Fathom Analytics vs Plausible 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.
The short answer
Both sides assessedFathom Analytics compared with Plausible Analytics
The two flagship privacy-first GA alternatives split on structure: Fathom gives every plan the full feature set, 50 sites, and forever retention at a flat price, while Plausible is open source, EU-owned end to end, cheaper at entry, and deeper analytically (funnels, user journeys, ecommerce revenue attribution) on its Business plan. Agencies and multi-site owners lean Fathom; open-source, EU-sovereignty, and funnel-needing buyers lean Plausible.
Plausible Analytics compared with Fathom Analytics
Plausible and Fathom are the two flagship privacy-first GA alternatives and overlap heavily; Plausible is open source, EU-hosted, slightly cheaper at entry, and gates funnels and revenue behind its Business plan, while Fathom is closed source, includes 50 sites and forever data retention on every plan, and prices flat by traffic. Agencies with many small sites lean Fathom; open-source and EU-sovereignty buyers lean Plausible.
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.
Choose Plausible Analytics if
Site owners, SaaS marketing teams, agencies, and publishers who want credible traffic and conversion reporting with the lightest possible privacy and compliance footprint, and who do not need user-level product analytics.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Fathom Analytics | Plausible Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Analytics | Analytics |
| Starting price | $15/mo (up to 100,000 pageviews) (7 days trial) | $9/mo (Starter at up to 10k monthly pageviews) (free plan available) |
| 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. | Subscription tiered by feature set (Starter, Growth, Business) with the price scaling by monthly pageview volume; a 30-day free trial and a custom Enterprise tier on top. |
| Free plan | No | No free hosted plan; the open-source Community Edition is free to self-host. |
| Free trial | 7 days | 30 days, no credit card required |
| Best for | 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. | Site owners, SaaS marketing teams, agencies, and publishers who want credible traffic and conversion reporting with the lightest possible privacy and compliance footprint, and who do not need user-level product analytics. |
| Setup time | Minutes: one script tag or the WordPress plugin, and data is live immediately; events take a few minutes each to add. | Minutes: add one script tag or the WordPress plugin and data flows immediately; goals take a few more minutes each, and a GA history import runs in the background. |
| Learning curve | Effectively none; the entire product is one dashboard page plus a settings screen. | Near zero for the dashboard; funnels and the Stats API are the only features that need documentation time. |
| Platforms | Web app (cloud), WordPress plugin, Script embed for any site or framework | Web app (cloud, EU-hosted), Self-hosted Community Edition (Docker, open source), WordPress plugin |
| Compliance | GDPR, CCPA, ePrivacy, PECR | GDPR, ePrivacy/PECR, CCPA (no personal data sold or collected) |
| Founded | 2018 | 2018 |
| Headquarters | British Columbia, Canada (Conva Ventures Inc.), with a small remote team worldwide | Remote; legal entity Plausible Insights OU, registered in Tartu, Estonia |
| Ownership | Bootstrapped; 100% independently owned, customer-funded, zero investors | Bootstrapped; independent, no outside investors |
Strengths and limitations
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 EU 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, with published static pricing covering only part of the tier ladder (higher volumes are calculator-only).
Plausible Analytics
Strengths
- Genuinely lightweight and simple: a sub-1KB script and a one-page dashboard that non-analysts read correctly on first contact.
- The cleanest privacy story in the category: cookie-free, no personal data, EU-owned hosting, Estonian entity, and open-source code backing every claim.
- Bootstrapped, profitable, and 20,000+ subscribers strong, so there is no acquisition-or-shutdown risk of the usual VC variety.
- Business-plan funnels, user journeys, and ecommerce revenue attribution push it past bare pageview counting into real marketing measurement.
Limitations
- No user-level analytics by design: no sessions per user, no retention cohorts, no replay, and funnels are aggregate only, so product analytics questions are out of scope.
- Attribution stops at the website: revenue attribution covers on-site ecommerce events, not CRM pipeline, offline conversions, or ad-platform sync.
- Daily-rotating visitor hashing means returning-visitor and multi-day journey measurement is structurally limited compared to cookie-based tools.
- Key features (funnels, revenue, API) are gated to the Business plan, making the effective entry price for marketing teams $19+ rather than $9.
Pricing compared
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 500k pageviews$45
- Higher volumes (2M, 10M, 25M+ pageviews)Scales by calculator
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 less special ($45/month at 500k pageviews is more than Plausible's equivalent band), and the absence of funnels or journey analysis means you are paying for simplicity, longevity, and site count, not analytical depth.
Plausible Analytics
Subscription tiered by feature set (Starter, Growth, Business) with the price scaling by monthly pageview volume; a 30-day free trial and a custom Enterprise tier on top.
- StarterFrom $9
- GrowthFrom $14
- BusinessFrom $19
- EnterpriseCustom
For pure web analytics, Plausible's pricing is honest and low: a typical small SaaS site pays less per month than a single GA4 consultant hour, and the Business tier at $19+ undercuts most attribution-lite competitors while including funnels and revenue tracking. The catch is scaling: because price tracks pageviews, high-traffic publishers should model their real slider price before assuming Plausible stays cheap, and anyone needing user-level analysis is buying the wrong tool at any price.
Editorial verdict on each
Fathom Analytics
Fathom is the pragmatic pick in privacy-first analytics: less ideological than Plausible (closed source, hosted where it is fastest, EU 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 profilePlausible Analytics
Best ValuePlausible is the best-reasoned product in the privacy-first analytics niche: every limitation traces back to a principled refusal to collect personal data, and what remains is a fast, honest, inexpensive dashboard that most marketing teams will actually read. The Business plan's funnels and revenue attribution cover more measurement ground than its minimalist reputation suggests, and the bootstrapped, open-source structure removes whole categories of vendor risk. Just be clear about the boundary: this is website analytics done extremely well, and nothing beyond it, so product analytics and B2B pipeline attribution belong to different tools.
Read the full Plausible Analytics profileFathom Analytics profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Plausible Analytics last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.