Fathom Analytics vs Simple 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 assessmentSimple Analytics compared with Fathom Analytics
Fathom bundles unlimited sites and forever data retention on every paid plan, which beats Simple Analytics on history and site count, and it is Canadian with EU isolation options rather than natively Dutch. Simple Analytics wins on the free tier, the AI assistant, and the traffic recovery pitch. Choose Fathom if permanent history matters most; choose Simple Analytics if you want to start free and never pay until you need history.
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 Simple Analytics if
European site owners, bootstrapped SaaS companies, and privacy-conscious marketing teams who want a readable cookieless dashboard with no consent banner, plus GA4 users who want a parallel measurement layer that captures the visitors their banner and ad blockers are hiding.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Fathom Analytics | Simple Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Analytics | Analytics |
| Starting price | $15/mo (up to 100,000 pageviews) (7 days trial) | $0 (free forever), then €20 per month |
| 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. | Freemium with a free forever plan, one self-serve paid plan priced in pageview bands via a slider, per-seat add-ons, and a quote-only Enterprise tier. |
| Free plan | No | Free forever with unlimited pageviews under a fair-use policy, 5 websites, 1 user, and 30 days of data history. |
| Free trial | 7 days (card required; billing starts automatically when the trial ends) | 14 days on the paid plan, 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. | European site owners, bootstrapped SaaS companies, and privacy-conscious marketing teams who want a readable cookieless dashboard with no consent banner, plus GA4 users who want a parallel measurement layer that captures the visitors their banner and ad blockers are hiding. |
| Setup time | Minutes: one script tag or the WordPress plugin, and data is live immediately; events take a few minutes each to add. | Under ten minutes: paste one script, install the WordPress plugin, or deploy through Google Tag Manager, and data appears immediately. Proxying through your own domain for blocker resilience takes an extra half hour of DNS and routing work. |
| Learning curve | Effectively none; the entire product is one dashboard page plus a settings screen. | Effectively none for the dashboard, which is the entire design goal. Events, the export API, and the BI connectors are the only pieces that need documentation time. |
| Platforms | Web app (cloud), WordPress plugin, Script embed for any site or framework | Web app (EU-hosted cloud), WordPress plugin, Google Tag Manager, Looker Studio connector, Power BI connector |
| Compliance | GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, ePrivacy, PECR, COPPA | GDPR, ePrivacy Directive and PECR, CCPA, CNIL and DSGVO alignment, SOC 2 in progress |
| Founded | 2018 | 2018 |
| Headquarters | British Columbia, Canada (Conva Ventures Inc.), with a small remote team worldwide | Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Ownership | Bootstrapped; 100% independently owned, customer-funded, zero investors | Bootstrapped; 100 percent owned by its founders with 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 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.
Simple Analytics
Strengths
- A free forever plan with unlimited pageviews under fair use and five websites, which no other serious privacy-first tool matches on volume.
- Paid pricing starts at €20 a month for 100,000 pageviews and 10 websites, with no overage surprises inside a band.
- The strongest privacy architecture claims in the group: no cookies, no browser storage, no IP storage, no visitor IDs, EU hosting under a Dutch entity.
- The traffic recovery positioning is commercially honest, acknowledging that most businesses will keep GA4 and selling a complement rather than pretending a replacement is realistic.
Limitations
- Per-seat pricing at €20 per additional user is expensive relative to competitors that bundle three to ten team members into the base price.
- The free plan's 30-day history window means trend analysis and year-over-year comparison are impossible without paying, unlike free tiers that limit volume instead.
- SOC 2 is described as in progress rather than complete, which will stall some procurement reviews that a competitor with a finished report would pass.
- SSO, role-based access, and raw data access sit behind a demo-gated Enterprise tier, so the self-serve product has a hard ceiling for larger teams.
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 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.
Simple Analytics
Freemium with a free forever plan, one self-serve paid plan priced in pageview bands via a slider, per-seat add-ons, and a quote-only Enterprise tier.
- Free€0
- Simple€20
- EnterpriseCustom
The free plan is the most useful free offer in privacy-first analytics because it does not meter your traffic, and for a small site the 30-day history limit is genuinely liveable for months. The €20 paid plan (100,000 pageviews, 10 websites, 3 years of history) is priced close to Plausible and Fathom at the same volume. The value breaks down on teams: at €20 per extra seat, a marketing department of five costs €100 a month for a tool whose competitors bundle ten users, so this is best value as a one-person or two-person purchase and worst value as a departmental one.
Editorial verdict on each
Fathom 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 profileSimple Analytics
Simple Analytics is the most sensible starting point in privacy-first analytics for a one-person or two-person business, because the free plan gives you unlimited traffic on five sites and only asks for money when you want history back. The €20 paid plan buys three years of history on 10 websites, the AI assistant is a better interface than any report builder for non-analysts, and the Dutch EU-only architecture is the cleanest answer available to a European privacy review. Two things to check before buying: seats cost €20 each, which makes it a poor fit for a marketing department of five, and SOC 2 is still in progress. The traffic recovery pitch is the most honest thing any vendor in this category says out loud, which is that you are probably not deleting GA4, so buy the tool that gives you the numbers you can actually trust while Google keeps feeding your ads.
Read the full Simple Analytics profileFathom Analytics profile last reviewed 2026-09-27; Simple 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 Fathom Analytics and Simple Analytics?
Fathom bundles unlimited sites and forever data retention on every paid plan, which beats Simple Analytics on history and site count, and it is Canadian with EU isolation options rather than natively Dutch. Simple Analytics wins on the free tier, the AI assistant, and the traffic recovery pitch. Choose Fathom if permanent history matters most; choose Simple Analytics if you want to start free and never pay until you need history.
Is Fathom Analytics or Simple Analytics cheaper?
Fathom Analytics starts at $15/mo (up to 100,000 pageviews) (7 days trial). Simple Analytics starts at $0 (free forever), then €20 per month. The billing models differ, so the entry price is rarely the whole 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. Simple Analytics pricing model: Freemium with a free forever plan, one self-serve paid plan priced in pageview bands via a slider, per-seat add-ons, and a quote-only Enterprise tier.
Does Fathom Analytics or Simple Analytics have a free plan?
Fathom Analytics has no free plan. Trial terms: 7 days (card required; billing starts automatically when the trial ends). Simple Analytics has a free plan. Free forever with unlimited pageviews under a fair-use policy, 5 websites, 1 user, and 30 days of data history. Trial terms: 14 days on the paid plan, no credit card required.
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.
Who should choose Simple Analytics?
European site owners, bootstrapped SaaS companies, and privacy-conscious marketing teams who want a readable cookieless dashboard with no consent banner, plus GA4 users who want a parallel measurement layer that captures the visitors their banner and ad blockers are hiding.
What are the best alternatives to Fathom Analytics and Simple 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.
