You can get the WordPress website statistics you need through WordPress’s built-in Jetpack Stats, Google Analytics 4 (GA4), or a privacy-focused or self-hosted analytics plugin. Each option gives you different information. They also work differently and cost different amounts.

In this guide, we'll compare your options, help you choose the right setup for your site, and show you the five numbers to check first.

Does WordPress have built-in analytics?

It depends on how you host your WordPress site. If you use WordPress.com, it’s an automatic yes. All WordPress.com sites include Jetpack Stats, regardless of your hosting plan. You can locate your WordPress site stats in the Stats section of your dashboard, so you should already be able to find the numbers you need.

If you have a self-hosted WordPress site, you don’t have analytics built-in, but they’re not far away. You'll just need to add an analytics tool yourself. Do this with a plugin like Jetpack Stats or use an external service like Google Analytics 4.

If you’re not sure which type of WordPress site you have, check who you pay for your hosting. If it’s WordPress.com, you have Jetpack Stats built-in. If you use another hosting company, you’ll need to check if you already have an analytics tool installed. Whichever setup you use, WordPress analytics is simply web analytics for your WordPress site.

Three ways to get analytics on a WordPress site

For WordPress web analytics, you can choose Jetpack Stats, Google Analytics 4, or a privacy-focused or self-hosted analytics plugin.

Jetpack Stats, the built-in option

Jetpack Stats comes built in with WordPress.com. If you have a self-hosted site, you can install it yourself as a standalone plugin.

If you use the plugin method, you must make sure it’s connected to a WordPress.com account. This is because WordPress.com records the visits and generates your reports. The plugin won't work without that connection.

To see your WordPress dashboard analytics, open the Stats screen and click the Traffic tab. Here, you'll see how many views your pages have received and how many visitors have come to your site. You'll also find your most popular posts and pages, where your traffic comes from, and which countries and devices your visitors use. Other available options include changing the date range to examine different periods, and downloading your WordPress site stats as CSV files. Some reports, including device statistics, are available only on certain plans.

Price-wise, Jetpack offers Free and Pay what you want plans for personal sites. For commercial sites of any kind, including company websites, you need the Commercial Stats plan. Jetpack defines commercial sites as “sites with ads, sales, affiliate links, or other business activity.”

Jetpack Stats is a good choice if you want straightforward visitor numbers and content reports inside WordPress, without having to learn a separate analytics tool.

Google Analytics 4, through Site Kit, Tag Manager or a header plugin

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a free option for analytics on a WordPress site, with detailed reports on traffic and what people do when they visit.

GA4 gives you headline data such as how many users visit your site and how many sessions they generate. But you can also go deeper and see which pages users visit, and the actions they take on your site. These actions, known as key events, are interactions you can choose to measure, such as someone submitting a contact form. Country and device stats are included too. GA4 is valuable for B2B marketers because it shows where traffic comes from.

You can add GA4 to WordPress in several ways, depending on how your site is set up.

On WordPress.com, copy and paste your GA4 measurement ID into your site settings. There's no need to install another plugin or edit your website's code. However, this option is available only on WordPress.com's Premium, Business, and Commerce plans.

Site Kit by Google is Google's official WordPress plugin. It connects GA4 and Google Search Console to your website without you having to edit any code. You also get a summary of your analytics inside the WordPress dashboard, which is handy if you prefer working there.

Google Tag Manager is a good option if you're already using it on your site, or plan to add other scripts later, such as advertising tags. You can manage these alongside your Google Analytics tag through Tag Manager.

A header and footer plugin allows you to paste the Google tag into your site's header without editing its theme files. Avoid adding the code to your header.php file yourself, as a theme update could overwrite your changes.

For detailed installation instructions, check out our guide on how to monitor website traffic.

GA4 is a good choice for company websites that want to measure campaign performance and actions such as demo requests alongside their traffic numbers.

Privacy-focused and self-hosted analytics plugins

If you'd prefer to keep your website analytics data on your own server, or collect less information about visitors, there are other WordPress traffic analytics options available.

Self-hosted analytics plugins count visits on your server and store the information in your WordPress database. You can read the reports straight from your WordPress dashboard, and your data stays with you. The trade-off is that these plugins use your own hosting resources, and the reports tend to be simpler than those in GA4. But if you only need basic traffic figures, that might be all you need.

Privacy-focused analytics services work a little differently. You install a WordPress plugin that adds the service's script to your site, and the service records the visits. Many work without cookies and collect less information about individual visitors. You'll usually find your reports in the service's own dashboard, although some let you view them inside WordPress too.

