Fathom Analytics

Fathom shows visitors, pageviews, time on site, bounce rate and event completions on one page. Below the chart sit boxes for pages (with entry and exit pages), referrers, sources, countries down to cities, devices, browsers, operating systems, events and UTM campaigns. An AI tab, added in October 2026, shows visits sent by tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude.

Click any row and the whole dashboard filters to it. You can combine filters, compare against the previous period, week, month, quarter or year or a custom range, and save a set of filters as a named view that everyone on the site can reuse. Milestones mark a launch or a redesign on the chart.

Events cover sign-ups, form submissions and link clicks. A purchase event can carry a value in the currency you choose, so revenue sits next to the number of completions. Connect Google Search Console and its search terms, clicks, impressions and positions appear beside your traffic.

Reports go out by email every week or month, to you or to clients, and one email can cover several sites. Dashboards can be shared publicly or behind a password, data exports to CSV, and every account gets the API at no extra cost. Every plan has every feature, and covers at least 50 sites.

Fathom suits people who want one clean page and nothing to configure: bloggers, consultants, small businesses and SaaS marketing sites. It is a strong match for agencies and freelancers with many small sites, because every plan includes 50 sites and the email reports and share links are built for clients. Since October 2026, each client or contractor can get a separate share link, with an optional password and expiry date, that you can revoke on its own.

It also fits teams that want no cookies and a company that sells software rather than data. Fathom stresses that it is independently owned.

Look elsewhere if you need funnels, journeys or event properties, since Fathom has none of them. The same goes if your data has to be stored in the EU, if you watch traffic as it happens, or if you run one small site on a tight budget.

You add one line of JavaScript, or use a ready-made integration for WordPress, Ghost, Webflow, Next.js, Nuxt and others. New visits reach the dashboard within minutes. Each event takes a short snippet of code, fathom.trackEvent('name'), with an optional value in cents. Since October 2026 the API also accepts event names, so integrations no longer need the old goal codes.

The 7-day trial needs a card, and Fathom says it emails you before the first charge. It suggests running Fathom next to your current analytics during the trial, so you see your real pageviews before choosing a plan.

If you are leaving Google Analytics, Fathom imports your GA4 history, so your charts do not start on the day you switch. Email reports show only the data Fathom collected itself.

Day to day, you open the dashboard and read it from the top. Charts group data from hourly to yearly, and you can drag across the chart to zoom. Each site has its own reporting timezone. A detail view lists 100 rows per page with bounce rate and time on page, and a second dimension (browser, country or device type) splits each row further.

The Realtime panel shows how many people are on your site, the pages they are viewing and where they came from. Fathom says it updates in 5-minute intervals, and a visitor who stays on one page longer than 5 minutes drops out of the count.

Housekeeping tools have grown in 2026. Firewall lists can block or allow traffic and events, and since October you can filter the dashboard to unwanted visits, check them and remove them from every report, with an undo. An AI assistant called Luna, also new in October, answers questions about Fathom and your stats.

For data outside the dashboard, CSV exports and email reports are unlimited on every plan. The API is free on every plan, and since June 2026 paid API plans from $19 to $399 a month raise the rate limits for heavy users.

Fathom sets no cookies. To count unique visitors, it builds a SHA-256 signature from the IP address, the browser's user agent, the site and a salt that changes every day at midnight UTC, so the same person cannot be followed from one day to the next. Fathom says ordinary analytics records hold no raw IP address or user agent field. Records it flags as bots do keep an IP address.

The company is in Canada and stores analytics data on servers in the US. Visits from the EU go through Bunny, an EU-owned CDN, to Fathom's servers in the EU, where the IP address is removed, and only the anonymous result reaches the US. Fathom calls this EU isolation, and it is on by default on every plan. You keep your full history for as long as you subscribe. The code is closed: only the older Fathom Lite is open source.

There is one plan with every feature, priced by pageviews: $15 a month for 100,000, $25 for 200,000, $45 for 500,000, $60 for 1 million and $470 for 25 million. Pageviews and events share the same allowance across all your sites. Plans up to 500,000 pageviews cover 50 sites; larger ones cover 75 to 350. Packs of 50 more sites cost $10 a month or $100 a year, up to 15 packs. Yearly billing gives two months free.

• A small blog with 15,000 pageviews a month pays $15 a month, or $150 a year. There is no smaller plan.
• A growing shop with 350,000 pageviews and 60,000 tracked events uses 410,000 of the allowance: $45 a month, or $450 a year, with revenue on its purchase events but no funnel to show where buyers drop out.
• An agency with 120 client sites and 800,000 pageviews in total takes the $60 plan, which covers 75 sites, plus one pack of 50 sites: $70 a month.

At the limit, Fathom says it never turns analytics off for an occasional spike. If you stay well over, it emails you about a larger plan and sends reminders, with extra time, before it pauses dashboard and API access, and it keeps collecting data throughout. Above 25 million pageviews, it quotes a price. Our pricing comparison lines these figures up against other tools.

• WireBoard (made by us) fits if you need funnels or a live view. It has funnels, goals and journeys of up to 29 steps on every plan, widgets that stream within seconds rather than every 5 minutes, and EU hosting. A free plan covers 50,000 pageviews a month on 2 sites, then $9 a month buys 100,000 pageviews on 50 sites. It sets cookies by default, with an optional cookieless mode.
• Pirsch is cookieless too, stores data in Germany and starts at $6 a month for 10,000 pageviews on up to 50 sites. Funnels come with its Plus plan.
• Plausible is open source and hosted in the EU, from $9 a month for one site, with funnels on Business.
• Simple Analytics has a free plan for 5 hobby sites and keeps data in the Netherlands, but no revenue tracking.

For faster live views, see our real-time shortlist.

There are no funnels, no user journeys and no event properties beyond a value. You cannot follow visitors through a sign-up flow or split traffic by your own data, such as logged-in users or article authors.

The Realtime panel shows the pages people are on and where they came from, but Fathom says it updates in 5-minute intervals. That is too slow to watch a launch or a newsletter send as it happens.

There is no free plan and no plan below 100,000 pageviews, so a small blog pays $15 a month where Pirsch starts at $6 and Plausible at $9. The 7-day trial needs a card. The code is closed and there is no self-hosted edition. And if your data has to be stored in the EU, Fathom's US storage rules it out, however the EU visits are anonymised on the way.