Fathom Analytics

Short verdict: Fathom Analytics is hosted, cookieless analytics with the same features on every plan and at least 50 sites per account. Its smallest plan costs $15 a month and covers up to 100,000 pageviews: good value from 50,000 to 100,000, poor value at 10,000. One million pageviews cost $60. There is no free plan, the 7-day trial needs a card, all analytics are stored in the US, and Fathom offers no way to serve the script from your own domain. It suits agencies and owners of many sites who want one flat bill; pick something else for EU-only storage, a free tier, funnels or team logins.

How we reviewed it: We did not create a Fathom account or send it any data. On 21 October 2026 we loaded its documented snippet on a test page in headless Chromium, with every outgoing request blocked so nothing reached Fathom, and recorded what the script downloads, stores and tries to send. We read the pricing page, docs, terms and status page, and clicked through the public demo in Playwright at 1440x900 with its own tracking blocked. We did not test the logged-in dashboard, count accuracy, imports or support. Prices are monthly in USD.

What Fathom Analytics costs and includes

Prices from Fathom's pricing page on 21 October 2026.

What we found in Fathom's pricing, script and demo

$15 buys up to 100,000 pageviews, and events count too

Fathom sells pageview tiers, not feature tiers. The ladder runs $15 for 100,000 pageviews, $25 for 200,000, $45 for 500,000 and $60 for 1 million. That is $0.15 per 1,000 pageviews at 100,000, but $1.50 at 10,000, since there is no smaller plan. Custom events use the same allowance, and so does the API: the API reference says "each request counts towards your monthly pageviews", which the pricing page leaves out. A site with 100,000 pageviews plus events is already past the $15 tier.

Going over costs nothing extra. The help center says Fathom emails you after repeated overages, then locks the dashboard and API while still collecting data. The terms, last updated in December 2021, are stricter: they allow suspension seven days after an upgrade request and deletion after two months suspended.

Clients see dashboards through share links, up to 100 per site, each with an optional password and expiry date. The docs describe no way to give a colleague their own login; the sharing page says Fathom is "in the process of adding fully functional user accounts".

What the script does on a page

The snippet loads cdn.usefathom.com/script.js. In our test it transferred 2.2 KB (7.0 KB uncompressed), used 11 ms of main-thread time at 4x CPU slowdown, set no cookies or web storage, and made one GET request to cdn.usefathom.com with the hostname, path, referrer, site ID and a short list of query parameters (UTM tags, gclid and a few more). The source reads one localStorage key, blockFathomTracking, which is written only when a site owner runs fathom.blockTrackingForMe(). A client-side route change was not counted: SPA tracking needs data-spa="auto". Outbound clicks are not tracked by default; Fathom filters bots on its servers, by user agent and datacenter IP.

EU processing, US storage, no first-party domain

Fathom routes EU and UK visitors through Bunny.net to servers in Germany and Finland, where the IP address is removed. Its data-isolation page then says "anonymized analytics are stored on our US infrastructure". A second script address, cdn-eu.usefathom.com, routes all traffic through the EU, but no plan stores data there. The homepage says Fathom, as a Canadian company, is covered by Canada's EU adequacy decision; that is the vendor's claim.

Fathom dropped custom domains in March 2023, saying uBlock blocked them anyway, and documents no proxy setup. On 21 October 2026 the EasyPrivacy filter list contained entries for cdn.usefathom.com and cdn-eu.usefathom.com. uBlock Origin enables that list by default, so the script is likely blocked for its users. We checked the list, not a browser with the extension.

Two answers on cookie banners

Fathom's pricing page lists "No cookie banners required", and its features FAQ says "you don't need a consent banner for analytics." Its compliance guides, updated 8 September 2026, say "cookie-free does not automatically mean outside device-access rules", and the ePrivacy guide calls the design "not a universal exemption from consent". Whether you need consent depends on your jurisdiction and setup, so go by the guide, not the tagline.

The public demo

"View a live demo" opens a public dashboard for a site called Hilarious Platypus, with data back to March 2021. For 15-21 October 2026 it showed 5,575 site visitors, 9,348 pageviews, a 72% bounce rate and 1,356 event completions. Clicking a row filters the whole dashboard (Twitter alone: 130 visitors, 324 pageviews), and the filter dialog offers 23 fields with regex matching. An AI tab lists visitors from ChatGPT (57), Gemini, Claude and Perplexity.

Some things were off: the Sources tab listed only one bucket, AI, though the docs describe five, one browser was named "0", and the bot counter read 0 for every range.

