# Comparisons

The comparison bar under the date picker splits any supported report into up to five side-by-side series: All users plus up to four comparisons — a built-in like Mobile traffic, a condition you define, or a saved audience.

## What a comparison does

A comparison runs the same report again for a slice of your traffic and shows the slices next to each other. **A** is always **All users**; you can add up to four more, lettered **B** to **E**, each with its own colour. KPI tiles show one line per comparison, charts draw one series per comparison, and tables gain a leading letter column so rows from different comparisons sit side by side.

The bar sits under the date picker on:

- **Home**, **Acquisition overview**, **Traffic acquisition**, **Engagement**, **Events**, **Demographics**, **Tech** and **Funnel**;
- **E-commerce**, **Attribution** and **Cost & ROAS**;
- **Realtime** — the overview, **Pages** and **Visitors** screens.

It is not shown on explorations — **Reports & Explore**, **Path**, **Cohort retention**, **Segment overlap** and **Lifetime value** — because they have their own segment panel, nor on model outputs — **Fraud Protection**, **Lift**, **Marketing Mix (MMM)** and **Heatmaps** — which are not event reports.

## Add a comparison

1. Select **Add comparison** in the bar.
2. In **Apply a comparison**, tick up to four rows — the counter shows how many are selected.
3. Select **Apply**. The page reloads with one series per comparison.

Remove a comparison with the ✕ on its chip. The drawer offers three kinds of row:

| Kind | What it is |
| --- | --- |
| Built-in | Direct, Organic, Paid, Referral & affiliates, and Email, SMS & push traffic (by session channel); Mobile, Web (desktop) and Tablet traffic (by device category) |
| Saved audience | any audience on the website |
| Create new | a condition you define: a dimension, a match type and values |

### Custom comparisons

**Create new** takes a **Dimension**, a **Match type** and **Values**:

- Dimensions: session default channel group, first user default channel group, session source, medium and campaign, first user source and medium, device category, browser, operating system, country, region, city, page path, hostname, event name, network operator and network type.
- Match types: **exactly matches** and **does not exactly match** (1–50 values), **contains** and **starts with** (exactly one value). Matching is case-sensitive.
- Each value is at most 200 characters. An optional name is shown on the chip.

## How the numbers are counted

- **A dimension comparison filters events.** Only events whose value matches are counted. That is why one visitor can appear in both Mobile and Desktop.
- **An audience comparison keeps people.** Every event of the audience's current members is counted — a Purchasers comparison shows those people's whole activity, not only their purchases.
- **Session figures** such as bounce rate and sessions per user use the sessions that contain at least one matching event.
- **Channel comparisons use the channel stored when the visit arrived.** If your website uses custom channel rules, a channel comparison can differ slightly from the channel row in Traffic acquisition; without custom rules they match.
- **Realtime** applies the comparison to every live figure: the selected window, the last 5 minutes, the previous-window change and the last 24 hours.
- **E-commerce** keeps the orders, refunds and products whose purchase or refund event matches the comparison (an audience comparison keeps its members' orders). Each series has its own currency split, so currencies are never added together.
- **Attribution** credits, for each comparison, the purchases and touchpoints that match it — Mobile traffic shows the mobile journey to mobile purchases. An audience comparison keeps its members' whole journey.
- **Cost & ROAS: spend is not segmented.** Ad spend is imported per channel and day, not per visitor, so every comparison shows the whole spend; a comparison's ROAS and CPA are its own revenue and conversions against that spend. The report says so above the figures.
- The report's own date range, time zone and key events are unchanged — a comparison only narrows the rows.

Comparisons combine with the date-range comparison in [Date ranges and comparison](analytics/reports/date-ranges-and-comparison): every series then carries its own previous-period figures.

## Where comparisons are kept

Your comparisons are stored in the browser and mirrored into the page address as `seg=` parameters. They follow you from report to report, survive a reload, and a copied link opens with the same comparisons — the address wins over what the browser remembered.

> **Not yet in shares and exports**
>
> Shared report links, exports and scheduled report emails show **All users** only. Freezing comparisons into them is planned.

## When a comparison is refused

- More than four comparisons, an unknown dimension or values out of range are refused as a bad request — the report does not load until the comparison is fixed.
- An audience that was deleted, or that belongs to another website, is reported as not found. Remove its chip.

## Frequently asked questions

### Why does a visitor count in both Mobile and Desktop?

A dimension comparison filters events, not people (GA4 does the same). Someone who visited on a phone and later on a laptop has events in both series, so they count once in each.

### Why doesn't an audience comparison match the audience's size?

Two reasons. Reports count devices while an audience's headline counts people, so a signed-in person with two devices is one audience user but two report users. And the report only sees members who were active in its date range.

### Do colleagues see my comparisons?

Only if you send them the link. Comparisons are kept in your browser and in the page address, so a link you copy opens with the same comparisons; nobody else's view changes.

### Do shared reports, exports and scheduled emails include comparisons?

Not yet. They always render All users.

## Related

- [Date ranges and comparison](https://docs.adpix.io/en/analytics/reports/date-ranges-and-comparison/)
- [Audiences and destinations](https://docs.adpix.io/en/analytics/admin/audiences-and-destinations/)
- [Audience overlap](https://docs.adpix.io/en/analytics/explore/segment-overlap/)
- [Realtime overview](https://docs.adpix.io/en/analytics/reports/realtime-overview/)

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[Docs](https://docs.adpix.io/en/analytics/reports/comparisons/) · AdPix