Counter vs Fathom Analytics
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
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The short answer
Editorial assessmentCounter compared with Fathom Analytics
Fathom sells simplicity as a paid product, bundling unlimited sites, permanent data retention, and a company that answers support email. Counter offers a smaller script and no bill. If minimalism is your requirement, Counter delivers more of it; if minimalism plus reliability is the requirement, Fathom is the version you can put on a client site.
Choose Counter if
Personal sites, blogs, side projects, and open-source project pages where the only question is how many people visited and where they came from, and where the owner would rather support an independent developer than pay a subscription.
Choose Fathom Analytics if
Agencies, portfolio operators, and marketing teams with many sites who want dead-simple, consent-banner-free traffic and conversion reporting at a flat monthly price, with data retention that never expires.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Counter | Fathom Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Analytics | Analytics |
| Starting price | $0 (pay what you want) | $15/mo (up to 100,000 pageviews) (7 days trial) |
| Pricing model | Pay what you want: the service is free to use and asks for a voluntary, affordable service fee, with no tiers, feature gates, or trials; the AGPL source can also be self-hosted at your own infrastructure cost. | Flat monthly subscription tiered by monthly pageview volume; all features on every plan, at least 50 sites included, extra sites in packs of 50. |
| Free plan | The entire product is free to use with no feature gating; users are asked to contribute a voluntary service fee when they are able. | No |
| Free trial | Not applicable; the service is free to use indefinitely | 7 days (card required; billing starts automatically when the trial ends) |
| Best for | Personal sites, blogs, side projects, and open-source project pages where the only question is how many people visited and where they came from, and where the owner would rather support an independent developer than pay a subscription. | Agencies, portfolio operators, and marketing teams with many sites who want dead-simple, consent-banner-free traffic and conversion reporting at a flat monthly price, with data retention that never expires. |
| Setup time | Under five minutes. Create an account, paste a one-kilobyte script, and the numbers start appearing. There is nothing else to configure. | Minutes: one script tag or the WordPress plugin, and data is live immediately; events take a few minutes each to add. |
| Learning curve | None. The dashboard has four sections and no report builder, which is the entire design intent. | Effectively none; the entire product is one dashboard page plus a settings screen. |
| Platforms | Web app (German-hosted), Self-hosted (Go binary plus Redis), JavaScript tracking script | Web app (cloud), WordPress plugin, Script embed for any site or framework |
| Compliance | GDPR, ePrivacy (no cookies, so no analytics consent required) | GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, ePrivacy, PECR, COPPA |
| Founded | 2020 | 2018 |
| Headquarters | Berlin, Germany | British Columbia, Canada (Conva Ventures Inc.), with a small remote team worldwide |
| Ownership | Independent single-developer project, funded by voluntary user payments | Bootstrapped; 100% independently owned, customer-funded, zero investors |
Strengths and limitations
Counter
Strengths
- The most conservative privacy architecture in this category: no cookies, no fingerprinting, no persistent identifier in browser storage, and no IP processing in the application backend.
- A tracking script of roughly one kilobyte, which is among the smallest in existence and effectively free in page weight terms.
- No consent banner required, with less to explain to a data protection officer than any competitor because there is less data being handled.
- AGPL-licensed and self-hostable from a Go binary plus Redis, so the software survives whatever happens to the hosted service.
Limitations
- The hosted service is run by one developer with no SLA and no support commitment, and the domain has already lapsed once, in 2025, which is a real continuity risk.
- No events, goals, funnels, or conversion reporting at all, so it cannot answer whether a campaign produced signups.
- No meaningful API, warehouse export, or BI connectors, so the data cannot feed anything else you run.
- No teams, roles, white labelling, or client dashboards, which rules it out for agency use entirely.
Fathom Analytics
Strengths
- Every plan includes at least 50 sites and the full feature set, unmatched economics for agencies and multi-site operators.
- Forever data retention as a standard feature; analytics history survives as long as the subscription does.
- Real-time, genuinely simple one-page dashboard that non-analysts read without training.
- Cookie-free, personal-data-free architecture with Data Isolation, removing consent banners for analytics and easing GDPR/CCPA/ePrivacy/PECR review.
Limitations
- No funnels, user journeys, or any multi-step conversion analysis; measurement depth stops at events and UTM breakdowns, less than Plausible's Business plan offers.
- Closed source: unlike Plausible or PostHog, the privacy claims cannot be verified by reading the code.
- No user-level or account-level analytics of any kind, so product analytics and B2B attribution are out of scope by design.
- No free plan and a short 7-day trial that requires a card and converts to paid automatically.
Pricing compared
Counter
Pay what you want: the service is free to use and asks for a voluntary, affordable service fee, with no tiers, feature gates, or trials; the AGPL source can also be self-hosted at your own infrastructure cost.
