How long does free analytics keep your data?
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The Short Answer
- Fathom Analytics — Fathom states "Forever data retention — 2, 4 or 8 years? How about forever! While you're a customer, your full analytics history stays available", with unlimited exports on every tier.
- Plausible Analytics — Plausible's $9 Starter plan carries "3 years of data retention", but "scheduled raw event exports" are reserved for Enterprise, whose price is not published.
- Google Analytics 4 — Google offers free properties "2 months" or "14 months" of retention and marks 26, 38 and 50 months "(360 only)"; expired data "is deleted automatically on a monthly basis".
- Umami — Umami Cloud's free tier states "6 month data retention" with export included, while the docs say self-hosted data is "retained indefinitely unless you manually delete it".
| Product | Best for | From | Free plan | Free-plan retention |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fathom Analytics | Forever, for as long as you keep paying | $12.50/mo (annual) | No | Kept, and exportable |
| Plausible Analytics | Three years of history, raw rows at Enterprise | $9/mo | No | Expires on a clock |
| Google Analytics 4 | Free, and fourteen months deep | — | Yes | Expires on a clock |
| Umami | Indefinite if you host it, six months if they do | $20/mo | Yes | Expires on a clock |
Free analytics cannot answer the question people ask it
Almost every question a small site owner has about traffic is a comparison with a year ago. Is this month better than last November? Did the redesign help? Is the seasonal dip normal, or is it different this time?
Here is how long the free tiers keep the data needed to answer that:
| Free retention | |
|---|---|
| Google Analytics 4 | 14 months |
| Umami Cloud (Hobby) | 6 months |
Fourteen months clears a single year by two months and nothing else. It is enough to compare this March with last March, once, and then that comparison expires. Six months does not clear a year at all.
Neither number is hidden. Google publishes its list of retention options plainly, and marks everything past 14 months as “(360 only)”. Umami prints “6 month data retention” on the free tier of its pricing table. They are simply not the numbers anyone compares these products on, because the comparisons are written from feature lists and feature lists do not have a row for how long the product remembers.
What expires, and what does not
The 14-month figure needs one qualification, because it does not mean your dashboard goes blank.
GA4’s pre-aggregated standard reports survive past the retention window. What expires is the underlying user-level and event-level data — which is what explorations, funnels and any custom segmentation are built from. So the top-line traffic chart keeps working, and the ability to ask a new question about an old period does not.
That distinction matters when you are deciding whether the limit affects you. If analytics means “a number I look at monthly”, 14 months is fine. If it means “the record I interrogate when something changes”, the useful part of the archive is shorter than the archive appears to be.
Export exists on both free tiers, and it is worth using early for that reason. GA4’s BigQuery export is free — “available for both standard and GA4 360 properties” — capped at a million events a day. Umami Cloud includes export on its free tier and states the position outright: “if you ever decide to leave, your data goes with you.” An export you run today preserves what a policy will delete next year. It is the only defence available, and it costs nothing.
The inversion
The two products that keep data longest are the two with no free plan at all.
Fathom states it in the plainest terms of anyone here, and names its competitors’ numbers while doing so: “Forever data retention — 2, 4 or 8 years? How about forever! While you’re a customer, your full analytics history stays available.” Plausible’s cheapest plan, at $9 a month, carries “3 years of data retention” — more than double GA4’s free ceiling.
Read Fathom’s sentence to the end, though. “Forever” is scoped, in Fathom’s own words, to “while you’re a customer”. That is not a trick, and Fathom is being clearer than most by stating it. It just means the same thing every paid retention promise means: what you are buying is not a guarantee about the data, it is a guarantee about the subscription.
Plausible splits the axis a different way. Retention is generous on the entry plan; the shape of the export is not. Aggregated CSV is available to everyone, and “scheduled raw event exports” are “part of our Enterprise plans”, whose price is not published. Three years of history, and the rows behind it at a price you have to ask for.
Forever, for as long as you keep paying
1. Fathom Analytics — Forever, for as long as you keep paying
The longest promise here, and the one most explicit about its own condition.
Best for Forever retention, for exactly as long as you keep paying
From $12.50/mo (annual). No free plan.
- Up to 100,000 pageviews — $15/mo, or $12.50/mo billed annually (The real entry tier: $15 a month, or $150 a year. The page's slider loads showing the 500k tier instead, and these figures were read from the pricing-tiers-data JSON embedded in the vendor's own page after the slider would not respond. Includes 50 sites. There is no free plan — "Do you have a lower/free option? Nope, and here's why...")
- Up to 500,000 pageviews — $45/mo, or $37.50/mo billed annually (Marked "recommended" in the vendor's own pricing data and shown by default on page load.)
