Cloudflare Web Analytics vs. Fathom Analytics

Last verified 33 days ago · 33 sources · Updated automatically

Cloudflare Web Analytics and Fathom Analytics compared across Company facts, Pricing, Analytics capabilities, Privacy & compliance, Data ownership & deployment and Platform & integrations — every fact sourced and re-verified from each vendor's public material.

Cloudflare Web Analytics

Free, privacy-first web analytics that tracks page views without cookies or fingerprinting.

Founded2009

HQ San Francisco, CA

Visit Cloudflare Web Analytics Full profile

Fathom Analytics

Privacy-first, cookieless web analytics with a simple dashboard and forever data retention.

Founded2018

HQ Victoria, Canada

Visit Fathom Analytics Full profile

Attribute

Cloudflare Web Analytics

Fathom Analytics

Company facts

Headquarters

San Francisco, CA

Victoria, Canada Fully remote-first company; Victoria, BC is the legal incorporation location.

Employees

5.2k

5 LinkedIn shows 2–10 employees; 3 listed profiles. Midpoint of visible data ~5.

Pricing

Starting Monthly Price (USD)

—

$15 Entry plan: $15/month for up to 100k pageviews.

Offers Free Tier

Cloudflare Web Analytics is entirely free — there are no paid tiers for this product.

7-day free trial available; no perpetual free plan.

Free Trial Length (Days)

0 days

7 days 7-day free trial on all paid plans.

Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)

—

100k Entry plan ($15/mo) includes up to 100k pageviews/month.

Entry Plan Website Limit

10 sites Soft limit of 10 sites per account (free product; raisable via Cloudflare support).

50 sites Up to 50 sites included on all plans; additional sites purchasable.

Analytics capabilities

Real-Time Dashboard

No live/current-visitors view; real-time dashboard updates are for paid zone analytics, not the free Web Analytics product.

Dashboard updates in real time; also provides a current-visitors API endpoint.

Custom Event Tracking

Web Analytics tracks only pageviews/visits; custom event tracking requires the separate Zaraz product.

Custom events tracked via fathom.trackEvent() JS call or data attributes.

Goal / Conversion Tracking

No goal or conversion rate reporting in Cloudflare Web Analytics.

Goals are built on custom events with conversion-rate reporting.

Funnels

Multi-step funnel analysis is not a feature; no documentation or marketing page references it.

Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking

Revenue tracking is a Zaraz product feature, not part of Cloudflare Web Analytics.

Revenue values (in cents) can be attached to custom events; Shopify integration supported.

Heatmaps

Heatmaps are not part of the product.

Privacy & compliance

Cookieless Tracking

Cookieless by default — does not use cookies or localStorage to collect usage metrics.

Zero cookies used by design; visitor identification via daily-salted SHA256 hashing.

Consent Banner Required

No cookie banner needed for Web Analytics alone; the tool sets no cookies and collects no personal identifiers.

Vendor explicitly states no cookie consent banner is needed when using Fathom.

GDPR Compliant

Cloudflare maintains a GDPR trust page and uses EU Standard Contractual Clauses for data transfers.

Vendor explicitly claims GDPR compliance; conducted formal GDPR review with EU consultants.

EU Data Residency

Free Web Analytics product does not offer EU data residency; Data Localization Suite is a separate enterprise add-on.

EU Isolation strips visitor IPs inside the EU, but the anonymized analytics data is stored on Fathom's main US servers.

Data ownership & deployment

Open Source

Proprietary cloud product. Counterscale is a separate MIT-licensed community project, not Cloudflare Web Analytics.

Fathom is a closed-source, proprietary cloud SaaS product.

License

proprietary

proprietary Current flagship product is closed-source; an archived MIT-licensed v1 exists but is not the offered product.

Self-Hostable

Cloud-only SaaS; no self-hosting option documented or advertised.

Data Retention (Months)

6 mo Free plan retains approximately 6 months of analytics history.

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Unlimited Data Retention

Vendor advertises 'forever' data retention on all plans.

Google Analytics Import

GA4 data import supported; Universal Analytics not supported (Google deleted UA data July 2024).

Raw Data Export

Web Analytics (RUM) data is queryable and pageable via the GraphQL Analytics API; no in-dashboard CSV button.

Export is aggregated CSVs (dashboard reports); no raw visit/event-level data export available.

Platform & integrations

Has API

GraphQL Analytics API provides programmatic access to Web Analytics data.

Public Stats API for aggregated reporting plus account/site/event management endpoints.

Tracking Script Size (KB)

11.2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.

2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.

Official WordPress Plugin

No official Cloudflare-published WordPress plugin specifically for Web Analytics; community plugins exist.

Official vendor-published WordPress plugin available at wordpress.org/plugins/fathom-analytics/.

Email Reports

Weekly email digest reports available via Cloudflare's Notifications system.

Weekly or monthly scheduled email reports available.

Public Dashboard Sharing

No public or shareable-link dashboard; sharing requires granting Cloudflare account access.

Dashboards can be shared publicly or via password-protected link.

The verdict

Cloudflare Web Analytics

Best for free pageview counting with raw API access

The free pick: no paid tiers at all, versus Fathom's $15/month entry plan. It also exposes raw, visit-level data through a GraphQL API, where Fathom's export is aggregated CSVs only. The trade-off is a basic feature set: no real-time view, custom events, goals, revenue tracking, and only ~6 months of retention.

Full profile

Fathom Analytics

Best for events, goals, and real-time tracking

The richer toolset for $15/month: a real-time dashboard, custom events, goal and conversion tracking, and ecommerce revenue tracking — all absent from Cloudflare's free product. It also keeps data forever (vs ~6 months), ships a 2 KB script (vs 11.2 KB), and adds GA import, an official WordPress plugin, and public dashboard sharing.

Full profile

Sources · 33 verified references

sec.gov usefathom.com linkedin.com cloudflare.com developers.cloudflare.com plausible.io + 5 more

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