Fathom Analytics
Flat-priced, cookie-free traffic analytics with 50 sites on every plan
Fathom Analytics is a privacy-first, cookie-free web analytics service from a bootstrapped Canadian company that puts traffic, sources, events, and ecommerce revenue on a single real-time dashboard, priced flat by pageview volume with at least 50 sites and permanent data retention on every plan, as a simpler alternative to Google Analytics.
Overview
Fathom is one of the two names that defined privacy-first web analytics (Plausible being the other), and its pitch has barely changed since 2018: a Google Analytics alternative that is 'simple and privacy-first', needs one line of code, sets no cookies, collects no personal data, and therefore requires no cookie consent banner. Data is anonymized with hashes and salts, bots and scrapers are filtered automatically, and the company states it is fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA, ePrivacy, and PECR, with EU visitor data processed through EU-located infrastructure via its EU Isolation architecture.
The product itself is deliberately one page: visitors, views, time on site, bounce rate, pages, referrers, sources, devices, browsers, countries, events, and UTM campaigns, all real time, with drill-down filtering, dark mode, and one-click CSV exports. Custom events cover clicks, form submissions, and ecommerce with revenue values in multiple currencies, and every plan includes an analytics API (600 requests per hour), unlimited email reports, and shareable public or password-protected dashboards.
The commercial posture is the differentiator to notice. Fathom is bootstrapped (Conva Ventures Inc., British Columbia), founded by Jack Ellis and Paul Jarvis, and prices flat by traffic: from $15/month for up to 100,000 pageviews, $45/month for up to 500,000, with every plan including at least 50 sites, forever data retention, and no discounts, ever, on principle. That structure makes it unusually good value for agencies and portfolio operators with many small sites, and it means your analytics history does not get truncated by a retention policy. Claimed users include IBM, GitHub, and Tailwind, across more than a million websites.
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.
Not the right fit for
- Product teams needing user-level analytics, funnels, retention cohorts, or session replay; Fathom is website analytics only, and it does not even offer aggregate funnels.
- B2B marketers who need revenue attribution against a CRM pipeline; Fathom's revenue tracking stops at on-site ecommerce events.
- Open-source purists: the current product is closed source (the long-retired Fathom Lite predecessor notwithstanding), so its privacy claims rest on policy and reputation rather than inspectable code.
- Bargain hunters expecting a free plan or promotional pricing; there is a 7-day trial, no free tier, and the company states it never discounts.
- Teams that want funnels, journey mapping, or any analysis beyond a single dashboard page; Plausible's Business plan offers more measurement depth at this price point.
How it works
- 1
You add a single script tag to your site (or install the WordPress plugin), and the dashboard starts showing data instantly; there is no configuration step, no property-and-stream hierarchy, and no 24-to-48-hour processing delay of the kind GA users are accustomed to.
- 2
Instead of cookies or persistent identifiers, Fathom anonymizes visitor data with industry-standard hashing and salting and reports only aggregates; it pioneered a privacy-first 'visits' counting method that other vendors later adopted. EU Isolation routes EU visitors' data through EU-located infrastructure, addressing data-transfer concerns without the customer doing anything.
- 3
Conversions are custom events: button clicks, form submissions, and ecommerce events that can carry revenue values in different currencies, reported alongside UTM campaign breakdowns so newsletters and paid campaigns can be judged on completions and revenue rather than raw traffic. Site settings handle the operational edges: allowed domains, IP and country blocking, single-page-app mode, and multi-domain tracking under one site ID.
- 4
Everything rolls up in the 'all sites' view for agencies and portfolio owners, dashboards can be shared publicly or behind a password, scheduled email reports go out weekly or monthly, and the API (600 requests per hour on every plan) feeds custom reporting. Data is retained for as long as you remain a customer, so year-over-year comparisons never fall off a cliff.
Feature breakdown
23 features in 5 modulesDashboard and reporting
One real-time page holding everything Fathom believes you need.- Single-page dashboard
- Pages, referrers, sources, devices, browsers, countries, events, and UTMs on one screen with drill-down 'details view' filtering on any element.
