AppGlance vs Firebase Analytics
Firebase Analytics is free, enormous, and backed by Google. That is a genuinely strong offer, and for a lot of apps it's the right one. Here is where the two actually differ — including the cases where you should close this tab and keep Firebase.
Who wrote this: we make AppGlance, so read accordingly. We've tried to be accurate about what Firebase does better, because a comparison that only flatters its author is no use to anyone. Product details change — verify anything decision-critical against Firebase's own docs. Checked August 2026.
The short version
Keep Firebase if…
- You already use Crashlytics, Remote Config, Cloud Messaging or Firebase Auth — Analytics is right there, integrated, and free.
- You ship on Android, web or Flutter as well and want one number across all of them.
- You want to slice data with SQL — the BigQuery export is the real thing, and nothing here matches it.
- You run Google Ads and need analytics-driven audiences and conversion measurement.
- Your event volume is enormous and your budget is zero.
Try AppGlance if…
- You want to open a page and see who is in the app right now — not a report about yesterday.
- You're an indie or small team and Firebase's console is more machinery than you need.
- You want App Store privacy answers that are short, and generated for you.
- You'd rather not hand your users' behaviour to Google.
- You want a push on your phone the moment someone buys.
Side by side
| AppGlance | Firebase Analytics | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | One Swift package, two lines, no config file. | Add the SDK, drop in GoogleService-Info.plist, configure at launch. More steps, well documented. |
| Dependencies | None. One module, Apple platforms. | Pulls in Firebase's core libraries; bigger binary and build. |
| Time to first number | Seconds. Run from Xcode with debug: true and watch yourself appear. |
DebugView is immediate once enabled; the standard reports take longer to fill in. |
| “Right now” | A live count per app, refreshed every few seconds, built on a once-a-minute presence ping. | A realtime view covering roughly the last half hour; the rest of the reporting is processed in batches, often around a day behind. |
| New event names | Appear in the dashboard by themselves — no schema, no registration. | Custom parameters generally need registering as custom definitions before reports use them; there's a cap on distinct event names. |
| Deep analysis | Funnels, retention, sessions, per-user timelines, CSV export. No query language. | BigQuery export and SQL. Far more powerful than anything here, if you'll write the SQL. |
| Platforms | Apple-first (iOS, watchOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS), a Kotlin SDK for Android, and an HTTP API for anything else. | Everywhere — iOS, Android, web, Flutter, Unity, C++. |
| Beyond analytics | Alerts and webhooks. That's the lot. | A whole platform — crash reporting, remote config, A/B testing, push, auth, databases. |
| Identifiers | A random per-install UUID in the Keychain. No IDFA, ever. | An app-instance identifier; the ad identifier only if you enable ad features. |
| App Store privacy label | Two data types, not linked, tracking No — generated for you. | Longer, and it grows if you turn on ad features. Google publishes guidance you have to map yourself. |
| ATT prompt | Not required. | Not required for analytics alone — but ad features and audience sharing change that answer. |
| Where data lives | Postgres in the EU (Ireland). Delete an app and every event is gone immediately. | Google's infrastructure. Deletion and retention controls exist and are configurable. |
| Price | Free to 100k events/month; $4.99/mo for 1M; $14.99/mo for 10M. Presence pings never count. | Free for standard reporting at effectively any volume. BigQuery costs extra once you exceed its free tier. |
| Source | SDK is MIT-licensed and readable. | The Firebase Apple SDK is open source; the backend is not. |
On "free"
Firebase Analytics really is free, and we're not going to pretend that a paid tool beats free on price. What free buys Google is the data: usage from millions of apps, and a hook into the ad ecosystem. If that trade is fine for you — and for plenty of apps it is — Firebase is very hard to beat on cost.
The honest cost comparison isn't money, it's attention: the Firebase console is built for teams who will spend time in it. If your actual question is "did anyone open my app today, and did anyone buy", that's a lot of console to wade through, and BigQuery is a strange place to answer it.
On privacy
Both tools can be configured to avoid the ATT prompt: Firebase Analytics without ad features is not "tracking" in Apple's sense either. The difference is the default and the blast radius. AppGlance cannot collect an ad identifier — there's no code to do it — and there is no ad network on the other end that might want your audience later. With Firebase, the analytics data sits inside a platform whose business is advertising, and the switches that change your privacy label are the ones you might be tempted to flip for growth.
If you want the argument in full: what privacy-first iOS analytics actually means. If you just want your questionnaire answered: the privacy-label tool.
You can run both
This isn't really either/or, and plenty of apps do run both for a while: Firebase for crash reporting and the deep historical slice, AppGlance for the daily glance and the alerts. Two SDKs is more code, more privacy label, and more to think about — but it's a reasonable way to try one without ripping out the other. Nothing in either tool objects.
See it before you decide
The live demo is the real dashboard on sample data from three apps — no account needed.