Web Analytics · Comparison
Fathom Analytics vs. Seline
Fathom Analytics and Seline 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.
Seline
Simple, cookieless, privacy-first website and product analytics built in the EU.
Company facts
Headquarters
Victoria, Canada Fully remote-first company; Victoria, BC is the legal incorporation location.
Warsaw, Poland Registered address: ul. Łowicka 60/16, 02-531 Warsaw, Poland.
Employees
5 LinkedIn shows 2–10 employees; 3 listed profiles. Midpoint of visible data ~5.
4 Tiny bootstrapped team of approximately 4 people. Co-founded by Kostya Nesterovich and Misha Slizenko.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
$15 Entry plan: $15/month for up to 100k pageviews.
$14 Single 'Pro' plan at $14/month (monthly billing). Annual billing available with 2 months free.
Offers Free Tier
7-day free trial available; no perpetual free plan.
No perpetual free plan. Seline states: 'No, we don't have a free plan. We're a small bootstrapped team operating exclusively through subscriber fees.'
Free Trial Length (Days)
7 days 7-day free trial on all paid plans.
7 days 7-day free trial on the Pro plan, no credit card required.
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
100k Entry plan ($15/mo) includes up to 100k pageviews/month.
100k Pro plan includes 100,000 events per month. Seline meters 'events' (pageviews + custom events combined), not pageviews alone.
Entry Plan Website Limit
50 sites Up to 50 sites included on all plans; additional sites purchasable.
1 sites Pricing is per project (one website/domain per subscription); linking additional projects requires their own Pro subscription, with the option to share an event limit.
Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Dashboard updates in real time; also provides a current-visitors API endpoint.
Live globe view and real-time visitor activity dashboard included.
Custom Event Tracking
Custom events tracked via fathom.trackEvent() JS call or data attributes.
Custom events tracked via seline.track() JS method or data-sln-event HTML attributes. Custom properties supported.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Goals are built on custom events with conversion-rate reporting.
Conversion via multi-step funnels (step drop-off / conversion rate) and revenue-attributed custom events.
Funnels
Multi-step funnel analysis is not a feature; no documentation or marketing page references it.
Multi-step funnel analysis built into the product for all plan users.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Revenue values (in cents) can be attached to custom events; Shopify integration supported.
Revenue attribution by traffic source, referrer, and UTM. Native integrations with Stripe, Shopify, and Polar. MRR tracking included.
Heatmaps
Heatmaps are not part of the product.
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Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
Zero cookies used by design; visitor identification via daily-salted SHA256 hashing.
Cookie-free by design. Uses daily-rotated non-reversible hashing of IP+browser+device — no cookies or persistent browser storage.
Consent Banner Required
Vendor explicitly states no cookie consent banner is needed when using Fathom.
No cookie/consent banner needed. Seline explicitly states GDPR compliance without requiring visitor consent banners.
GDPR Compliant
Vendor explicitly claims GDPR compliance; conducted formal GDPR review with EU consultants.
Vendor explicitly claims GDPR compliance. No personal data retained; EU-hosted infrastructure.
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 infrastructure hosted in Germany (EU) via Hetzner — app servers, ClickHouse, and Postgres databases.
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
Fathom is a closed-source, proprietary cloud SaaS product.
The main SaaS product is proprietary. Only the JavaScript tracker client (seline-js) is MIT-licensed open source on GitHub.
License
proprietary Current flagship product is closed-source; an archived MIT-licensed v1 exists but is not the offered product.
proprietary Main analytics platform is proprietary SaaS. The JS tracker client is separately MIT-licensed.
Self-Hostable
Cloud-only SaaS; no self-hosting option documented or advertised.
Cloud-only SaaS. No self-hosting or on-premises option is documented or advertised.
Unlimited Data Retention
Vendor advertises 'forever' data retention on all plans.
Pro plan retains data forever ('unlimited' retention). Free trial and any hypothetical lower tiers cap at 1 year.
Google Analytics Import
GA4 data import supported; Universal Analytics not supported (Google deleted UA data July 2024).
No official Google Analytics (UA/GA4) historical-data import; tracking starts from install.
Raw Data Export
Export is aggregated CSVs (dashboard reports); no raw visit/event-level data export available.
Public API includes a Raw Events endpoint for exporting individual event records with full filtering, pagination, and ordering. CSV export also available via AI assistant.
Platform & integrations
Has API
Public Stats API for aggregated reporting plus account/site/event management endpoints.
Public Stats API available at seline.com/api — covers visit metrics, custom events, funnels, visitor profiles, revenue data, and raw events.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
4.2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
Official WordPress Plugin
Official vendor-published WordPress plugin available at wordpress.org/plugins/fathom-analytics/.
Official WordPress plugin published at wordpress.org/plugins/seline-analytics by the Seline founder (nstkostya = Kostya Nesterovich).
Email Reports
Weekly or monthly scheduled email reports available.
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Public Dashboard Sharing
Dashboards can be shared publicly or via password-protected link.
Dashboards can be shared via a public link (e.g. app.seline.com/share/<site>) viewable without an account.
The verdict
Fathom Analytics Best for multi-site portfolios and GA migration
Fathom's entry plan covers up to 50 sites on one subscription, versus 1 per Seline subscription, so portfolios scale cheaper. It also imports GA4 history, which Seline does not, and ships a lighter 2 KB script against Seline's 4.2 KB. Tradeoff: no funnels and no raw event-level export.
Full profile Seline Best for EU data residency, funnels, and raw export
Seline hosts all data in Germany (EU) via Hetzner; Fathom stores anonymized data on US servers. Seline adds multi-step funnels and a raw-events export endpoint, both absent in Fathom, at $14/mo vs $15. Tradeoff: one site per subscription versus Fathom's 50, and no Google Analytics import.
Full profileSources · 32 verified references
usefathom.com seline.com linkedin.com starterstory.com capterra.com github.com + 4 more
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