Stop guessing which one. Put them side by side.

The grid says what these tools are. This says what builders did about it — one decision per person, changeable whenever you change your mind.

# Tool comparison — OpenPanel vs Google Analytics 4 vs Microsoft Clarity

Source: Kbaise, a directory of tools that work with Lovable projects.
Pick one and tell me why before writing any integration code.

## OpenPanel (openpanel)
- URL: https://openpanel.dev
- Category: Product analytics
- Cost: mixed — Cloud from $2.50/mo for 5K events, $20/mo for 100K, $90/mo for 1M. 30-day trial, no permanent free tier. Self-hosting free with unlimited events.
- What it is: A young open-source analytics project that merges simple web analytics with product-analytics features like funnels, retention and user profiles. Cloud pricing is a single slider on monthly event volume, with sites, dashboards, charts and team members all unlimited. Self-hosting is free and uncapped.
- Why builders pick it: It is the cheapest route to Mixpanel-style event analysis without a Mixpanel bill, and the self-hosted build has no event ceiling at all if you already run a VPS.
- Trap: No permanently free cloud tier, just a 30-day trial. It is a small project with a far smaller ecosystem, integration list and support surface than PostHog or Plausible.
- Wiring: npm i @openpanel/nextjs
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/openpanel

## Google Analytics 4 (google-analytics-4)
- URL: https://analytics.google.com
- Category: Product analytics
- Cost: free — Free for standard properties at essentially any volume. GA4 360 historically starts around $50,000/yr.
- What it is: Google's event-based analytics platform, free for standard properties, with audiences, attribution modelling, Search Console linking and a daily BigQuery export capped at 1M events. Standard properties allow 50 event-scoped custom dimensions and 30 key events. Cloud-only, with no self-hosted equivalent.
- Why builders pick it: It costs nothing at any traffic level and it is still what advertisers, SEO tools and clients expect to see, so it often ends up running alongside a nicer tool rather than instead of one.
- Trap: Retention maxes at 14 months (default 2) and explorations sample above 10M events per query. EU traffic needs a consent banner plus Consent Mode v2, and several EU regulators have ruled plain GA deployments unlawful without extra safeguards.
- Wiring: npm i @next/third-parties
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/google-analytics-4

## Microsoft Clarity (microsoft-clarity)
- URL: https://clarity.microsoft.com
- Category: Product analytics
- Cost: free — Free forever with no traffic limits and no paid tier.
- What it is: Microsoft's free behavioural analytics tool offering unlimited session recordings, click and scroll heatmaps, rage-click and dead-click detection, and AI summaries of sessions. There are no traffic caps and no paid upgrade path. Cloud-only, with an optional Google Analytics integration.
- Why builders pick it: Unlimited free session replay is unmatched at any price. Watching ten real people fumble your onboarding teaches you more in an hour than a month of staring at funnel charts.
- Trap: It sets the _clck and _clsk cookies, and since 31 October 2025 Clarity requires a valid consent signal for EEA, UK and Swiss visitors, so without a CMP those sessions will not record. Recordings can capture PII unless you mask fields.
- Wiring: npm i @microsoft/clarity
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/microsoft-clarity

## Quick read

- Free with no card: Google Analytics 4, Microsoft Clarity.

## Rules
1. Prefer the free tier when no budget was stated, and say what the ceiling is.
2. Read the full dossier before integrating.
3. Fetch /api/public/models before writing any AI model ID.

Agents can fetch the same thing: GET /api/public/compare?slugs=openpanel,google-analytics-4,microsoft-clarity