What's a good bounce rate? Benchmarks for GA4 in 2026
Bounce rate means something different in Google Analytics 4 than it did in Universal Analytics. The new definition, 2026 benchmarks by industry, device and channel, and the 2020 numbers for comparison.
Short answer (2026): In Google Analytics 4 a typical site has a bounce rate of about 49%, meaning roughly half of its sessions are not “engaged”. Organic search traffic bounces least, at about 37%, and paid social bounces most, at about 80%. These numbers can’t be compared with Universal Analytics benchmarks from before 2023, which measured something else and usually came out around 60%.
Bounce rate changed meaning in 2023
Universal Analytics, Google’s previous analytics tool, defined a bounce as a session with only one page view. Someone who read a whole article for ten minutes and then left counted as a bounce.
Google Analytics 4 turned this around. It starts by defining an engaged session, one that does at least one of these:
- lasts longer than 10 seconds,
- includes a key event (what GA4 now calls a conversion),
- includes two or more page or screen views.
Engagement rate is the share of sessions that were engaged. Bounce rate is the rest: bounce rate = 100% minus engagement rate.
Universal Analytics stopped processing data on 2023-07-01, so every site now reports the GA4 version. Two practical consequences:
- Benchmarks from before 2023 don’t apply. A 60% bounce rate in Universal Analytics and a 60% bounce rate in GA4 describe different behavior.
- Your own settings change the number. In GA4 you can raise the 10-second timer to up to 60 seconds in the data stream settings. A higher timer means a higher bounce rate. Check this before you compare your site to anyone else’s.
GA4 benchmarks for 2026
The largest public GA4 dataset I found is Siege Media’s, last updated 2026-08-26. It covers 546 GA4 properties and about 16 billion sessions between January 2024 and August 2026. Siege Media reports engagement rate. The bounce rate column below is 100% minus that.
| Segment | Engagement rate | Bounce rate |
|---|---|---|
| All sites (median) | 51.0% | 49.0% |
| Ecommerce | 54.4% | 45.6% |
| SaaS and B2B | 46.6% | 53.4% |
| Desktop | 55.3% | 44.7% |
| Mobile | 48.8% | 51.2% |
| Organic search | 63.4% | 36.6% |
| 50.9% | 49.1% | |
| Direct | 45.7% | 54.3% |
| Paid social | 20.2% | 79.8% |
The pattern makes sense. Someone who searched for something and clicked your result arrived on purpose. Someone who tapped an ad while scrolling a social feed usually didn’t, and leaves in under ten seconds. Direct traffic also looks poor, partly because GA4 dumps visits it can’t attribute, including some bots, into that bucket.
The 2020 numbers, for comparison
The original version of this page was built on Orbit Media’s 2020 study. Andy Crestodina’s team collected Universal Analytics data from 501 accounts covering more than 250 million visits in February 2020:
| Segment (Universal Analytics, 2020) | Bounce rate |
|---|---|
| All sites (average) | 61.0% |
| Organic search | 55.6% |
| 61.5% | |
| Paid search | 62.6% |
| Direct | 66.5% |
| Social media | 67.6% |
| Ecommerce sites | 62.1% |
| Media and publishing sites | 68% |
Half of the sites in that study had a bounce rate between 50% and 70%. Banking and beverage sites had unusually low rates, because login pages and age checks force a second page view. The study’s sample was 95% American and 58% B2B.
The order of channels is similar in both studies: search traffic engages best and social traffic worst. The levels are different, because the definitions are.
What counts as good
There’s no single good bounce rate. A blog post that answers a question in one screen will have a high bounce rate and still do its job. A checkout page with a high bounce rate is a problem. Some rough guides for GA4:
- Under 40%: typical for organic search landing pages and strong ecommerce sites.
- 40% to 55%: normal for most sites and most mixed traffic.
- 55% to 70%: common for SaaS marketing sites, blogs and sites with a lot of direct or referral traffic.
- Above 70%: expected for paid social traffic. On other channels it often points to a tracking problem, slow pages or a mismatch between the ad or link and the landing page.
If your bounce rate suddenly drops below 20%, check your tracking first. A duplicated analytics tag or an event that fires on page load can make every session look engaged.
How to lower a bounce rate
- Segment before you fix. Look at bounce rate by landing page, channel and device. A sitewide number hides where the problem is.
- Match the landing page to the source. The headline should continue the promise of the ad, email or search result that brought people there.
- Make the page fast. A visitor who waits on a blank screen often leaves before the 10-second mark. Check the page’s Core Web Vitals.
- Give a clear next step. Related articles, a product recommendation or one obvious call to action turn single-page visits into engaged sessions.
- Remove what pushes people away. Full-screen pop-ups on arrival, autoplay video and layouts that shift while loading all raise bounce rates.
Sources
- Google Analytics Help, "Engagement rate and bounce rate". support.google.com
- Google Analytics Help, "Universal Analytics is going away". support.google.com
- Siege Media, "GA4 engagement rate benchmarks", updated 2026-08-26. siegemedia.com
- Andy Crestodina, "What's a Good Bounce Rate? We Asked 500+ Analytics Accounts", Orbit Media, 2020-02-19, updated 2023-07-06. orbitmedia.com