How to choose

Four ways to keep
tracking honest.

Audit-only SaaS, an analytics agency on retainer, a senior web analyst on payroll, or Analytics-as-Code. Each one has a real job. Each one has a real failure mode. Here are the four side-by-side, with the costs, the scope, and the situation each is the right call for. If a comparison page is going to be useful it has to be honest about where we're wrong, not only where we're right — so we've done that.

At a glance

Audit-only SaaS

Analytics agency on retainer

Hire a senior web analyst

Analytics-as-Code

Cost

$400 – $2,000 / year

$3,000 – $10,000 / month

$80,000 – $250,000 / year

$0 – $199 / month

Runs the audit

Yes

Yes (manual)

Yes (automated, 116 checks)

Writes the fix

Yes (human)

Yes (AI + sandbox)

Watches nightly

Sometimes

No (sleeps)

Yes

Cross-checks GA4 × GTM

Rare

If asked

Always (5 checks)

Time to first finding

~1 day (PDF)

2-4 weeks

Day-one ramp

Under 60 seconds

Side by side

Audit-only SaaS.

$400 – $2,000 / year

Subscription. Some price by audit count, some by property count.

One-off audit tools that scan your GA4 or GTM setup and email you a PDF of what's broken. Useful for surfacing problems quickly. Not built to fix anything.

What it does

Scans your GA4 property or GTM container against a rule set.
Returns a PDF report grouped by severity.
Sometimes ships with a basic re-run schedule.

What it does not

Generate the actual fix code, banner, or tag config.
Watch for changes between audit runs.
Cross-check GA4 and GTM against each other.
Catch live anomalies in your traffic or conversions.

Choose this when

You only need a one-time diagnostic — for example, before a vendor switch or for a procurement review — and someone in-house will do the actual fix work afterwards.

Failure mode

The PDF lands, sits in someone's inbox, and nothing changes. Six months later you re-run it and the same findings come back.

Analytics agency on retainer.

$3,000 – $10,000 / month

Monthly retainer. Often a 3-6 month minimum commitment.

A team of human consultants who handle audits, fixes, monitoring, and a monthly meeting. Strong on strategy and one-off projects. Slow and expensive when you just need the recurring audit-and-monitor work done.

What it does

Run audits, write the fix code, and ship the changes.
Sit in your stakeholder meetings.
Build custom dashboards and pick the right attribution model.
Run discrete projects (migration, replatform, ecommerce launch).

What it does not

Catch a tracking regression at 3am the night a developer ships a release.
Send you a Monday digest written this morning, not last week.
Scale economically when the work is "check the same 116 things every night".

Choose this when

You have at least one strategic project a quarter — a replatform, a CRM migration, a real attribution rebuild — that needs human judgment. Or your CFO won't approve software but will approve consultants.

Failure mode

The retainer becomes a slow drip of small fixes. The audit-and-monitor work that doesn't need a human eats the budget meant for strategy.

Hire a senior web analyst.

$80,000 – $250,000 / year

Fully loaded — payroll, equity, benefits, recruiter fee. EU mid-senior is €55–90k base.

A full-time analyst on payroll, owning the entire analytics stack end-to-end. The right call when analytics is core to the business model. Overkill for the recurring audit-and-monitor part of the role, which is what most marketing teams actually need.

What it does

Everything an agency does, plus deep institutional knowledge of your business.
Be in every product and growth meeting that matters.
Run experiments, write SQL, build dashboards from scratch.

What it does not

Stay focused on the recurring audit / fix / monitor cycle when bigger projects land on their plate.
Work nights, weekends, or vacations — when most production releases happen.
Cost less than the audit-fix-monitor work alone justifies for a $10–500M business.

Choose this when

Analytics is core to the business model — a marketplace, a heavy DTC ecommerce, a B2B SaaS where pipeline attribution drives the GTM motion. Or you have multiple full-time growth roles that need an analyst peer.

Failure mode

The analyst gets pulled onto strategy work and the recurring audit cycle quietly breaks. Tracking decays to the point where reports stop matching ad-platform numbers.

Analytics-as-Code (NiceLookingData).

$0 – $199 / month

Free reads. $49/mo Pro adds writes + watches. $199/mo Agency adds client workspaces.

Software that does the auditing, fixing, and monitoring work of a web analyst — for about one two-hundredth of the salary. Three things it does for you: checks your GA4 and GTM setup (116 checks), writes the fix code in a sandbox copy of your container, and keeps watching after you log out.

