Web Analytics · Comparison
Fathom Analytics vs. Simple Analytics
Fathom Analytics and Simple 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.
Simple Analytics
Privacy-friendly, cookieless web analytics that requires no consent banner.
Company facts
Headquarters
Victoria, Canada Fully remote-first company; Victoria, BC is the legal incorporation location.
Amsterdam, Netherlands Dutch company (Simple Analytics B.V.); founders and operations based in Amsterdam.
Employees
5 LinkedIn shows 2–10 employees; 3 listed profiles. Midpoint of visible data ~5.
3 Very small team — founder Adriaan van Rossum plus a couple of team members as of 2024/2025.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
$15 Entry plan: $15/month for up to 100k pageviews.
$20 Self-Serve plan at $20/month (monthly billing); entry slider point is 100k pageviews. 2 months free with annual billing.
Offers Free Tier
7-day free trial available; no perpetual free plan.
Perpetually free plan available; analytics history limited to 30 days on the free tier.
Free Trial Length (Days)
7 days 7-day free trial on all paid plans.
14 days 14-day free trial on paid plans; no credit card required.
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
100k Entry plan ($15/mo) includes up to 100k pageviews/month.
100k Self-Serve plan starts at 100,000 pageviews/month (adjustable up to 2.5M via slider).
Entry Plan Website Limit
50 sites Up to 50 sites included on all plans; additional sites purchasable.
10 sites Starter plan covers up to 10 websites.
Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Dashboard updates in real time; also provides a current-visitors API endpoint.
Live visitor stats; embeddable live-stats widget for your own site.
Custom Event Tracking
Custom events tracked via fathom.trackEvent() JS call or data attributes.
Custom events supported via sa_event() JS call, data attributes, and server-side API.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Goals are built on custom events with conversion-rate reporting.
Goals feature reports conversion rates for defined events or pageview paths.
Funnels
Multi-step funnel analysis is not a feature; no documentation or marketing page references it.
Multi-step funnels supported via Goals; can chain events and pageviews with step-by-step drop-off.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Revenue values (in cents) can be attached to custom events; Shopify integration supported.
Revenue values can be attached to events via metadata (e.g. revenue, order value) and reported in Goals.
Heatmaps
Heatmaps are not part of the product.
No heatmap feature — Simple Analytics is a minimalist analytics tool focused on traffic stats.
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
Zero cookies used by design; visitor identification via daily-salted SHA256 hashing.
Tracking is cookieless by design — no cookies or persistent identifiers are set.
Consent Banner Required
Vendor explicitly states no cookie consent banner is needed when using Fathom.
Vendor explicitly states no cookie or consent banner is required when using Simple Analytics.
GDPR Compliant
Vendor explicitly claims GDPR compliance; conducted formal GDPR review with EU consultants.
Vendor states it fully adheres to GDPR and UK GDPR by not collecting personal data.
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 stored in the Netherlands on Dutch-hosted servers (Worldstream, Leaseweb); never leaves the EU.
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
Fathom is a closed-source, proprietary cloud SaaS product.
Core SaaS product is proprietary; only the public tracking scripts are MIT-licensed open source.
License
proprietary Current flagship product is closed-source; an archived MIT-licensed v1 exists but is not the offered product.
proprietary Core analytics platform is proprietary SaaS; tracking scripts are MIT-licensed.
Self-Hostable
Cloud-only SaaS; no self-hosting option documented or advertised.
Cloud-only SaaS product; no documented self-hosting or on-premises option.
Data Retention (Months)
—
36 mo Simple plan: 3 years
Unlimited Data Retention
Vendor advertises 'forever' data retention on all plans.
No
Google Analytics Import
GA4 data import supported; Universal Analytics not supported (Google deleted UA data July 2024).
Official Google Analytics 4 (GA4) import tool; heavily filtered for privacy.
Raw Data Export
Export is aggregated CSVs (dashboard reports); no raw visit/event-level data export available.
Export API provides raw event-level data export; CSV export and data warehouse integrations also available.
Platform & integrations
Has API
Public Stats API for aggregated reporting plus account/site/event management endpoints.
Stats API, Export API, and Admin API all documented.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
3.8 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
Official WordPress Plugin
Official vendor-published WordPress plugin available at wordpress.org/plugins/fathom-analytics/.
Official WordPress plugin at wordpress.org/plugins/simpleanalytics/ maintained by Simple Analytics.
Email Reports
Weekly or monthly scheduled email reports available.
Built-in weekly and monthly email reports; sent at 9AM in local timezone with top referrers summary.
Public Dashboard Sharing
Dashboards can be shared publicly or via password-protected link.
Dashboards can be made fully public or shared via link; Simple Analytics publishes their own publicly.
The verdict
Fathom Analytics Best for many sites at a low entry price
Fathom starts at $15/mo versus Simple Analytics' $20 and covers 50 sites on its entry plan, against 10. Retention is unlimited rather than capped at 36 months, and the script is lighter at 2 KB versus 3.8 KB. The trade-off: no perpetual free tier (7-day trial only), no funnels, and data sits on US servers.
Full profile Simple Analytics Best for EU data residency and deeper analysis
Simple Analytics keeps data in the Netherlands and never leaves the EU, while Fathom stores anonymized data on US servers. It also adds multi-step funnels and raw event-level export, both absent from Fathom, plus a perpetual free tier and 14-day trial. The cost: $20/mo versus $15, only 10 sites, and 36-month retention rather than unlimited.
Full profileSources · 36 verified references
usefathom.com datarequests.org linkedin.com simpleanalytics.com docs.simpleanalytics.com github.com + 4 more
Affiliate disclosure. DecisionWire may earn a commission when you sign up through links on this page. Commissions never influence our data, scores, or rankings.