- Real-time processing
- Data appears instantly, including a live-visitors view showing current page and referral source, versus the long processing delays of GA-style tools.
- Site totals snapshot
- Visitors, views, average time on site, bounce rate, and event completions summarized per site.
- All-sites view
- Account-wide totals and per-site cards for monitoring dozens of sites at once, built for agency and portfolio use.
- Dark mode
- Full light and dark dashboard themes.
- One-click CSV exports
- Any report exports to CSV for offline analysis or client decks.
Events, conversions, and campaigns
Conversion measurement without a tag-management project.- Custom events
- Track button clicks, form submissions, signups, and other actions as named events with completion counts on the dashboard.
- Ecommerce revenue tracking
- Events can carry monetary values, with different currencies assignable to different events, turning the dashboard into a basic revenue report.
- UTM campaign tracking
- Full UTM parameter breakdowns for attributing newsletters, ads, and social campaigns from any platform.
- Bot and spam filtering
- Bots, crawlers, and DDoS traffic are filtered automatically so counts reflect human visits.
Privacy and compliance
The architecture behind the no-cookie-banner claim.- Cookie-free tracking
- No cookies of any kind, which removes the analytics justification for consent banners under GDPR and ePrivacy.
- Data anonymization
- IP addresses and visitor data are anonymized using hashes and salts; all reporting is aggregate with no individual profiles.
- EU Isolation
- EU visitors' data is processed through EU-located infrastructure, Fathom's answer to EU-US data transfer concerns after Schrems II.
- Multi-regulation compliance
- The company states compliance with GDPR, CCPA, ePrivacy, and PECR, with dedicated legal review behind the claims.
- No data brokering
- Customers own their data; Fathom sells software subscriptions and has no advertising or data-resale business.
Site management and configuration
Operational controls for running many sites cleanly.- 50+ sites per plan
- Every plan includes at least 50 sites, with larger pageview plans including more, and extra packs of 50 sites at $10/month.
- Allowed domains and IP/country blocking
- Restrict collection to specific domains, exclude office IPs, or block whole countries from tracking.
- SPA and multi-domain support
- A single-page-application mode handles client-side routing, and one site ID can track across multiple domains.
- Dashboard sharing
- Dashboards are private by default and shareable via public link or password protection for clients and stakeholders.
Data access and longevity
Getting data out, and keeping it forever.- Forever data retention
- Full analytics history is retained for as long as you remain a customer, enabling decade-scale year-over-year comparisons.
- Analytics API
- Read API access included on every plan at 600 requests per hour for custom reporting and integrations.
- Email reports
- Unlimited scheduled email reports, per site, per group of sites, or account-wide, weekly or monthly.
- Infrastructure at scale
- A serverless architecture on a global CDN that Fathom states has processed billions of pageviews across a million-plus sites.
Use cases
4 documentedAgency running analytics for 40 client sites
Managing 40 separate GA4 properties is a part-time job, clients cannot read the reports, and per-site analytics subscriptions would eat the retainer.
One Fathom plan covers all 40 sites (50 included) at a flat price, each client gets a password-protected dashboard they can actually read, and scheduled email reports replace manual monthly reporting.
SaaS marketing manager tired of GA4
Needs daily traffic, source, and campaign-conversion numbers without GA4's interface, consent-banner drag on conversion, or data-retention limits truncating history.
Fathom's one-page dashboard answers the daily questions in seconds, the cookie banner goes away for analytics, and forever retention preserves every year-over-year trendline.
Indie hacker with a portfolio of small products
Runs a dozen microsites and side projects; wants one bill and one screen showing which properties are growing.
The all-sites view puts every project on one page under the $15/month entry plan, with events tracking each product's signups.
Newsletter operator measuring paid promotions
Buys sponsorships and cross-promotions and needs to know which placements produce subscribers, not just clicks.
UTM tracking plus a subscription-completion event attributes signups to each placement, and CSV exports feed the sponsorship ROI spreadsheet.