What it does

116 automated checks across GA4 + GTM + cross-product, every night.
Generate fix code, cookie banners, tracking specs, UTM rules — paste-ready.
Stage GTM fixes in a sandbox version you approve before publish.
Quiet anomaly alerts: only emails you when traffic, score, or new criticals actually move.
Monday executive summary written by AI. Plain English, one page.
Ask follow-up questions about any audit in plain English.

What it does not

Replace the strategic 20% of the role: stakeholder interviews, custom dashboards, attribution model selection, experiment design.
Mutate your live GTM container without your explicit approval — fixes are always staged in a sandbox first.
Read your visitor data — only your configuration. Privacy is a feature.

Choose this when

You're a Head of Marketing, VP Growth, or Director of Performance Marketing at a $10M–$500M business. Your tracking is configured (often badly). You can't justify a full-time analyst hire and an agency retainer feels overkill for the recurring work.

Failure mode

Software covers ~80% of the role. If your analytics is genuinely strategic and needs daily human judgment, you'll outgrow this and want a human alongside.

Common questions

Picking between
the four.

What is the cheapest option?+

Analytics-as-Code starts at $0 — the full 116-check audit (58 GA4 + 53 GTM + 5 cross-checks) runs free with no credit card. The next-cheapest is an audit-only SaaS at $400–2,000/year, which only runs the audit and stops. Agencies start around $3,000/month. A full-time hire is the most expensive at $80–250k/year fully loaded.

Do I need a developer to use Analytics-as-Code?+

No. Audit findings are written for marketers — every problem comes with a plain-English explanation, the business impact, and the click-path inside Google Analytics or Tag Manager to fix it. The generated artifacts (cookie banners, tracking specs) can be handed to a developer if you have one, or imported through Google Tag Manager directly if you do not. You write no code yourself.

Can Analytics-as-Code replace my agency?+

It replaces the recurring audit-fix-monitor portion of an agency engagement — typically 60-80% of what an analytics retainer covers. The 20-40% that requires human judgment (stakeholder interviews, dashboard design, attribution strategy, experiments) still needs a human. Many teams pair Analytics-as-Code as the always-on layer with an agency for one-off strategic projects.

When does it make sense to hire a full-time analyst instead?+

When analytics is core to the business model — a marketplace, heavy DTC ecommerce, or B2B SaaS where pipeline attribution drives the go-to-market motion. Or when you have multiple full-time growth roles that need an analyst peer. For most $10M–$500M marketing teams, a full-time hire at $80–250k/year is overkill for the audit-and-monitor work that software does well now.

Why is the audit free if it's the most valuable part?+

Because the audit alone is not a business — auditing is the diagnostic step. The recurring value is in fixing what the audit finds and watching for new issues. Free audits prove the depth of the diagnostic; Pro adds the fix-code generators, sandbox container changes, white-label PDFs, and the nightly monitoring layer.

How do I move from an audit-only SaaS to Analytics-as-Code?+

Run a free audit at NiceLookingData on the same property your audit-only tool covers. Compare findings — Analytics-as-Code typically catches an extra 30-60% (cross-product bugs, semantic event-name issues, governance gaps, the ones that need both GA4 and GTM context). Once a re-audit passes the bar, cancel the audit-only subscription and upgrade to Pro for the writes + watches layer.

Try the cheapest one first

Run the free audit.
Then decide.

116 checks across GA4 + GTM + cross-product. Real findings in plain English. No credit card. If a different path turns out to fit better, you'll know in 60 seconds — that's the point.

Run my free audit Read about Analytics-as-Code See pricing

Picking between
the four.

What is the cheapest option?+

Do I need a developer to use Analytics-as-Code?+

Can Analytics-as-Code replace my agency?+

When does it make sense to hire a full-time analyst instead?+

Why is the audit free if it's the most valuable part?+

How do I move from an audit-only SaaS to Analytics-as-Code?+

Four ways to keeptracking honest.

Audit-only SaaS.

Analytics agency on retainer.

Hire a senior web analyst.

Analytics-as-Code (NiceLookingData).

Picking betweenthe four.

Four ways to keeptracking honest.

Audit-only SaaS.

Analytics agency on retainer.

Hire a senior web analyst.

Analytics-as-Code (NiceLookingData).

Picking betweenthe four.

Four ways to keep
tracking honest.

Picking between
the four.

Four ways to keep
tracking honest.

Picking between
the four.