Exit Rate
Ankit Agarwal · Head of Marketing
Exit rate is the percentage of page views of a given page that were the last in a session. It shows where visitors leave a site, unlike bounce rate.
What is Exit Rate?
Exit rate is the percentage of all views of a specific page that were the last page view in a session. It shows how often a page is where visitors leave the site, whether they arrived on that page or reached it after browsing elsewhere. It is calculated per page, not per site.
Exit rate is a diagnostic metric. Every session has to end somewhere, so the number only means something when you compare it with what the page is supposed to do.
How to calculate it
Exit rate = (Exits from the page / Total views of the page) x 100
For example, if a pricing page gets 1,000 views in a month and 400 of those views were the last in their session, its exit rate is 40%. These numbers are illustrative.
| Metric | Counts | Answers |
|---|---|---|
| Exit rate | All sessions ending on the page | Where do people leave? |
| Bounce rate (GA4) | Non-engaged sessions | Did the visit engage at all? |
| Engagement rate | Engaged sessions | Did visitors interact meaningfully? |
In Google Analytics 4, the Exits metric is available in Explorations and customizable reports. Universal Analytics showed ”% Exit” by default, but it stopped processing data in July 2023.
Examples
- A SaaS company sees that step two of its trial signup flow has a far higher exit rate than step one. Session recordings reveal a confusing company-size field. Removing it reduces exits.
- A cybersecurity blog post has a high exit rate but strong engagement time. It answers the question fully. The team adds a related-guide link and a soft CTA instead of rewriting.
- A pricing page’s exit rate rises after a redesign hides the comparison table. Restoring it is the first test.
Best practices
- Judge exit rate by page purpose: navigation, pricing and checkout pages matter most.
- Pair it with funnel and path explorations to see where visitors went before leaving.
- Use heatmaps and recordings to find the cause, then A/B test fixes.
- Give informational pages a clear next step relevant to the reader’s stage.
Common mistakes
- Trying to lower exit rates on thank-you pages or documentation that solved the user’s problem.
- Comparing exit rates across pages with very different traffic volumes without checking sample size.
- Confusing exit rate with GA4 bounce rate, which is defined differently.
Exit rate and AI search
As AI Overviews and assistants answer simple questions directly, the visitors who do click through to a B2B page often want depth: a comparison, pricing context or implementation detail. If those pages show high exit rates, the content may not deliver that next layer. Review exit rates on pages that receive AI referral traffic separately, since those visitors often arrive with a shortlist already formed and a specific question to resolve.
Related terms
Sources
- [GA4] Dimensions and metrics, Analytics Help
- [GA4] Engagement rate and bounce rate, Analytics Help
- Universal Analytics is going away, Analytics Help
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between exit rate and bounce rate?
Exit rate covers every session that ended on a page, regardless of how many pages were viewed before. Bounce rate covers only sessions that started on that page and did not engage. In GA4, bounce rate means non-engaged sessions, so a visitor can read one page for minutes and not count as a bounce.
What is a good exit rate?
It depends on the page's job. A thank-you page or a blog post that fully answers a question can have a high exit rate without any problem. Steps in a signup flow, pricing pages and product tours should have lower exit rates, because exits there mean lost conversions.
Where do I find exit rate in GA4?
GA4 does not show exit rate in standard reports by default. Add the Exits metric in an Exploration (free form or path exploration) alongside Views by page path, then divide exits by views. You can also customize a report to include Exits.
