Frequently asked questions

GA4BigQuery is a digital guide & newsletter with example queries and tutorials on how to query Google Analytics data in BigQuery.

Our goal is to provide valuable content to data analysts, online marketeers and engineers who seek guidance on how to query the GA4 BigQuery export data set—and other digital data sources.

Yes! Become a free member and get a thoughtfully curated newsletter delivered on a flexible schedule, packed with GA4 & BigQuery news, tips & tricks in your inbox. You can unsubscribe from this newsletter anytime.

To get full access to the archive, containing zero-to-hero tutorials and out-of-the-box report queries. See the pricing plans for details.

Not sure what to expect? Subscribe as free member and get access to this premium tutorial).

As long as your payment method is valid, your subscription will be automatically renewed at the end of the subscription period. You can cancel your subscription at any time, and you will keep access to all content until the end of your subscription period.

The price of an existing premium membership will always remain the same, even if the subscription prices for new members have been increased in the meantime.

Log in to your account and cancel your subscription on the account page.

Refunds are not issued automatically when you cancel a subscription. Eligibility for a refund depends on several factors, including the timing of your cancellation and the reason for your request. If you believe you are eligible, you must apply for a refund by contacting support. Refunds are granted at our discretion based on the circumstances surrounding your cancellation.

We assume you have a basic understanding of SQL as a querying language and BigQuery as a database tool. If not, we suggest you start with a SQL introduction course (this one, or this one) or purchase this GA4 focused SQL course where you'll get up to speed with the SQL syntax while working with the GA4 data export and BigQuery. This platform does not yet go into too much detail about the SQL syntax, though this might change in the future. Don't feel like learning SQL yourself? Generate out of the box queries at GA4SQL.com or see a few other tips on our welcome page.

Our team consists of two main contributors.

Balazs Vajna is Head of Analytics in a digital marketing and analytics services agency. MarketingLens provides expert digital advertising services led by ex-Googlers, and data analytics services to enhance digital advertising, usually with BigQuery at the core. Going forward, Balazs is mainly responsible for creating new content, supporting members and operating the platform.

Johan van de Werken is a freelance data analyst & analytics engineer with a decade of hands-on experience in marketing, web & data analytics; thriving best at the sweet spot between data, business & tech. Johan is the original founder of this platform and will stay involved to ensure the high quality set out originally and maintained ever since.

To understand the recent transition and the nature of our collaboration, you can read our announcement here.

Yes, both Johan as well as Balazs (and his team) are available to support your organization. Don't hesitate to get in touch for analytics or digital advertising services.

We are happy to announce that Johan has been collaborating with Mari and Simo Ahava to deliver an extensive online course on Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and BigQuery on Simmer, a brand new technical marketing learning platform. This course is recommended if you're not comfortable with SQL and/or BigQuery (yet).

Access to the Simmer course is not included in the GA4BigQuery membership. By subscribing to our premium plan you will unlock a 15% discount for the Simmer course. The discount is not stackable with other discounts.

Absolutely! Simmer can - on request - provide you a link to get 15% off our annual subscription. The 15% discount will remain valid if your subscription is renewed.

Yes, please find the feed here: rss-feed.

By default all queries on this platform are written in BigQuery standard SQL, unless stated otherwise. We'd suggest to use #standardSQL only.

It is expected that the results for most queries on this website will not match with the GA4 user interface. This can occur for a variety of reasons.

Generally I like helping others, but as time is limited I prefer to focus on other stuff.

One of the perks of purchasing the course is that you'll get access to the Simmer community, where other community members can help you out. Of course you can also post your question on StackOverflow, join the kind community at Measure Slack or ask ChatGPT.

UA stands for Universal Analytics. This has been the Google's analytics flag ship since 2012. The BigQuery export for UA was only available for enterprise customers. GA4 is the successor of UA, the latter was deprecated in 2023. Read all about it here. Main differences: all BigQuery export data is event based and available for all, including free accounts.

That depends on your Google Analytics property:

• Google Analytics 4
• Universal Analytics (only with GA360) - deprecated

In 2019, our original founder Johan published 'How to query and calculate Google Analytics data in BigQuery', with the following intro:

When I first started querying Google Analytics data in BigQuery, I had a hard time interpreting the ‘raw’ hit-level data hiding in the ga_sessions_ export tables. Because I could not find a noob-proof guide on how to calculate Google Analytics metrics in BigQuery, I decided to write one myself. I provide lots of example queries so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel and hopefully you can save yourself some valuable time.

At the moment this article received 150k+ views, an indication that I was not alone in my journey.

My early 2020 article 'How to query and calculate GA4 event data in BigQuery' got a lot of viewers as well. As the BigQuery export for Google Analytics 4 (previously App + Web) is free to use for everyone, not only for enterprise GA360 accounts, I expected the demand for practical knowledge to grow in the coming years.

Especially after the announcement that Universal Analytics would be deprecated, the amount of users on this platform searching for GA4 and BigQuery related content was increasing heavily, and interest has still been increasing.

Johan, teaming up with a handful of other data engineer and analyst experts, started focusing his efforts on GA4Dataform.com, to provide an easy-to-install Dataform package to unpack the raw GA4 data and kick-start BigQuery-based digital analytics initiatives for any organization. This and other commitments made it difficult to maintain a steady frequency of new articles and newsletters. To alleviate this, Balazs joined the endeavor in 2025 and took over the maintenance of the platform, with Johan staying involved (for the long term) to ensure a smooth transition.

You're probably right. We are learning everyday, please feel free to drop a line and share your remarks and suggestions.

Let us know what's on your mind.