GA4 standard properties cap BigQuery export at 1 million daily events. Hit that limit, and the rest of your day’s data never reaches BigQuery. For enterprise WordPress sites running high-traffic WooCommerce stores, this isn’t a theoretical problem—it’s a daily reality where the data you thought you were preserving simply isn’t there.
The Export Ceiling You Didn’t Know About
You set up GA4 BigQuery export expecting complete data. Every pageview, every purchase, every scroll event—all flowing into your data warehouse for analysis. The setup went smoothly. BigQuery tables are populating. Everything looks good.
Then your Black Friday traffic spikes. Or your viral campaign takes off. Or your steady growth finally crosses the threshold. GA4 standard properties are limited to 1 million daily events for BigQuery export. Event 1,000,001? Never exported. Event 2,000,000? Gone.
This limit isn’t prominently advertised. You discover it when your BigQuery data stops matching your GA4 reports, or when your data team notices suspiciously low event counts on your busiest days.
The $150,000 Solution
Google’s answer to the export limit is GA4 360. GA4 360 costs approximately $150,000 per year—a price point designed for enterprise organizations with dedicated analytics teams and substantial budgets.
For that investment, you get:
- Higher (not unlimited) export quotas
- More granular data sampling thresholds
- Extended data retention
- SLA guarantees
What you don’t get: unlimited BigQuery exports. Export quotas apply even after upgrading to GA4 360. The ceiling is just higher—high enough that most 360 customers won’t hit it, but it’s still there.
For a WooCommerce store doing $2M annually, spending $150,000 on analytics isn’t just expensive—it’s absurd. That’s 7.5% of revenue on data infrastructure before you’ve hired an analyst to use it.
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Streaming vs. Daily Export: Pick Your Problem
GA4 offers two BigQuery export methods, and both have issues.
Streaming export sends data near real-time. Sounds ideal until you learn that streaming export may have gaps—daily export is more complete but delayed. Events can be missed. Attribution data may be incomplete. Session data might not stitch correctly.
Daily export batches everything into a single daily upload. More complete, more reliable—but delayed by 24+ hours. Need to analyze yesterday’s campaign performance this morning? Daily export won’t help.
The choice:
- Streaming: Fast but potentially incomplete
- Daily: Complete but delayed
Attribution data in BigQuery exports may be incomplete for streaming exports. The conversion you’re trying to attribute might show up without full channel context. The purchase might exist but the source/medium might be missing. You end up with data that’s technically present but analytically useless.
When Growing Stores Hit the Wall
One million events sounds like a lot until you calculate what your store actually generates.
Consider a moderately successful WooCommerce store:
- 50,000 daily visitors
- Average 8 pageviews per session
- Enhanced ecommerce tracking (view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout, purchase)
- Scroll depth and engagement events
- Custom events for your specific needs
That’s easily 20+ events per session. At 50,000 daily visitors, you’re generating 1,000,000 events—exactly at the limit. Any traffic spike pushes you over. Any additional tracking pushes you over. Growth itself pushes you over.
The GA4 BigQuery limit punishes success. The better your store performs, the more likely you are to lose data.
What You Actually Lose
Missing events aren’t just numbers. They’re:
- Purchases you can’t attribute—conversions that happened but can’t be traced to their source
- Customer journeys you can’t analyze—incomplete sessions that break path analysis
- A/B test results you can’t trust—partial data leading to wrong conclusions
- Revenue you can’t report—BigQuery totals that don’t match reality
Your data warehouse becomes unreliable. Every query requires asterisks. Every report needs caveats. The entire point of exporting to BigQuery—complete, queryable data—is undermined.
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The Direct Pipeline Alternative
GA4 BigQuery export has limits because Google controls the pipeline. They set the quotas. They determine what gets exported and when. You accept their terms or pay $150,000/year for better ones.
Direct WordPress-to-BigQuery has no event limits—you own the pipeline, you control the volume.
When data flows directly from your WordPress server to BigQuery:
- No daily event caps
- No streaming vs. daily tradeoffs
- Complete attribution on every event
- Real-time data without gaps
- Infrastructure you control and scale
Transmute Engine™ sends WooCommerce events directly to BigQuery. Every purchase, every add-to-cart, every custom event—complete with full attribution data, as they happen, with no artificial limits.
Your Black Friday doesn’t get capped. Your viral traffic doesn’t get truncated. Your growing success doesn’t get penalized.
The Math That Matters
Compare the options for a growing WooCommerce store needing complete BigQuery data:
Option 1: GA4 Standard
- Cost: Free
- Limit: 1 million daily events
- Reality: Lose data on your best days
Option 2: GA4 360
- Cost: $150,000/year
- Limit: Higher quotas (not unlimited)
- Reality: Massive expense for most SMBs
Option 3: Direct WordPress-to-BigQuery
- Cost: Transmute Engine subscription + BigQuery storage
- Limit: None
- Reality: Complete data at a fraction of 360 pricing
BigQuery storage costs roughly $0.02 per GB per month. Even high-volume stores rarely exceed $50/month in storage. Combined with Transmute Engine, you get unlimited events for less than 2% of what GA4 360 costs.
Key Takeaways
- GA4 standard caps BigQuery export at 1 million daily events—a limit growing stores hit sooner than expected
- GA4 360 removes the cap but costs $150,000/year—prohibitive for most WordPress businesses
- Streaming exports are fast but may have gaps—daily exports are complete but delayed 24+ hours
- Attribution data can be incomplete in exports—undermining the entire purpose of BigQuery analysis
- Direct WordPress-to-BigQuery pipelines have no limits—complete data at a fraction of enterprise pricing
GA4 standard properties are limited to 1 million daily events for BigQuery export. Once you hit this limit, additional events for that day are not exported, resulting in incomplete data in your BigQuery dataset. This limit resets daily.
GA4 360 costs approximately $150,000 per year. It removes the 1 million event export cap for BigQuery, but export quotas still apply even at the 360 level—they’re just significantly higher. Most SMB WordPress sites cannot justify this investment.
Daily export is more complete but delayed by 24+ hours. Streaming export provides near real-time data but may have gaps and attribution data can be incomplete. For accurate historical analysis, daily export is recommended, but you sacrifice timeliness.
Yes. Direct WordPress-to-BigQuery pipelines have no event limits because you own the infrastructure. Every purchase, page view, and custom event goes directly from your server to BigQuery with complete attribution data and no daily caps.
The GA4 BigQuery export limit isn’t a bug—it’s a business decision. Google provides free export up to a point, then enterprise pricing takes over. For WordPress stores that need complete data without enterprise budgets, the answer isn’t paying more for GA4. It’s owning your data pipeline entirely.
Making the Transition
If you’re approaching the 1 million event threshold—or already hitting it—the transition to direct BigQuery integration is straightforward. Your existing GA4 data stays in BigQuery. Your new direct pipeline runs alongside it. You can compare the data sources to verify completeness before fully relying on the direct feed.
The key insight: you don’t have to choose between GA4 and direct integration. Many stores run both. GA4 provides the familiar reporting interface. Direct BigQuery integration provides complete, unlimited raw data for serious analysis.
For growing WordPress stores, the question isn’t whether you’ll hit the GA4 export limit—it’s when. Planning your data infrastructure before that ceiling arrives means you’re never scrambling to explain missing conversions or incomplete attribution data.
