Web Analytics · Comparison
Fathom Analytics vs. Pirsch Analytics
Fathom Analytics and Pirsch 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.
Fathom Analytics
Privacy-first, cookieless web analytics with a simple dashboard and forever data retention.
Pirsch Analytics
Server-side, cookieless web analytics hosted in Germany, built for GDPR compliance.
Company facts
Headquarters
Victoria, Canada Fully remote-first company; Victoria, BC is the legal incorporation location.
Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany Emvi Software GmbH registered at Nickelstraße 1b, 33378 Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany.
Employees
5 LinkedIn shows 2–10 employees; 3 listed profiles. Midpoint of visible data ~5.
2 Pirsch is a two-person team: Marvin Blum (backend/infra) and Daniel Schramm (design/UX).
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
$15 Entry plan: $15/month for up to 100k pageviews.
$6 Standard plan starts at $6/month for 10,000 monthly pageviews (as of June 2026).
Offers Free Tier
7-day free trial available; no perpetual free plan.
No perpetual free plan; only a 30-day free trial is offered.
Free Trial Length (Days)
7 days 7-day free trial on all paid plans.
30 days 30-day free trial with no credit card required.
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
100k Entry plan ($15/mo) includes up to 100k pageviews/month.
10k Standard entry plan includes 10,000 monthly pageviews at $6/month.
Entry Plan Website Limit
50 sites Up to 50 sites included on all plans; additional sites purchasable.
50 sites Standard entry plan covers up to 50 websites.
Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Dashboard updates in real time; also provides a current-visitors API endpoint.
Live visitor count and real-time visitor map are core dashboard features.
Custom Event Tracking
Custom events tracked via fathom.trackEvent() JS call or data attributes.
User-defined custom events supported via JS snippet or server-side API.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Goals are built on custom events with conversion-rate reporting.
Conversion goals can be defined against events or pageviews with conversion rate reporting.
Funnels
Multi-step funnel analysis is not a feature; no documentation or marketing page references it.
Multi-step funnel analysis (up to 8 steps) is available on the Plus plan.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Revenue values (in cents) can be attached to custom events; Shopify integration supported.
Revenue tracked via custom events with monetary metadata; Shopify integration available.
Heatmaps
Heatmaps are not part of the product.
Heatmaps are not offered; a feature request exists on the forum but is unimplemented.
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
Zero cookies used by design; visitor identification via daily-salted SHA256 hashing.
Cookieless by design; uses a daily-rotating fingerprint hash with no browser cookies.
Consent Banner Required
Vendor explicitly states no cookie consent banner is needed when using Fathom.
Pirsch explicitly states no cookie consent banner is needed for its analytics.
GDPR Compliant
Vendor explicitly claims GDPR compliance; conducted formal GDPR review with EU consultants.
Vendor claims GDPR, CCPA, PECR, and Schrems II compliance.
EU Data Residency
EU Isolation strips visitor IPs inside the EU, but the anonymized analytics data is stored on Fathom's main US servers.
All analytics data stored on Hetzner servers in Falkenstein, Germany.
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
Fathom is a closed-source, proprietary cloud SaaS product.
Core analytics library is open source (AGPLv3) on GitHub.
License
proprietary Current flagship product is closed-source; an archived MIT-licensed v1 exists but is not the offered product.
AGPLv3 Core analytics library (pirsch-analytics/pirsch) is licensed under AGPLv3.
Self-Hostable
Cloud-only SaaS; no self-hosting option documented or advertised.
Self-hosting available via Enterprise License for on-premise deployment.
Unlimited Data Retention
Vendor advertises 'forever' data retention on all plans.
Both Standard and Plus plans include unlimited data retention.
Google Analytics Import
GA4 data import supported; Universal Analytics not supported (Google deleted UA data July 2024).
Official import from Google Analytics (UA and GA4) is documented with step-by-step guide.
Raw Data Export
Export is aggregated CSVs (dashboard reports); no raw visit/event-level data export available.
Stats API enables full programmatic data retrieval; CSV export and raw exports on request also available.
Platform & integrations
Has API
Public Stats API for aggregated reporting plus account/site/event management endpoints.
RESTful Stats API with no rate limit on statistics endpoints.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
3.5 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
Official WordPress Plugin
Official vendor-published WordPress plugin available at wordpress.org/plugins/fathom-analytics/.
Official WordPress plugin published by Emvi Software GmbH on wordpress.org.
Email Reports
Weekly or monthly scheduled email reports available.
Scheduled weekly and monthly email summary reports are supported.
Public Dashboard Sharing
Dashboards can be shared publicly or via password-protected link.
Dashboards can be made public or shared via private access links without requiring viewer accounts.
The verdict
Fathom Analytics Best for higher-traffic sites on a flat entry plan
Fathom's $15/mo entry plan covers 100k pageviews, ten times Pirsch's 10k at $6. For a site already past Pirsch's entry ceiling, Fathom is cheaper per pageview and keeps headroom. Both are cookieless, need no consent banner, and bundle 50 sites and unlimited retention, so the gap here is allowance, not feature set.
Full profile Pirsch Analytics Best for EU residency, funnels, and data portability
Pirsch stores all data on German servers, is open source (AGPLv3) and self-hostable, and adds multi-step funnels (up to 8) and raw-data export. Fathom keeps data on US servers, is proprietary cloud-only, has no funnels, and exports only aggregated CSVs. Pirsch also starts at $6/mo with a 30-day trial versus Fathom's $15 and 7 days, though its entry plan caps at 10k pageviews.
Full profileSources · 37 verified references
usefathom.com pirsch.io linkedin.com docs.pirsch.io github.com cdn.usefathom.com + 2 more
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