Fathom sells the thing the others ration, and names the competition while doing it: "Forever data retention — 2, 4 or 8 years? How about forever! While you're a customer, your full analytics history stays available." Export is not tiered either — "Unlimited email reports and exports — Schedule email reports and export your data whenever you need it" — and the FAQ says cancelling comes "with a complete data export." The caveat is in Fathom's own sentence and belongs in the verdict: forever lasts "while you're a customer." There is no free plan, so this is the cheapest-plan case at $15 a month.
Pros
- "Forever data retention" on every paid tier, stated in explicit contrast to competitors' "2, 4 or 8 years".
- Unlimited exports at every tier with "no extra fees", and a "complete data export" on cancellation.
- A real $15 entry tier exists for up to 100,000 pageviews, below the $45 tier the page shows by default.
Skip it if
- No free plan at all, and the vendor is explicit it will not add one: "Do you have a lower/free option? Nope, and here's why..."
- "Forever" is scoped to "while you're a customer"; the vendor does not say what happens if you lapse without exporting first.
- The pricing slider loads on the 500k/$45 tier, so the cheapest plan is not what a first-time visitor sees.
Three years of history, raw rows at Enterprise
2. Plausible Analytics — Three years of history, raw rows at Enterprise
Generous retention on the entry plan, restricted export shape.
Best for Three years of history, and raw events only at Enterprise
From $9/mo. No free plan.
- Starter — $9/mo (Cheapest plan; there is no free tier, only a 30-day trial. Up to 10k monthly pageviews, one site, "3 years of data retention." An annual toggle advertises "2 months free" but its per-month figure did not render for us.)
- Growth — $14/mo · 3 seats (Up to 3 sites and 3 team members. The page does not list an upgraded retention window for this tier.)
- Business — $19/mo · 10 seats (Up to 10 sites and 10 team members, "5 years of data retention.")
- Enterprise — price not shown on the page we opened ("Contact us" — no figure published. "5+ years of data retention", and the only tier listing "Scheduled raw event data exports".)
There is no free plan, so this is judged on the cheapest one: Starter at $9 a month, with "3 years of data retention" — longer than either free tier here. The restriction is on the shape of the export rather than its existence. The docs offer to "Export all the native data collected for a particular Plausible dashboard to date" as CSV, "best suited for data portability purposes", but that is aggregated. The same page states: "If you need event-level data rather than aggregated stats, Plausible offers scheduled raw event exports as part of our Enterprise plans." Three years of history, and the raw rows behind it only at a price that is not published.
Pros
- The cheapest paid plan states a concrete "3 years of data retention", more than double GA4's free ceiling.
- Aggregated CSV export is available from the dashboard on every tier, not withheld from the entry plan.
- Cookie-free by design, so the vendor states no consent banner is required.
Skip it if
- No free plan at all — a 30-day trial, then $9 a month.
- Raw event-level export is reserved for Enterprise, whose price is not published.
- The vendor states the 3-year window but never says whether data is deleted or aggregated when it passes.
Free, and fourteen months deep
3. Google Analytics 4 — Free, and fourteen months deep
Free raw export, on data that expires just past a year.
Best for Free, and fourteen months deep
From —. Free plan: Standard properties are free — "Google Analytics gives you the tools, free of charge, to understand the customer journey and improve marketing ROI." GA4 360 is a separate paid enterprise product..
- GA4 360 — price not shown on the page we opened (Google's paid enterprise tier. No USD figure is published anywhere on the page; pricing is contract-based.)
Google publishes the ceiling in its own help centre: "For Google Analytics properties, you can set the retention period of user-level data to: 2 months 14 months ... For all other event data, you can set retention to: 2 months 14 months 26 months (360 only) 38 months (360 only) 50 months (360 only)". Everything past 14 months is marked 360-only, so 14 months is the maximum a free property can hold, and "When data reaches the end of the retention period, it is deleted automatically on a monthly basis." Export is genuinely free — "BigQuery export is available for both standard and GA4 360 properties" — but it can only export what has not yet expired.
Pros
- Free for standard properties with no seat limit.
- Raw event-level export through BigQuery is available on the free tier, not reserved for 360.
- The retention ceiling is published as an explicit list of options rather than described vaguely.
Skip it if
- User-level and event data expire at a maximum of 14 months on a free property, and are "deleted automatically on a monthly basis".
- Every longer retention option — 26, 38 and 50 months — is marked "(360 only)".
- Free-tier BigQuery export is capped at one million events a day, so a busy site does not get all of its raw data out.
Indefinite if you host it, six months if they do
4. Umami — Indefinite if you host it, six months if they do
Two products under one name, with opposite answers.