Cost-wise, both types often offer free versions with paid upgrades if you need more functionality. Some plugins also say you won't need a cookie banner. The section below covers how a banner changes your numbers.

These options suit websites that want to keep analytics data on their own server or limit what they collect. For comparisons of specific products, see our guide to website analytics tools.

How the options compare, and which to choose

The right analytics choice for you depends on the type of site you’re running.

For a blog or content site, Jetpack Stats may give you everything you need to understand which posts attract visitors, making it the straightforward choice for personal WordPress blog analytics. Remember that company blogs count as business activity, so you'll need the Commercial Stats plan.

GA4 is the standard choice for B2B company websites, sometimes alongside Jetpack Stats for quick numbers inside WordPress. When you want to go beyond traffic and measure key events like demo requests or contact form submissions, GA4 gives you the information you need. Our guide to b2b website metrics explains what else marketers should measure.

Online shops need to measure product performance and sales alongside website visits. Our guide to ecommerce analytics covers that in more detail.

For an agency managing several client sites, choose a consistent analytics setup across your clients. This will make monthly reporting easier because you'll be comparing figures collected in the same way.

You can run two analytics options on one WordPress site, although their numbers won't necessarily match. We'll explain why in the FAQs section.

What to look at first in your WordPress analytics

The five numbers you need to check are the same, no matter which WordPress visitor analytics option you use. Only the screens where you find them will differ. 

1. Visitors and views

Views versus visitors in WordPress is a useful distinction to understand. Visitors measure how many distinct browsers have accessed your site, while WordPress page views count how many times pages have been loaded (or reloaded). One visitor can generate several views, so the view count is usually higher. In Jetpack Stats, you'll find both figures in the Views card under Stats > Traffic. In GA4, check the Engagement overview for active users and the Pages and screens report for views. These numbers give you a starting point for measuring the size of your audience.

 2. Where visits come from

Your WordPress traffic can come through search engines, social media, other websites, email links, or direct visits. Jetpack Stats shows this information in the Referrers card. In GA4, open the Traffic acquisition report to see which channels bring people to your site. To identify individual campaigns, add utm parameters to your links. These help your analytics tool distinguish campaign traffic from other visits.

3. Top pages and posts

Your WordPress page analytics will show which content receives the most attention. In Jetpack Stats, check the Most viewed card under Traffic, then select Posts & pages. In GA4, open the Pages and screens report. Compare individual pages over different periods. You'll see which posts continue attracting visitors and whether recently published content is picking up traffic.

4. Countries and devices

These figures show where your audience is located, and whether people use desktop or mobile devices to access your site. Jetpack Stats has Locations and Devices cards under Traffic, although availability depends on your plan. In GA4, use Demographic details for countries and cities, and Tech details for devices. Compare the country numbers with the markets you want to reach. Device figures can also help you decide which screen sizes deserve attention when checking your site's layout.

 5. Changes over time, and odd spikes

Use the date filters and traffic charts in Jetpack Stats or GA4 to compare this week with last week, or this month with the same month last year. Watch for sudden spikes in traffic. These can happen when someone shares a link to your site or automated bots generate extra visits. Check the traffic sources before celebrating a surge in visitors. For more detailed explanations of these figures, see our guide to the most important website metrics.

How cookie banners change your numbers

If your WordPress site shows a cookie banner, some visitors will decline analytics cookies. Your analytics tool may then miss their visit or record only part of it, so your reports may show fewer visits than your site receives. That's normal, so keep it in mind when you read your traffic figures. Some analytics tools work without cookies, and our guide to cookieless website analytics explains how they work and what changes for your reporting. Before you rely on the numbers, ask whoever manages your cookie banner to confirm that it and your analytics tool work as intended.

Going beyond visit counts to the companies behind them

The WordPress analytics options we've covered show how many visits your website receives and where they come from. But none of them identifies the companies behind those visits. For B2B marketers, that's often the next thing they want to know.

Company-level identification works by matching the network a visit comes from to the organization that owns it. This identifies companies rather than individual people. Our guide to WordPress website visitors explains the process in more detail.

Leadfeeder's Web Visitors is a visitor identification tool that shows which companies have visited your WordPress site, by name, and which pages they've viewed. It works alongside whichever analytics option you've chosen, giving B2B marketers another way to understand their website traffic. You can install the tracker through the Leadfeeder plugin for WordPress, Google Tag Manager, or a header and footer plugin. These are similar to the GA4 installation methods we covered earlier. You'll need Administrator access to WordPress, and you should avoid editing your theme's header.php file because an update could overwrite your changes. To get started, install the Leadfeeder plugin for WordPress, paste in your tracker ID, and open Web Visitors after at least an hour to see which companies have been identified.