Yes, while you don’t *immediately* need to delete your Universal Analytics (UA) property, Google has ceased processing new hits for standard UA properties since 1 July 2023, and as of December 2025, historical UA data will become inaccessible within the Google Analytics interface. This means UA will effectively be read-only, and retaining the property serves limited practical purpose.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) operates on a fundamentally different data model than UA. UA relies on sessions and pageviews, while GA4 uses an event-based model, tracking user interactions as ‘events’ without requiring a session wrapper. Currently, GA4 properties collect data independently of UA; they don’t ‘upgrade’ existing UA setups. In December 2025, the UA interface will no longer display data, even historical data, meaning reporting and analysis will be impossible. While you can still access UA data exports created *before* this date, the platform itself will be inactive. For Australian businesses, this impacts integrations with marketing platforms like Campaign Manager 360 and Search Ads 360, which now primarily utilise GA4 data for attribution and audience building. Google’s data retention policies for GA4, configurable up to 14 months for user-level data, differ from UA’s default settings.
GA4 functions as a distinct analytics platform, and UA’s eventual inaccessibility necessitates a complete transition to GA4 for ongoing website performance measurement.
