Web Analytics · Comparison
Fathom Analytics vs. GoatCounter
Fathom Analytics and GoatCounter 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.
Fathom Analytics
Privacy-first, cookieless web analytics with a simple dashboard and forever data retention.
GoatCounter
Open-source, privacy-friendly web analytics that tracks no personal data.
Company facts
Headquarters
Victoria, Canada Fully remote-first company; Victoria, BC is the legal incorporation location.
Dublin, Ireland GoatCounter is a one-person project by Martin Tournoij, who is located in Ireland.
Employees
5 LinkedIn shows 2–10 employees; 3 listed profiles. Midpoint of visible data ~5.
1 GoatCounter is a one-person independent project built and maintained solely by Martin Tournoij.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
$15 Entry plan: $15/month for up to 100k pageviews.
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Offers Free Tier
7-day free trial available; no perpetual free plan.
GoatCounter.com is offered free for personal websites and small-to-medium businesses. No paid plans exist; the project is donation-supported.
Free Trial Length (Days)
7 days 7-day free trial on all paid plans.
0 days No paid plan exists, so no trial applies. The hosted service is entirely free.
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
100k Entry plan ($15/mo) includes up to 100k pageviews/month.
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Entry Plan Website Limit
50 sites Up to 50 sites included on all plans; additional sites purchasable.
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Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Dashboard updates in real time; also provides a current-visitors API endpoint.
Dashboard uses WebSocket for real-time data updates.
Custom Event Tracking
Custom events tracked via fathom.trackEvent() JS call or data attributes.
Custom events tracked via data-goatcounter-click HTML attribute or window.goatcounter.count() JS call.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Goals are built on custom events with conversion-rate reporting.
No goal or conversion-rate tracking; GoatCounter is a minimalist pageview/event counter.
Funnels
Multi-step funnel analysis is not a feature; no documentation or marketing page references it.
No multi-step funnel analysis.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Revenue values (in cents) can be attached to custom events; Shopify integration supported.
No ecommerce or revenue tracking; no monetary value can be attached to events.
Heatmaps
Heatmaps are not part of the product.
GoatCounter does not offer heatmap or session replay features.
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
Zero cookies used by design; visitor identification via daily-salted SHA256 hashing.
No cookies, localStorage, or any browser-side persistent identifiers are used.
Consent Banner Required
Vendor explicitly states no cookie consent banner is needed when using Fathom.
GoatCounter's docs state a GDPR consent banner is probably not required, as no PII is collected.
GDPR Compliant
Vendor explicitly claims GDPR compliance; conducted formal GDPR review with EU consultants.
Vendor provides GDPR guidance and states no consent notice is likely needed due to no PII collection.
EU Data Residency
EU Isolation strips visitor IPs inside the EU, but the anonymized analytics data is stored on Fathom's main US servers.
Data hosted on Hetzner servers in Finland and Germany. Operated by Martin Tournoij from Ireland.
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
Fathom is a closed-source, proprietary cloud SaaS product.
GoatCounter is open source under EUPL-1.2, available at github.com/arp242/goatcounter.
License
proprietary Current flagship product is closed-source; an archived MIT-licensed v1 exists but is not the offered product.
EUPL-1.2 Licensed under EUPL-1.2 with a minor modification to the Compatible Licenses appendix.
Self-Hostable
Cloud-only SaaS; no self-hosting option documented or advertised.
Self-hosting is officially documented and encouraged for high-volume usage.
Unlimited Data Retention
Vendor advertises 'forever' data retention on all plans.
Hosted data is retained until the user deletes it; no time-based aging-out.
Google Analytics Import
GA4 data import supported; Universal Analytics not supported (Google deleted UA data July 2024).
Google Analytics report import added in v2.6.0 (Jun 2025). Limited to path-level totals due to GA's export constraints.
Raw Data Export
Export is aggregated CSVs (dashboard reports); no raw visit/event-level data export available.
Full pageview-level data exportable as CSV or JSON. API also supports paginated data export.
Platform & integrations
Has API
Public Stats API for aggregated reporting plus account/site/event management endpoints.
REST API (v0) for stats retrieval, data ingestion, site management, and export.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
3 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
Official WordPress Plugin
Official vendor-published WordPress plugin available at wordpress.org/plugins/fathom-analytics/.
Official WordPress plugin maintained by GoatCounter's creator (arp242/goatcounter-wordpress on GitHub).
Email Reports
Weekly or monthly scheduled email reports available.
Scheduled email reports are supported. Enhancement work completed Dec 2025.
Public Dashboard Sharing
Dashboards can be shared publicly or via password-protected link.
Dashboards can be shared via secret access token URL (e.g. https://mystats.example.com?access-token=…).
The verdict
Fathom Analytics Best for conversion and revenue tracking
Fathom adds the marketing layer GoatCounter lacks: goal and conversion-rate tracking plus ecommerce revenue values on events, with a Shopify integration. It starts at $15/month for 100k pageviews across up to 50 sites, with no free plan. Closed-source and cloud-only, stored on US servers, with aggregated CSV export but no raw-data export.
Full profile GoatCounter Best for free, self-hosted, EU-resident analytics
GoatCounter is free for personal sites and SMBs, open source under EUPL-1.2, and the only option here you can self-host. Hosted data sits on EU servers (Finland/Germany), and full pageview-level data exports as CSV or JSON. The tradeoff is scope: no goal/conversion tracking and no ecommerce or revenue tracking, so it is a counter, not a conversion tool.
Full profileSources · 29 verified references
usefathom.com goatcounter.com linkedin.com arp242.net github.com cdn.usefathom.com + 1 more
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