Analytics 360, formally Google Analytics 360, is the paid enterprise edition of Google Analytics. It runs on the same collection code and the same reporting interface as the free product, but a contract buys higher data limits, unsampled reporting, larger exports to Google's BigQuery data warehouse, finer control over who sees what, and service level agreements (SLAs) that put commitments behind data processing. It exists because the free tool was built for millions of small sites, and its caps, sampling and lack of guarantees become a problem for retailers, publishers and banks that collect billions of events a month and feed them into media buying. It is sold through Google Marketing Platform, usually via a reseller, alongside Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360 and Campaign Manager 360.

Since July 1, 2024, Analytics 360 has meant a Google Analytics 4 (GA4) property on a 360 contract. The older version, built on Universal Analytics (UA), no longer exists.

What the contract changes

A GA4 property becomes a 360 property when an administrator links it to a Google Marketing Platform organisation with an active order. Nothing changes on the website or in the app. The difference sits in the processing and storage layers, and in the numbers.

Google's own comparison table, as of November 2026, lists the main gaps. A 360 property accepts 100 parameters per event against 25, and 125 event-scoped custom dimensions against 50. It allows 50 key events (the metric Google called conversions until 2024) against 30, and 400 audiences against 100. Calculated metrics rise from 5 to 50 per property. String parameter values can run to 500 characters rather than 100, a change Google extended to 360 web streams in November 2023. Data retention for granular exploration data reaches 50 months, against 14 on the free tier. Data import storage rises from 10 GB to 1 TB per property, and the daily Data API quota from 200,000 tokens to 2 million.

Sampling is the most visible difference for analysts. When a free property's exploration query touches more than 10 million events, GA4 estimates the answer from a subset. On 360, the threshold rises to 1 billion events, and the 100 million default can be raised by choosing more detailed results, as PPC Land described in January 2024. Beyond 1 billion, 360 users can request unsampled explorations, paid for from a daily allowance of 20,000 tokens with a 5,000-token ceiling per query, figures Google set in October 2024.

The BigQuery export sends raw, event-level rows to a customer's cloud project. Free properties are capped at 1 million events a day on the daily export. For 360, Google's comparison table says only "billions of events", while its export documentation gives a ceiling of 20 billion. That ceiling matters because the raw export is where large advertisers join analytics data to CRM records and build their own attribution, as the PPC Land explainer on BigQuery sets out.

Data freshness also differs. According to Google's help centre, intraday data on a 360 property arrives continuously, typically within about an hour, against two to six hours on a standard property. Daily tables land within roughly 12 hours for most 360 properties, longer for the very largest. Google labels these timings "typical", not guaranteed.

Subproperties, roll-ups and pricing

Two property types exist only in 360. A subproperty takes a filtered slice of a source property, say one country or one brand, so a regional team sees only its own data and links its own Google Ads accounts. A roll-up property works the other way, combining several source properties into one view. Both were introduced with the GA4 version of 360 in October 2021 and gained links to Search Ads 360 and Display & Video 360 in February 2024. Since June 2025, custom dimensions can sync one way from a source property to its subproperties, though not to roll-ups.

Pricing is usage-based. According to Google's billing documentation, a GA4 360 contract carries a fixed base fee covering the first 25 million events a month, with further events billed per event at falling rates as volume rises. Google publishes no list price. Cardinal Path, a Google Marketing Platform reseller, puts the suggested retail starting point at $50,000 a year and says events flowing into subproperties and roll-ups are billed at a premium. The old UA 360 product carried a flat fee, with a suggested price of $150,000 a year.

Access control is handled at the organisation level. Org admins and billing admins can upgrade or downgrade a property themselves once an order is active, and Google says an upgrade can take up to four hours. A roll-up property cannot be downgraded at all. On the buy side, the users are in-house analytics teams, agencies and the specialist resellers that hold most contracts. Publishers use the same tier to measure subscriptions and audience across large sites and apps.

From Urchin to GA4 360

Google bought the web analytics company Urchin in 2005 and relaunched its software as the free Google Analytics in November that year. The paid tier followed on September 29, 2011, as Google Analytics Premium, offered in the US, Canada and the UK for a flat $150,000 a year, with round-the-clock support and SLAs for collection, processing and reporting, according to Research Live. The product was aimed squarely at Adobe and IBM.

On March 15, 2016, Paul Muret, then Google's vice president of display, video and analytics, announced the Google Analytics 360 Suite. Premium was renamed Google Analytics 360 and became the measurement centre of six products, alongside Tag Manager 360, Attribution 360 (formerly Adometry), and new Optimize 360, Data Studio 360 and Audience Center 360. In June 2018 the suite was folded with DoubleClick's advertiser tools into Google Marketing Platform.

GA4 launched on October 14, 2020, announced by Vidhya Srinivasan. A GA4 version of Analytics 360 opened in beta on October 7, 2021.

The cut-over was forced. On March 16, 2022, Google said standard UA would stop processing on July 1, 2023 and UA 360 on October 1, 2023. In October 2022 the 360 date moved to July 1, 2024. Google then retired UA 360 features in stages through early 2024 before ending interface and API access on July 1, 2024.

