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Exits in GA4
August 12, 2025
Universal Analytics had some simple, go-to reports, and one of the most useful was the ‘Exit Rate’ metric.
It gave you a crystal-clear percentage of how often a specific page was the final curtain on a user’s visit.
In GA4, that neat little percentage is gone. Poof.
But here’s the thing: just because the metric has vanished doesn’t mean the insight is lost.
You just need to know where to look.
You can still uncover which pages are waving goodbye to your visitors, and with a clever tweak, you can get the context you need to decide if it’s a friendly farewell or a sign of a serious problem.
This guide will walk you through exactly how to build a report in GA4 to find your top exit pages and, more importantly, how to interpret that data meaningfully.
Table of Contents
What Are ‘Exits’ in GA4?
Before we dive in, let’s get our terms straight.
GA4 doesn’t have an exit rate, but it does have a metric called Exits.
Exits: This is a simple count. Every time a page is the very last one a user sees in their session, the ‘Exits’ metric for that page goes up by one.
Think of it as the bookend to Entrances, another standard metric in GA4 which counts how many times a page was the first in a session.
So, whilst we can’t see the percentage out-of-the-box, we can still count the raw number of times a page was the end of the journey.
And that data lives in the ‘Explore’ section.
How to Build Your Exit Page Report in GA4
The best way to view this information is by building a ‘Free Form’ exploration. And I say the best way because exits aren’t available in the report section of GA4, even if you try and customise a report.
It’s more flexible than the standard reports and lets us pull in exactly what we need.
Step 1: Navigate to the Explore Section
In the left-hand navigation of GA4, click on Explore.
Step 2: Create a New Blank Exploration
Select the Blank template to start a new, fresh report. Give it a memorable name like “Exit Page Analysis”.
Step 3: Import Your Dimensions and Metrics
This is where we tell GA4 what data we want to see.
- Dimensions: In the ‘Variables’ column on the left, click the ‘+’ sign next to ‘Dimensions’. Search for and import ‘Page path and query string’. This will show you the specific URLs of the pages.
- Metrics: Now, click the ‘+’ sign next to ‘Metrics’. Search for and import ‘Exits’
Step 4: Build the Report Canvas
Now, simply drag and drop (or double-click) the dimension and metric you just imported from the ‘Variables’ column into the ‘Tab Settings’ column.
Drag ‘Page path and query string’ into the ‘Rows’ section.
Drag ‘Exits’ into the ‘Values’ section.
Almost instantly, you’ll see a table populate on the right. It will list your site’s pages, automatically sorted by the highest number of exits.
The Problem with Raw Numbers (and How to Fix It)
You now have a list of pages that cause the most exits. Job done? Not quite.
A page might have thousands of exits simply because it gets a massive amount of traffic. Your homepage or a major product page will naturally have high exit numbers. This report on its own lacks context. A “high” number of exits is only a problem if it’s disproportionate to the page’s traffic.
So, how do we add that crucial context? We add another metric.
Pro Tip: Go back to your ‘Metrics’ in the ‘Variables’ column and add ‘Entrances’. Drag it into the ‘Values’ section alongside ‘Exits’. Now you can compare how many journeys start on a page versus how many end there.
To make this even easier to spot, change the visualisation. In the ‘Tab Settings’ column, under ‘Cell type’, change ‘Plain text’ to ‘Heatmap’.
Now you can scan the report instantly. The darker colours highlight the bigger numbers. You’re looking for the anomalies:
Are there pages with a dark heatmap cell for ‘Exits’ but a very light one for ‘Entrances’? This could be a red flag. It suggests the page isn’t a common landing page, but when people do get there, they often leave the site. This might indicate a broken user journey or unfulfilled expectations.
Exits Metric in Looker Studio
It’s important to be upfront about the limitations. At the time of writing, you cannot create a calculated metric in GA4 or Looker Studio to divide Exits / Pageviews to create a true exit rate.
If you absolutely need that percentage, the only way is to export your report data into a Google Sheet or CSV file and perform the calculation manually. It’s a bit of a faff, but it’s the only workaround for now.
Aren’t Exits Just the Same as Bounces?
This is a common point of confusion, but the answer is a firm no. They measure two very different things.
An Exit simply refers to the last page of any session. A user could have browsed ten pages, completed a purchase, and then exited from the ‘thank you’ page. That’s a successful session, and the ‘thank you’ page still gets credited with an exit.
A Bounce (or more accurately, a session that is not engaged in GA4) is a session where the user left without interacting meaningfully. Specifically, an engaged session is one that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a conversion event, or has at least 2 pageviews. A ‘bounced’ session is one that meets none of those criteria.
In short, all bounces involve an exit, but most exits are not bounces.
Before you exit, what’s the Takeaway?
Whilst the old ‘Exit Rate’ metric may be a thing of the past, the ability to analyse user departures is not.
By using a Free Form exploration in GA4 and combining the Exits and Entrances metrics with a heatmap, you can get a powerful, at-a-glance view of which pages are ending your user journeys.
It requires an extra step or two, but it encourages a more thoughtful analysis. Instead of just reacting to a percentage, you’re prompted to ask why a page has a high number of exits relative to its traffic.
And that’s a much more valuable question to answer.
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Author
Hello, I'm Kyle Rushton McGregor!
I’m an experienced GA4 Specialist with a demonstrated history of working with Google Tag Manager and Looker Studio. I’m an international speaker who has trained 1000s of people on all things analytics.