Google Search Console and Google Analytics get installed together often enough that business owners sometimes treat them as one tool. They answer different questions, and knowing which one to check for which question saves a lot of confused scrolling.
Search Console: what happens before the click
Search Console shows how a site performs specifically in Google Search results, before a visitor ever reaches the site: which search queries surface your pages, how often they're shown (impressions), how often they're clicked, and your average position for those queries. It's the tool for understanding search visibility itself.
Analytics: what happens after the click
Google Analytics picks up once a visitor actually arrives on the site: where they came from, what pages they viewed, how long they stayed, and whether they converted. It doesn't know or care what someone searched to get there; it only sees the visit itself.
Where they overlap, and where they don't
Both can show traffic numbers, but from different angles. Search Console's numbers only cover organic Google Search traffic. Analytics covers every traffic source (search, direct, social, referral, paid) but doesn't show you the actual search terms that led someone in, since Google restricts most of that query-level data to Search Console specifically.
A common mistake
Checking Analytics to answer "why aren't we ranking for this search term" is checking the wrong tool. Search Console is built for exactly that question. Checking Search Console to ask "how long are visitors staying on the page" is the same mistake in reverse.
Using them together
The most useful combined view is Search Console to identify which queries and pages have visibility but low click-through, paired with Analytics to see what happens once those visitors actually land. See Google Analytics for small business: the reports that actually matter.
Questions
Do I need both, or is one enough?
Both are free and answer different, complementary questions. There's little reason for a business with a website to skip either one.
Which one shows schema and rich result performance?
Search Console, under its structured data and enhancement reports. Analytics has no visibility into how Google is interpreting your schema.
Is either tool hard to set up?
Both require a small verification and tracking code step, usually a one-time setup that a developer or the platform's own instructions can walk through in a few minutes.