- Hosted (pay what you want)$0
- Self-hosted$0
At a price of zero with an honest request attached, the value question is not really about money, it is about risk and scope. What you get is a fast, tiny, genuinely private visitor counter that answers two questions well and asks nothing of you. What you do not get is events, goals, funnels, an API, teams, or any commitment that the service will exist next year. For a personal site that is an excellent trade and the right thing to do is pay something. For a business, the six to twenty dollars a month that Pirsch, Simple Analytics, Plausible, or Fathom charge buys continuity, support, and a feature set that grows with you, and that is money well spent rather than money saved.
Fathom Analytics
Flat monthly subscription tiered by monthly pageview volume; all features on every plan, at least 50 sites included, extra sites in packs of 50.
- Up to 100k pageviews$15
- Up to 200k pageviews$25
- Up to 500k pageviews$45
- Up to 1M pageviews$60
- Up to 2M pageviews$100
- 5M to 25M pageviews$140 to $470
Fathom's value case is strongest per site rather than per pageview: $15/month for 50 sites with every feature and permanent retention is the cheapest credible analytics setup an agency or portfolio operator can buy, and the everything-included model avoids Plausible-style feature gating. For a single high-traffic site the math is closer ($45/month at 500k pageviews against Plausible's $49 Starter band at the same volume), and the absence of funnels or journey analysis means you are paying for simplicity, longevity, and site count, not analytical depth.
Editorial verdict on each
Counter
Counter is the most likeable product in this category and the one you should be most careful about depending on. The privacy engineering is genuinely the strictest here, refusing even to process IP addresses in the backend, the script is a kilobyte, no consent banner is needed, and the whole thing is free with a polite request attached. For a personal blog, an open-source docs site, or a portfolio, it is the right tool and you should pay the developer something. For anything commercial, the absence of events, goals, an API, teams, and any service commitment is disqualifying, and the fact that the domain lapsed once in 2025 is not a detail to gloss over. If you like the philosophy but need reliability, Simple Analytics is free and more capable, Pirsch is six dollars and far deeper, and Umami is the open-source version to self-host instead.
Read the full Counter profileFathom Analytics
Ease of UseFathom is the pragmatic pick in privacy-first analytics: less ideological than Plausible (closed source, hosted where it is fastest, Data Isolation handling the compliance edge) but structurally more generous, with 50 sites, every feature, and permanent data retention on the cheapest plan. For agencies and anyone running many properties it is the best per-site deal in the category, and the product's refusal to grow past one page is exactly why its users keep it. The boundary is firm, though: no funnels, no journeys, no user or account analytics, so treat it as the traffic-and-conversions layer and pair it with deeper tools when the questions get harder.
Read the full Fathom Analytics profileCounter profile last reviewed 2026-09-27; Fathom Analytics last reviewed 2026-09-27. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.
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Frequently asked questions
6 questionsWhat is the difference between Counter and Fathom Analytics?
Fathom sells simplicity as a paid product, bundling unlimited sites, permanent data retention, and a company that answers support email. Counter offers a smaller script and no bill. If minimalism is your requirement, Counter delivers more of it; if minimalism plus reliability is the requirement, Fathom is the version you can put on a client site.
Is Counter or Fathom Analytics cheaper?
Counter starts at $0 (pay what you want). Fathom Analytics starts at $15/mo (up to 100,000 pageviews) (7 days trial). The billing models differ, so the entry price is rarely the whole cost. Counter pricing model: Pay what you want: the service is free to use and asks for a voluntary, affordable service fee, with no tiers, feature gates, or trials; the AGPL source can also be self-hosted at your own infrastructure cost. Fathom Analytics pricing model: Flat monthly subscription tiered by monthly pageview volume; all features on every plan, at least 50 sites included, extra sites in packs of 50.
Does Counter or Fathom Analytics have a free plan?
Counter has a free plan. The entire product is free to use with no feature gating; users are asked to contribute a voluntary service fee when they are able. Trial terms: Not applicable; the service is free to use indefinitely. Fathom Analytics has no free plan. Trial terms: 7 days (card required; billing starts automatically when the trial ends).
Who should choose Counter?
Personal sites, blogs, side projects, and open-source project pages where the only question is how many people visited and where they came from, and where the owner would rather support an independent developer than pay a subscription.
Who should choose Fathom Analytics?
Agencies, portfolio operators, and marketing teams with many sites who want dead-simple, consent-banner-free traffic and conversion reporting at a flat monthly price, with data retention that never expires.
What are the best alternatives to Counter and Fathom Analytics?
SaaSTracker profiles 16 products in GTM Analytics. The Summer 2026 awards in the category went to Google Analytics 4 (Category Leader), Umami (Best Value), HockeyStack (Momentum). Every profile is compiled from primary sources, so a shortlist can be built from pricing, limitations, and fit rather than from star ratings.
