When to use this package

This is not a GA4 replacement. GA4 is free at any scale, runs on global real-time infrastructure, has ML predictions and deep Google Ads integration — a self-hosted package does not compete with that. Use this package when you want tracking that lives inside your app, next to your data:

	This package	GA4	Plausible / Fathom	Matomo (self-hosted)
Data location	Your database	Google’s servers	Vendor’s servers (hosted)	Your database
Events attached to your own models (Order, Lead) through an Eloquent relation	Yes (eventable)	No — separate system, joined manually	No	No
Query visits together with your app’s data (one JOIN, no export)	Yes	No	No	No
Cost at high volume	Your infrastructure	Free	Paid per page-view tier	Your infrastructure
Real-time global scale, ML, ad-platform sync	No	Yes	No	Partial

In practice: “which orders came from a Facebook campaign, joined with my own orders table” is what this package exists for. “How is our traffic trending against industry benchmarks, with nothing to run” is GA4’s job. Running both side by side is fine — they answer different questions.

The cost is load on your own stack: one queued job per tracked request, rows in your database, and a scheduler for rollups and retention.