Shared philosophy, different operating model

Both products present a compact dashboard for pages, sources, countries, devices, campaigns, and events while rejecting cross-site advertising profiles. Both promote small scripts, no analytics cookies, and aggregate reporting. They are closer substitutes for each other than either is for a granular visitor-log platform.

Plausible publishes its source and supports community self-hosting in addition to paid Cloud. Fathom is a proprietary managed service and explicitly has no free tier. That difference matters to teams that need source auditability or infrastructure control, and to teams that prefer one vendor to own operations.

Features and day-to-day reporting

Plausible supports real-time aggregates, filters, campaigns, custom events, goals, funnels, ecommerce revenue, shared links, email reports, an API, Google Search Console integration, and imports. Fathom supports instant filters, live visitors, custom events and revenue, UTMs, saved views, shared dashboards, all-sites views, reports, exports, an API, and a Google Analytics importer.

The products evolve quickly, so test the exact workflows: custom-property limits, funnel definitions, ecommerce currencies, public-link controls, data exports, search data, and client access. A screenshot of the main dashboard does not reveal the edge cases that determine a migration.

Privacy, hosting, and retention

Plausible says its hosted service is EU-owned and keeps visitor data on European-owned infrastructure; it uses a daily rotating method rather than persistent identification. Fathom describes an EU isolation process for EU visitor data and an aggregate model without showing personal information on dashboards. Review each current data policy and processing agreement for the intended audience.

Fathom advertises full dashboard history for as long as the account remains a customer. Plausible’s current retention and plan behavior should be confirmed in its official terms and account controls. Self-hosted Plausible retention becomes the operator’s responsibility, including backups and deletion.

Pricing and selection rule

Both managed services price primarily by monthly usage, with annual discounts. Fathom includes at least 50 sites and charges for additional packs; its pricing page states that custom events count toward pageview usage. Plausible’s calculator varies plan cost and allowances by traffic and selected options. Use the live calculators with peak traffic before deciding.

Choose Plausible for open-source auditability, a possible self-hosted path, and its specific EU-operated model. Choose Fathom for a hosted-only workflow, broad site allowances, saved dashboards, and long in-product history while subscribed. The better tool is the one whose limits and reports match the real portfolio.

Direct answers

Questions this guide answers

Is Plausible or Fathom open source?

Plausible publishes open-source code and supports self-hosting. Fathom is a proprietary managed analytics service.

Which includes more sites?

Fathom says every current plan includes at least 50 sites; Plausible allowances vary through its live pricing configuration.

Do Plausible and Fathom use analytics cookies?

Both describe their core analytics models as operating without cookies or persistent cross-day visitor tracking; verify the live configuration and any added integrations.

Evidence

Primary-source ledger

  1. Plausible privacy and hosting modelPlausible Analytics · accessed 30 July 2026
  2. Fathom featuresFathom Analytics · accessed 30 July 2026
  3. Fathom pricing and allowancesFathom Analytics · accessed 30 July 2026

Scope note: Vendor privacy and compliance statements are their own claims. Verify the current data policy, contract, configuration, and legal context before deployment.

Found an outdated fact or a material omission?Read the corrections and recheck policy.