Pricing
from $15/mo (up to 100,000 pageviews)Flat monthly subscription tiered by monthly pageview volume; all features on every plan, at least 50 sites included, extra sites in packs of 50.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 100k pageviews | $15 per month |
|
| Up to 500k pageviews | $45 per month |
|
| Higher volumes (2M, 10M, 25M+ pageviews) | Scales by calculator per month |
Fathom publishes higher-tier prices only through its interactive calculator, not as a static list. |
Add-ons
- Additional sites ($10/mo per pack of 50 sites)
Billing notes
- Annual billing gives two months free versus paying monthly.
- Pricing is in USD and renews automatically; there is no free plan, only the 7-day trial.
- Fathom states it never runs discounts or sales, so the listed price is the real price for everyone.
- There is one feature set: you pay for traffic volume, not for feature unlocks, which makes budgeting simple compared to feature-gated rivals.
- Above 500k pageviews, get your exact price from the calculator before assuming linear scaling.
Value assessment: 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.
Strengths & limitations
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.
- Bootstrapped and customer-funded (zero investors), with a track record since 2018 and claimed users including IBM, GitHub, and Tailwind across a million-plus sites.
- API access and unlimited email reports included at every tier rather than reserved for upper plans.
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).
- Small bootstrapped team means a deliberate release pace and no enterprise apparatus (SSO, SLAs, procurement support).
- Visitor counting differs from cookie-based tools, so reconciling Fathom numbers against GA or ad-platform counts requires accepting methodological gaps.
Head-to-head comparisons
3 alternativesFathom Analytics vs Plausible Analytics
from $9/mo (Starter at up to 10k monthly pageviews)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.
Full Fathom Analytics vs Plausible Analytics comparisonFathom Analytics vs PostHog
from $0 (generous monthly free tiers; pay only past the allowance)Fathom sells a $15 flat-rate traffic dashboard; PostHog gives away a web analytics dashboard inside a usage-priced platform that also does product analytics, replay, and experiments. If the website is a brochure, Fathom is simpler and calmer; if the website feeds a product funnel you will eventually want to analyze, PostHog's free tier makes running a separate paid traffic tool hard to justify.
Full Fathom Analytics vs PostHog comparisonFathom Analytics vs HockeyStack
from Custom (not published)These bracket the category's extremes: Fathom counts anonymous site traffic for $15/month, HockeyStack attributes B2B pipeline and revenue across CRM, ads, and web at quote-only pricing reported in the four figures monthly. They do not compete; a B2B SaaS company might run Fathom on the marketing site for clean traffic numbers while HockeyStack answers the board's attribution questions.
Full Fathom Analytics vs HockeyStack comparisonImplementation & onboarding
- Setup time
- Minutes: one script tag or the WordPress plugin, and data is live immediately; events take a few minutes each to add.
- Learning curve
- Effectively none; the entire product is one dashboard page plus a settings screen.
- Onboarding
- Self-serve with a 7-day trial and email support from the team; no sales process.
- Migration notes
- There is no historical import from Google Analytics, so trendlines start on day one, the strongest argument for switching sooner rather than later; leaving Fathom later is straightforward via CSV exports and the API.
Platform, API & security
- Platforms
- Web app (cloud)WordPress pluginScript embed for any site or framework
- API
- Analytics read API included on all plans at 600 requests per hour for custom reporting and integrations.
- Compliance
- GDPRCCPAePrivacyPECR
- Data residency
- Global serverless infrastructure with EU Isolation: EU visitor data is processed through EU-located infrastructure.
- SSO
- Not advertised; standard account login.
- Security notes
- No cookies or persistent identifiers; visitor data anonymized with hashes and salts; aggregate-only reporting with no individual profiles, and the company is customer-funded with no data-monetization business.
Support & resources
- Channels
- Email support
- Documentation
- Concise public docs covering setup, events, API, and privacy, plus legally reviewed compliance explainers.
- Community
- No official community; the founders are publicly active and the company publishes openly about its practices.
