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Exploring the Constraints and Sampling in GA4 Analytics
Hey, I’ve been trying to dig into some stuff online, but it’s a bit confusing. I was looking for detailed info on the hit limit for a GA4 property in a single month without any restrictions. I know with GA3 it was capped at around 10 million, but I’m not sure about GA4. What happens after you cross the 10M mark in a month; does Google still collect data or does it cap it there?
Also, I came across this Google document that mentions something called ‘Explore sampling limits’ set at 10M events per query. Any idea what that means? Does it imply that a report can’t have more than 10 million lines or something?
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2 Replies
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Sure, let me clarify that for you. Google Analytics 4 doesn’t really have a definitive hit limit like its previous version. So, even when you cross the 10M hit point in a month, Google continues to track and collect data without a cap.
As for ‘Explore sampling limits,’ it’s not as complicated as it sounds. When you’re pulling a report that involves over 10 million hits, Google applies what’s called ‘sampling’ to manage the volume. This means your report will be based on a subset (or a ‘sample’) of all those hits to make the data more manageable. If you prefer to get a report without sampling, you can adjust your parameters like reducing the date range to keep total events below the 10M mark. This way, your report still provides reliable insights while keeping within the limit.
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For Google Analytics 4, there isn’t a specific hit limit per month like GA3, however, free GA4 users have a limit of 2 million hits per user per month which resets every month. Cross this limit and Google may stop collecting data until the end of the month. Yet, this limit can be increased if you are using Google Analytics 360.
Regarding ‘Explore sampling limits’, it’s related to how data is pulled for report analysis in GA4. A single Explore report can analyze up to 10 million events per query. It doesn’t limit the number of rows in a report, but it restricts the number of single actions/events, like page views, that are analyzed in one specific data operation. It helps maintain a faster, more efficient data analysis and reporting process. Keep in mind that larger sets of data might require Google to apply sampling to keep the reports manageable.
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