Why it matters to marketers

Analytics 360 is where Google's measurement and buying tools meet. Audiences built in a 360 property flow into Display & Video 360 and Search Ads 360, and key events become bidding signals. Large advertisers buy it for export volume, governance and integrations more than for reports. The product has also become Google's vehicle for higher-level measurement. At Google Marketing Live on May 20, 2026, Google said it would integrate Meridian, its open-source marketing mix model, directly into Analytics 360, letting customers model cross-channel spend on first-party data already collected.

Limitations and disputes

The guarantees are narrower than the label suggests. Google's help centre lists features outside the 360 processing SLA, including attribution, Insights, Data Import and the BigQuery daily export, even though Steve Ganem, a Google product manager, presented an SLA on that export as a first in the October 2021 launch post.

The UA shutdown remains a sore point. Organisations that had paid for years of UA 360 lost interface access to that history unless they had exported it, and GA4's different data model made old and new figures hard to compare. Ginny Marvin, Google's ads product liaison, called the transition "a shock to the system" in January 2026.

Usage-based pricing makes cost harder to forecast than the old flat fee. Data retention also has an asterisk: properties in Google's XL category are limited to two months of granular exploration data even on 360.

The Meridian integration revives an old objection about a media seller measuring its own media. On Google's Ads DevCast, host Cory Liseno described the risk as "grading our own homework"; Katie Munro, Meridian's product manager, answered that the model's code is public and "we aren't asking for blind trust".

Not the same as

  • Standard GA4: the free edition. Same tag and interface, lower limits, sampling at 10 million events, no subproperties and no SLA.
  • Google Analytics 360 Suite: the 2016 brand for a bundle of six products, of which Analytics 360 was one. The suite name was retired in 2018.
  • Google Marketing Platform: the umbrella that sells Analytics 360 alongside DV360, SA360 and CM360. The "360" suffix marks the enterprise family, not shared features.
  • Meridian: an open-source marketing mix model that can run anywhere; Explaining Meridian covers it.

Recent developments

Most GA4 changes reach both tiers, though the 360 version often gets a larger allowance. Drag-and-drop dashboards arrived on September 9, 2026 with a ceiling of 15 cards on standard properties and 30 on premium ones. In September 2026 Google also added 14 alpha methods to the Google Marketing Platform Admin API, so that user groups and admin access bindings can be managed in code. On November 6, 2026, a Data Manager landing page reached Analytics in beta, but Google's help page says subproperties and roll-up properties do not support it, which leaves the two 360-only property types outside the new setup flow for now.

For the 360 tier itself, PPC Land's Google Marketing Live round-up described a reimagined Analytics 360 that pulls in performance from Google, TikTok, Pinterest and Snap and offers scenario planning through a natural-language interface. At the EMEA edition of the event, Google named two new metrics, attributed branded searches and qualified future conversions, the second linking actions to sales up to six months ahead. Google has given no date for general availability of Meridian in Analytics 360 as of November 2026.

Timeline

  • November 2005: Google relaunches Urchin software as the free Google Analytics.
  • September 29, 2011: Google Analytics Premium launches in the US, Canada and UK at $150,000 a year.
  • March 15, 2016: Google announces the Google Analytics 360 Suite; Premium becomes Google Analytics 360.
  • June 2018: The suite is folded into Google Marketing Platform.
  • October 14, 2020: Google launches Google Analytics 4.
  • October 7, 2021: Analytics 360 for GA4 enters open beta.
  • March 16, 2022: Google sets UA shutdown dates of July 1, 2023 (standard) and October 1, 2023 (360).
  • October 2022: The UA 360 date moves to July 1, 2024.
  • November 2023: 360 web streams gain 500-character parameter values.
  • January 29, 2024: First batch of UA 360 features retired.
  • February 2024: Subproperties and roll-ups link to SA360 and DV360.
  • July 1, 2024: UA 360 interface and API access end.
  • October 14, 2024: Unsampled exploration quota set at 20,000 daily tokens.
  • June 2, 2025: Custom dimension syncing to subproperties announced.
  • May 20, 2026: Google announces Meridian integration into Analytics 360.
  • September 9, 2026: Dashboards launch, with 30 cards per dashboard on 360 against 15 on standard.
  • September 18, 2026: User group methods added to the Google Marketing Platform Admin API (alpha).
  • November 6, 2026: Data Manager reaches Analytics in beta, without subproperty or roll-up support.

Summary

Who: Google sells Analytics 360 through Google Marketing Platform and resellers; large advertisers, agencies and publishers use it.

What: The paid enterprise edition of Google Analytics, offering higher limits, unsampled data, subproperties, roll-ups, large BigQuery exports and SLAs.

When: Launched as Google Analytics Premium on September 29, 2011, renamed in March 2016, rebuilt on GA4 from October 2021, UA-free since July 1, 2024, with Meridian announced for it on May 20, 2026.

Where: In GA4 properties linked to a Google Marketing Platform organisation, feeding DV360, SA360, Google Ads and BigQuery.

Why: Organisations collecting billions of events need guarantees, scale and governance that the free tier does not provide.