How Google Analytics 4 counts sessions
- A session starts when a visitor opens a page or screen and no session is already active.
- By default it ends after 30 minutes without activity. The timeout can be changed.
- Unlike Universal Analytics, GA4 doesn’t start a new session at midnight or when the traffic source changes.
Sessions, users and page views
One user can have several sessions, and one session can include many page views. So a report may show 1,000 users, 1,400 sessions and 3,200 views for the same period.
Engaged sessions
GA4 also reports engaged sessions: sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, included a key event or had at least two page views. Engagement rate is engaged sessions divided by all sessions.