Comparison
GA4 tells you about traffic. It's never once told you the truth about your ROAS.
Google Analytics shows pageviews and sessions. It doesn't see Stripe, so it can't catch Meta and Google both claiming credit for the same sale.
Reconciles double-counted ad revenue
- Google Analytics 4
- No, doesn't connect to Stripe or any payment processor
- Thexly
- Yes, matches every payment to the one channel that closed it
Cookieless / no consent banner
- Google Analytics 4
- Thexly
Tied to real, bank-verified revenue
- Google Analytics 4
- Thexly
Setup complexity
- Google Analytics 4
- Hours, buried menus
- Thexly
- Minutes
Data ownership
- Google Analytics 4
- Hosted by Google
- Thexly
- You own it
| Feature | Google Analytics 4 | Thexly |
|---|---|---|
| Reconciles double-counted ad revenue | No, doesn't connect to Stripe or any payment processor | Yes, matches every payment to the one channel that closed it |
| Cookieless / no consent banner | ||
| Tied to real, bank-verified revenue | ||
| Setup complexity | Hours, buried menus | Minutes |
| Data ownership | Hosted by Google | You own it |
The blind spot
Both platforms can't be right, and GA4 won't tell you that.
GA4 will faithfully show you that a Meta ad and a Google ad both drove traffic to the same product page. What it won't tell you is that Meta's dashboard claims that sale, Google's dashboard claims the same sale, and neither number matches what actually hit your Stripe account.
- Meta says
- $12,400 in sales this month
- Google says
- $9,800 in sales this month
- Combined claim
- $22,200
- Actual Stripe revenue
- $14,600
GA4 can't catch this because it was built to measure traffic, not reconcile revenue. Thexly was built to do exactly that.
GA counts sessions
You can see that 18,000 people visited. You cannot see which of them paid you, or from where.
Consent kills your data
Every visitor who declines the banner disappears from your numbers. Thexly needs no banner, so nobody drops out.
Mechanism
Payment matching GA4 can't do
Thexly's script automatically captures the campaign and click ID (Meta's fbclid, Google's gclid, or standard UTM parameters) the moment a visitor arrives, no account connection to Meta or Google required. When that visitor completes a payment through Stripe, Thexly matches it back to that one captured click. GA4 has no equivalent: it can show you a conversion event, but it has no idea what your Stripe balance actually was.
Stop trusting a tool that's never seen your Stripe account.
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More comparisons
Thexly vs. Plausible and Thexly vs. Baremetrics are still in progress.