Best for Indefinite if you host it, six months if they do
From $20/mo. Free plan: Umami Cloud Hobby is $0 — "Up to 100K events per month, 1 website, 6 month data retention, Community support." Self-hosted Umami is separately free and open source with no vendor-imposed cap..
- Pro (Cloud) — $20/mo · 10 seats (1 million events included, $0.00003 per additional event, up to 20 websites, 2 year data retention, API access.)
- Business (Cloud) — $200/mo (10 million events included, unlimited websites and team members, 5 year data retention, session replays, heatmaps, white-labeling.)
- Enterprise (Cloud) — price not shown on the page we opened ("Custom" pricing with custom data retention and SSO. No figure published.)
This verdict is about Umami Cloud's free Hobby tier, which is the free plan the question asks about: "$0/month — Up to 100K events per month, 1 website, 6 month data retention, Community support." Export is not the restriction — the comparison table checks "Data export" for Hobby along with every paid tier, and the FAQ says "Yes, all of your data can be exported from Umami Cloud... There is no vendor lock-in — if you ever decide to leave, your data goes with you." The six-month window is. Self-hosted Umami is a different and better answer, and the docs say so: asked "How long is data retained?", the FAQ answers "[data is] retained indefinitely unless you manually delete it. For Umami Cloud, see the pricing page." Open source does not make the hosted free tier unlimited; it makes a second, separate option unlimited.
Pros
- Self-hosted Umami retains data "indefinitely unless you manually delete it", per the vendor's own FAQ.
- The free Cloud tier includes data export in the vendor's own comparison table, which several competitors do not.
- The FAQ states the anti-lock-in position outright: "if you ever decide to leave, your data goes with you".
Skip it if
- Umami Cloud's free tier keeps data for six months — the shortest window of anything here.
- The free tier is capped at one website and 100K events a month.
- The vendor does not state what happens to Cloud data once the six months pass — deleted or aggregated is unstated.
What this means if you are choosing today
If you are on GA4 and have been for over a year, the useful move is not switching. It is running the BigQuery export once. It is free, it is available on standard properties, and it turns a 14-month rolling window into an archive you keep.
If you are choosing now and the site is a business, the retention numbers make a stronger case for paying than the feature lists do. $9 a month buys three years at Plausible; $15 buys “forever, while you’re a customer” at Fathom. Against a free tier that forgets last spring, that is a different value proposition than “nicer dashboard”.
If you can run a server, self-hosted Umami is the only answer here where nobody’s retention policy applies to you, because the database is yours. Note carefully that this is a different product from the free Umami Cloud tier, which keeps six months. Same name, opposite answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does Google Analytics 4 keep data on the free plan?
Fourteen months at most. Google's help centre lists the options as "2 months" or "14 months" for standard properties, and marks 26, 38 and 50 months as "(360 only)". When the period ends, data "is deleted automatically on a monthly basis". Standard reports are pre-aggregated and survive; explorations and funnels lose access to anything older.
Can you export raw data from free analytics?
From GA4, yes — "BigQuery export is available for both standard and GA4 360 properties", capped at one million events a day on the free tier. From Umami Cloud's free tier, yes, and its FAQ says "if you ever decide to leave, your data goes with you." From Plausible, only aggregated CSV unless you are on Enterprise: "If you need event-level data rather than aggregated stats, Plausible offers scheduled raw event exports as part of our Enterprise plans."
Which analytics tool keeps your data longest?
Fathom, which states "Forever data retention" on every paid tier and names the competition while doing it — "2, 4 or 8 years? How about forever!" The caveat is Fathom's own sentence: it lasts "while you're a customer." Self-hosted Umami is the other indefinite answer, and there the database is yours.
Does open-source analytics mean unlimited retention?
Only if you host it. Umami's docs answer "How long is data retained?" with "[data is] retained indefinitely unless you manually delete it. For Umami Cloud, see the pricing page" — and Umami Cloud's free tier is capped at six months. Open source describes what you may do with code you run. It says nothing about the vendor's own hosted free tier.
Did you test these retention policies?
No, and nobody reasonably could — verifying a 14-month policy takes 14 months. Every figure here was read on the vendor's own pricing page or documentation on 6 August 2026 and is labelled as read, not run. This is a category where documentation is the only practical evidence, which is worth saying rather than implying.
How We Keep This Updated
Prices move and vendors rewrite their plan tables, so every value on this page carries the date we read it. When a page changes, the change lands here rather than being edited away quietly. The procedure is on the methodology page. tell us and we will re-check it.
- 2026-08-06 — First published. Retention figures read on each vendor's own docs. Fathom's pricing slider loads on the 500k tier; the real $15 entry tier was read from the pricing data embedded in Fathom's own page. Plausible's /pricing is a 404 — its pricing now sits on the homepage.