Company
- Founded
- 2018
- Headquarters
- British Columbia, Canada (Conva Ventures Inc.), with a small remote team worldwide
- Ownership
- Bootstrapped; 100% independently owned, customer-funded, zero investors
- Founders
- Jack Ellis (CEO/CTO), Paul Jarvis (co-founder, now retired from the business)
- Employees
- Not disclosed; a small remote team
- Funding
- None; deliberately customer-funded with no venture capital.
Timeline
- 2018Fathom launches, beginning as an open-source analytics project that is downloaded millions of times.
- 2019Jack Ellis joins Paul Jarvis; the paid, hosted version of Fathom launches under Conva Ventures Inc. in Canada.
- 2021Version 3 ships on rebuilt serverless infrastructure, with the privacy-first visits-based counting method the company says others later adopted.
- 2022EU Isolation launches, processing EU visitor data through EU-located infrastructure in response to EU-US data transfer rulings.
- 2026Bootstrapped and profitable, processing data for over a million websites with customers including IBM, GitHub, and Tailwind; co-founder Paul Jarvis retired from day-to-day involvement.
Integrations
- WordPress (official plugin)
- Vue.js and SPA frameworks (SPA mode)
- ConvertKit
- SavvyCal
- Analytics API for custom integrations
Frequently asked questions
10 questionsWhat is Fathom Analytics?
Fathom is a privacy-first web analytics tool that shows traffic, sources, events, and ecommerce revenue on a single real-time dashboard without cookies or personal data collection. It is a bootstrapped Canadian company positioning the product as a simpler Google Analytics alternative, with flat pricing by pageview volume and at least 50 sites on every plan.
How much does Fathom Analytics cost?
Plans start at $15/month for up to 100,000 monthly pageviews and $45/month for up to 500,000, with higher volumes (2M, 10M, 25M+) priced through the calculator on their pricing page. Every plan has the full feature set and at least 50 sites; annual billing gives two months free, and there is a 7-day trial but no free plan.
Do I need a cookie banner with Fathom?
Not for analytics: Fathom sets no cookies and collects no personal data, anonymizing visitor information with hashes and salts and reporting only aggregates. That removes the analytics basis for consent banners under GDPR and ePrivacy, though other scripts on your site may still require consent.
How many sites can I track?
Every plan includes at least 50 sites, larger pageview plans include more, and additional sites come in packs of 50 for $10/month. All sites appear in one account with an all-sites overview, which is why Fathom is popular with agencies and portfolio operators.
How long does Fathom keep my data?
Forever, while you remain a customer: full analytics history is retained with no expiry on any plan. That contrasts with retention windows on most analytics tools (Plausible retains 3 to 5 years depending on plan) and matters for long-run year-over-year reporting.
What is EU Isolation?
Fathom's architecture for EU privacy rules: data from EU visitors is processed through EU-located infrastructure rather than being routed to North American servers. It addresses the EU-US data transfer concerns raised by rulings like Schrems II without any configuration by the customer.
Does Fathom have funnels or user journeys?
No. Fathom measures pageviews, events (including revenue values), and UTM campaigns, all as aggregates on one dashboard. Teams that want multi-step funnels or journey analysis in a privacy-first tool should look at Plausible's Business plan, and teams that want full product analytics should look at PostHog.
Is Fathom open source?
The current product is closed source. Fathom began life as an open-source project (downloaded millions of times), but the hosted product that replaced it is proprietary, so unlike Plausible or PostHog its privacy claims are backed by policy and legal review rather than inspectable code.
How accurate is Fathom compared to Google Analytics?
Numbers will differ by design: Fathom filters bots aggressively, needs no consent (so it counts visitors GA loses to declined banners), and uses anonymized visit-based counting rather than cookie-based user tracking. Treat it as a consistent instrument for trends and conversions rather than expecting line-by-line reconciliation with GA.
Who owns Fathom Analytics?
Conva Ventures Inc., a British Columbia, Canada company founded by Jack Ellis and Paul Jarvis in 2018. It is bootstrapped and customer-funded with zero investors; Jarvis has since retired from the business and Ellis continues to run it with a small remote team.
Editorial verdict
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.
Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.