Adjust vs Google Analytics

Adjust is a mobile measurement partner (MMP) founded in Berlin in 2012 and acquired by AppLovin in 2021 in a deal valued at about $1 billion. It tells app marketers which ad networks, campaigns and creatives drove installs, in-app events and revenue, so budget can move to the channels that actually pay back. Its SDK runs inside iOS, Android and Unity apps.

The platform covers attribution and deep linking, Datascape dashboards and cohort reporting, a Fraud Prevention Suite that blocks click spam and fake installs, and support for Apple's SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit privacy frameworks. Add-on modules include InSight for incrementality testing with synthetic control groups, Audience Builder, CTV AdVision for connected-TV campaigns and SpendWorks for ad-spend mapping. The free Base plan covers up to 1,500 attributions per month; Core and Enterprise are custom-priced annual contracts.

Adjust suits app publishers, games studios and fintech or ecommerce apps with real paid user-acquisition budgets. AppsFlyer is its biggest rival with a larger partner ecosystem, while Singular leans harder into cost aggregation. Northbeam and Rockerbox, also in our catalog, solve web and DTC attribution rather than app installs, so they are not like-for-like replacements.

In May 2025 Adjust launched Growth Copilot in beta, an AI assistant that answers reporting questions in plain language and, with Pulse, can publish scheduled AI reports. When negotiating, ask for fraud prevention to be bundled, since it is often quoted as a separate add-on.

Google Analytics 4 is Google's free, event-based analytics platform, which replaced Universal Analytics in July 2023. Every interaction, from page views to purchases, is recorded as an event with parameters, and web and mobile app data can be measured together in one property. It remains the most widely installed analytics tool on the web, largely because it is free and tightly connected to Google's advertising products.

GA4 offers standard reports for acquisition, engagement, monetisation and retention, explorations for funnels, paths, segments and cohorts, machine learning features such as predictive audiences and anomaly detection, and modelled conversions that fill gaps when cookies are refused. Native integrations with Google Ads, Search Console, Merchant Center and BigQuery support attribution, bidding and free export of raw events for analysis. Google Tag Manager is commonly used to set up tracking. The enterprise version, Google Analytics 360, adds higher limits, unsampled data, SLAs and support for a substantial annual fee.

GA4 is indispensable for businesses that advertise on Google and want conversion data flowing into campaigns. Its weaknesses are a steep learning curve, data thresholds that hide small segments, and privacy requirements: in the EU and under similar laws, consent must be collected and Consent Mode implemented, or data is lost. Plausible, Fathom and Umami are simpler cookie-free alternatives for content sites, Matomo offers self-hosting and data ownership, and Mixpanel or Amplitude are better for product analytics.