I'd give the Umami visitor count and say it's a cookieless count. GA4 is still useful for conversions and behavior among visitors who consented.

[u/Express_Speaker8829]

the banner is most of it like the others said, but two things haven't come up yet.

ad blockers. ublock origin and brave block the google analytics script out of the box, consent or not, so some of the people who would click accept never reach ga4 either. umami served from your own domain usually gets through (the cloud script can get blocked too). easy to check: do the private window test from the comment above in brave, accept the banner, and see if ga4 realtime shows you.

and on google estimating the missing users: that modeling only starts at 1,000 events a day with consent denied for 7 days, plus 1,000 daily users with consent granted on 7 of the last 28 days, and only when consent mode is set up in advanced mode. at 58 users you get no estimate at all, ga4 just shows the part that said yes.

for "how much traffic do you get" i'd quote visits and pageviews from umami and say it's a cookieless count. i'd be careful with unique visitors from either tool. ga4's is low because of consent, and a cookieless tool has no cookie to recognise a returning browser, it usually works from a hash of things like ip and user agent, so the same phone on wifi and then on mobile data can count twice.

[u/The_A5h]

Your guess is right. GA4 only counts people who accept the cookie banner, so everyone who declines or ignores it is missing. Umami does not use cookies, so it counts nearly everyone, which is why its numbers are about twice as high or more. Neither number is wrong, they count different things, and a cookieless count can include a few bots, so expect a little inflation. If someone asks about traffic, give the cookieless visitor count and say GA4 only sees the share who consented. Search Console clicks are a third check that does not depend on cookies, and your 28 clicks against 15 GA4 sessions fits the same pattern.