Google Analytics 4 (GA4) provides a range of tools for understanding user behavior, but few are as immediate or visually engaging as the Realtime report.
This feature lets you monitor activity on your website as it happens—showing how many users are currently active, what pages they’re viewing, and where they’re located. Whether you’re testing new events, measuring campaign performance, or validating tracking setups, the Realtime report offers a dynamic snapshot of your audience in motion.
In this report, some user data that has been collected in the preceding 30 minutes is displayed, as shown in the figure below. A measured action on the website should appear in the report a few seconds later. In the other Google Analytics reports, however, a certain amount of time is required for the data to be processed and displayed.
This report shows the total number of current users and their distribution by device category. The world map on which active sessions are currently lit up is rather prominent. Below the map, you’ll find some tiles that show you the active users in more detail, such as the following information:
Compared to the previous overviews, these tiles are somewhat limited in their display. You’ll only ever see six lines and must scroll to get more results. Unfortunately, the tiles cannot be customized.
Real-Time Report for Pages: The Page title and screen name tile only shows the title, but not the URL. For a better overview of the pages accessed, you must select the separate Realtime pages report item in the navigation. As shown in this figure, this step takes you to a live list of the URLs visited by users on your website.
Unfortunately, the report does not provide the same options as the overview: No comparisons can be applied, and the primary dimension of the report cannot be changed. The table is always more useful than the real-time overview for quick feedback on the content currently being used.
Two tiles of the overview provide added value for a quick analysis of your users: Audience and Key events. You can define the classification of users into a specific group yourself, just as you can mark certain events as key events. As a result, you only see what you have defined as interesting in the tiles.
As with any report, you can add filters and comparisons to the entire report, allowing you to focus your analysis on specific areas or groups.
By clicking on a location on the map, you can create a comparison of these users with all users of the offer. You’ll see the value of these two groups for each tile, as shown in this figure.
On top of the maps, you can click the View user snapshot button to access the ongoing sessions of randomly selected users, as shown in the following figure. Then, you can look “over the shoulders” of your users.
For instance, you can see which events were fired by a user at what time, which user properties they had, and more. The problem with this view is the selection of the sessions shown: You cannot predefine them, for example, by using filters on the overview map. Instead, a few randomly selected users are always shown. While this view makes for a nice visualization, explicit analysis of specific users is not provided.
The structure and functionality of the user overview are similar to the DebugView, which you can use to track sessions you have started and marked. Thus, events and properties of the tracking can be tested live within GA4.
The Realtime report in GA4 is a valuable tool for gaining instant insights into user engagement. While its customization options are limited, its ability to display active users, event data, and audience breakdowns provides quick feedback on what’s happening on your site right now. Combined with features like user snapshots and comparisons, it helps bridge the gap between data collection and immediate analysis, allowing you to observe and refine your website performance in real time.
Editor’s note: This post has been adapted from a section of the book Google Analytics 4: The Practical Guide by Markus Vollmert. Markus is the founder and managing director of the Cologne-based digital marketing agency luna-park.
This post was originally published 11/2025.