Google Analytics 4 is completely free for the vast majority of websites and businesses. You get up to 10 million events per month per property at no cost, which covers most small-to-midsize operations and even many large sites. There are no seat fees, no feature gates based on traffic tier, and no expiration on your data retention (within GA4's default limits). Google Analytics 360 is the paid enterprise tier. Pricing typically starts around $50,000 USD per year and scales based on monthly hit volume, often reaching $150,000+ annually for high-traffic properties. You get unsampled reports, BigQuery export at no extra charge, service-level agreements, dedicated support, and higher event limits. Most businesses never need it. The real cost of Google Analytics isn't the license—it's setup, maintenance, and making sense of the data. A botched GA4 implementation means garbage data, and fixing it months later is expensive. At Ottawa SEO, we've seen companies waste more money on bad tracking than they would have spent on Analytics 360. Proper event tagging, conversion setup, cross-domain tracking, and ecommerce integration all take time and expertise. Watch out for hidden costs: Google Tag Manager is free but requires developer or agency time to configure. If you need advanced features like data import, custom funnels, or audience segmentation, you'll likely pay for analytics consulting or a tool like Looker Studio (free) or a third-party BI platform (not free). Also, if you hit the 10-million-event threshold, Google doesn't automatically upsell you to 360—they throttle or sample your data instead, so you may never know you're losing visibility unless you monitor usage. For Canadian agencies and SMBs, the free GA4 tier is more than sufficient. Invest in proper implementation and ongoing audits instead of worrying about licensing fees. If you're considering Analytics 360, you're likely already tracking billions of annual sessions and need contract-grade data accuracy.