Marketing and agency reporting
How to build a GA4 dashboard in Looker Studio
The short answer
In Looker Studio, create a blank report, add the Google Analytics connector, pick your GA4 property, then add scorecards, a time series and a channel table. Keep each page to a handful of charts: every chart is a separate request against GA4's API quota, and a standard property allows 14,000 tokens per project per property per hour, so busy dashboards hit quota errors. Looker Studio itself is free.
On this page 6 sections
Build the dashboard
- Go to lookerstudio.google.com, choose Create, then Report.
- Select the Google Analytics connector, authorise it, and pick the account, then the GA4 property. Click Add.
- Add a date range control at the top so readers can change the period, with comparison to the previous period switched on.
- Add scorecards for the four numbers people read first: Sessions, Engaged sessions (or Engagement rate), Key events and, for shops, Purchase revenue.
- Add a time series of Sessions and Key events by date, so trends and tracking breaks are visible.
- Add a table with the dimension Session default channel group, metrics Sessions, Key events and Session key event rate. Add a second table by Landing page.
- Share it with View access, or schedule email delivery from the Share menu.
Fields that trip people up
- Session vs user scope. Session default channel group answers "what brought this visit"; First user default channel group answers "what first brought this person". Do not mix them in one table.
- Key events, not conversions. GA4 renamed conversions to key events in March 2024. A chart built on an old field name may show nothing.
- Totals will not match GA4 exactly. Looker Studio queries the GA4 API, which can apply thresholds and sampling differently from the GA4 interface. Small differences are normal; see why GA4 numbers don't match.
- Calculated fields such as cost per lead need data from another source (Google Ads spend). Use the Google Ads connector and a blend joined on date and campaign.
Quota errors, and how to avoid them
| GA4 Data API core quota | Standard property | Analytics 360 |
|---|---|---|
| Tokens per property per day | 200,000 | 2,000,000 |
| Tokens per property per hour | 40,000 | 400,000 |
| Tokens per project per property per hour | 14,000 | 140,000 |
| Concurrent requests per property | 10 | 50 |
Every chart on every page a viewer opens draws on these limits, and long date ranges with many dimensions cost more tokens. To stay under them: keep pages to roughly ten charts, avoid high-cardinality dimensions such as full page URLs over years, split large reports into pages, and use Extract Data for slow-changing history.
Home-made dashboard or reporting tool?
Looker Studio is free and flexible, and it is the right answer for one business reporting on its own site. Agencies reporting to many clients often outgrow it: each client needs its own copy, connectors to non-Google platforms usually need paid third-party connectors, and quota errors arrive at the worst moment. A client reporting platform bundles the connectors, templates, white-labelling and scheduling. Compare the two in AgencyAnalytics vs Looker Studio and the best marketing reporting tools.
Questions
- Is Looker Studio free?
- Yes. Looker Studio, formerly Google Data Studio, is free, and the Google Analytics, Google Ads and Search Console connectors are free. A paid Looker Studio Pro tier adds team management and support. Many third-party connectors charge their own fees.
- Why does my Looker Studio report show a GA4 quota error?
- Each chart sends requests to the GA4 Data API, and a standard GA4 property allows 14,000 tokens per project per property per hour and 40,000 per property per hour. Reports with many charts, long date ranges or many viewers exhaust them. Reduce charts per page, shorten ranges, or extract the data.
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