Visitors are a hash of IP address, user agent and site ID with a salt that changes at midnight UTC, so monthly totals sum daily visitors. The time-on-site note excludes single-page sessions; the measurement docs say they are included.

Script weight, privacy and reliability

Fathom, Plausible and Umami differ by about 1 KB and a few milliseconds, which is noise on one machine; Google Analytics 4 downloads about 70 times more.

Fathom's status page shows only the last 60 days, so we could not check 90. From 22 August to 21 October 2026 the dashboard was up 99.999%, with 59 seconds of downtime on 29 September, and the ingest monitor, which checks cdn.usefathom.com, showed 100%. The history page reads "No incident history available."

Fathom publishes no npm package. Its Next.js guide uses the community fathom-client: version 3.7.2 from 10 July 2024, 65,727 downloads from 28 September to 4 October 2026. The official WordPress plugin reports more than 10,000 active installs.

What you still have to set up

• Single-page apps. Add data-spa="auto" or call fathom.trackPageview(). The Next.js guide's App Router example appends search parameters to the path without a "?" (we read it, not ran it), so check that line.

• Events and revenue. Call fathom.trackEvent('Signup', { _value: 1999 }) with the value in cents and set currencies in the dashboard. Events carry only a name and a value. Outbound links and downloads need your own click handlers.

• Your own visits and spam. Block your IP or allow only your domains in the site's Firewall settings.

• Client access. Create a share link per person, with a password and expiry if needed.

• Google Analytics history. The importer takes GA4 data only, by day, without events, and can take up to 48 hours.

Pros and cons

Pros

• One feature set on every plan and at least 50 sites, from $15 a month.

• A 2.2 KB script that set no cookies or web storage in our test.

• No overage charges: going over brings emails and eventually a locked dashboard, while collection continues.

• Regex filters, saved views, an AI-referrer tab and per-person share links.

• 99.999% dashboard uptime and 100% ingest over the 60 days the status page shows.

Cons

• No free plan; the 7-day trial needs a card and bills automatically.

• $15 is steep at 10,000 pageviews, and events and API requests count toward the limit.

• Analytics are stored in the US, with no EU storage option.

• No first-party domain or proxy, and EasyPrivacy lists the script's host.

• No funnels, team logins, self-hosted edition or official MCP server.

How Fathom Analytics compares

• Plausible Analytics costs $9 at 10,000 pageviews, $19 at 100,000 and $69 at 1 million, hosts only in the EU and has a 30-day trial without a card. Choose it for EU-only storage or small sites.

• Umami Cloud is free up to 100,000 events a month for one site with 6 months of data, and Pro costs $20 at 1 million events. It offers US or EU hosting and MIT-licensed self-hosting. Choose it for a free tier or to run it yourself.

• Google Analytics costs $0 at all three volumes but sets 2 cookies and downloads about 153 KB in our test. Choose it when price matters more than consent banners and page weight.

See all analytics tools, including PostHog and DataFast.

Who should use Fathom Analytics

Use Fathom if you run many sites with 50,000 to a few million pageviews a month, want every feature without tiers, and accept US storage and a card-first trial. Look elsewhere for EU-only storage (Plausible), a free tier or self-hosting (Umami), funnels and product analytics (PostHog), or the lowest price at 10,000 pageviews.

FAQ

Is Fathom Analytics free?

No. Fathom has no free plan, only a 7-day trial that needs a card and bills automatically unless you cancel. The cheapest plan costs $15 a month for up to 100,000 pageviews and includes 50 sites.

How much does Fathom cost for 100,000 pageviews a month?

$15 a month, or $150 a year, as of 21 October 2026, which puts you exactly at the cap of the smallest plan. Custom events and API requests count toward the same allowance, so a site that also tracks events may need the $25 plan for 200,000. One million pageviews cost $60 a month.

Does Fathom Analytics need a cookie banner?

Fathom's marketing says no, because its script sets no cookies, and our test found none. Its own ePrivacy guide, updated 8 September 2026, says the cookie-free design is not a universal exemption from consent, so the answer depends on your jurisdiction and setup.

Does Fathom keep data in the EU?

Only partly. Requests from EU visitors are processed on EU servers, where IP addresses are removed, but Fathom stores the anonymized analytics on US infrastructure and offers no EU storage option. Fathom is a Canadian company.

Can I self-host Fathom Analytics?

No, the current product is hosted only. Fathom Lite, the MIT-licensed first version, is still on GitHub, but it gets no new features, uses cookies according to its README, and its last tagged version dates from January 2023.