Plausible vs Fathom 2026: Every Price and Feature Compared

The short answer: These two are genuinely close, and anyone telling you one is clearly better has not priced both. Fathom is cheaper at almost every traffic level and includes 50 sites on every plan, against Plausible's 1, 3 or 10. At 100,000 monthly pageviews Fathom is $15 per month; Plausible is $19, $29 or $39 depending on tier. Plausible is the deeper product: funnels, user journeys, saved segments, automatic scroll depth, Search Console integration and AI referral tracking have no Fathom equivalent, and Plausible is open source under AGPLv3 and self hostable, which Fathom explicitly is not. Take Fathom if you run many sites, want forever data retention and want the lowest bill. Take Plausible if you need funnels, segmentation or the ability to audit and host the code yourself. Every price below was read on the vendors' own pricing pages on 17 August 2026.

Most comparisons of these two manufacture a gap that is not there. Both are bootstrapped, independent, cookie free, GDPR compliant, single page dashboards built by small teams who publish their prices and mean them. The differences that matter are narrow, specific, and mostly about how many sites you run and how deep you need to dig. Here is the whole thing, priced.

At a glance

Sources: plausible.io/#pricing, plausible.io/docs/subscription-plans, usefathom.com/pricing, usefathom.com/features. Script sizes measured by fetching each vendor's tracking script directly on 17 August 2026.

Quick verdict

• Price at matched traffic: Fathom, at every tier up to 5M pageviews.
• Price at very high traffic on the cheapest tier: Plausible. At 10M pageviews Plausible Starter is $169 against Fathom's $200.
• Multiple sites: Fathom, decisively. 50 sites on the $15 plan.
• Depth of analysis: Plausible, decisively. Funnels, journeys, segments, scroll depth.
• Ecommerce and revenue tracking: Fathom. Included on every plan, not gated to a top tier.
• Data retention: Fathom. Forever, against 3 to 5 years.
• Open source and self hosting: Plausible. Fathom does not offer it and says so.
• Trial length: Plausible. 30 days with full Business features against 7 days.
• What happens when you go over: Fathom. Plausible locks your dashboard, Fathom does not.
• Script weight: Plausible, though both are so small the difference is academic.
• Running an A/B test on what you find: Neither.

Pricing, tier by tier

Both vendors price on monthly pageviews and both give two months free on annual billing. Here is the complete published table for each, read directly off their pricing pages.

Plausible (plausible.io/#pricing, 17 August 2026, monthly billing):

Fathom (usefathom.com/pricing, 17 August 2026, monthly billing). Fathom has one plan; the only variable is volume:

Winner: Fathom, with one honest exception. At 100k pageviews it is $15 against $19 for Plausible's most limited tier and $39 for the tier that has funnels. At 500k it is $45 against $49 or $99. At 2M it is $100 against $89 or $179, so Plausible Starter finally edges ahead on the cheapest tier. By 10M the inversion is clear: Plausible Starter is $169 against Fathom's $200.

That inversion is real but narrow. It applies only if you run a single high traffic site and need nothing from Plausible's Growth or Business features. Against Plausible Business, the tier most people who want funnels actually buy, Fathom is cheaper at every volume on the table.

One thing is identical and worth knowing before you pick a tier: both vendors count custom events against your pageview allowance. Fathom's pricing FAQ says so plainly, and Plausible's subscription docs state that your tier is based on pageviews plus custom events, including outbound link clicks, file downloads, form submissions and 404 tracking. Budget above your raw pageview count on either platform if you track events heavily.

Sites and team members

This is the single largest practical difference between the two products and it is barely discussed.

Fathom includes at least 50 sites on every plan, starting at $15 per month. Bigger volume plans include more: 75 sites at 1M pageviews, scaling to 350 at 25M. Extra sites are sold in packs of 50 for $10 per month.

Plausible gates sites by tier: Starter is one site, Growth is up to 3 sites and 3 team members, Business is up to 10 sites and 10 team members. Above 10 sites you are into Enterprise, which is quoted by sales.

Winner: Fathom, and it is not close. If you are an agency, a freelancer, or anyone running a portfolio of small sites, Fathom's $15 plan gives you 50 dashboards where Plausible's $39 plan gives you 10.

The counterweight is team access. Plausible's tiers bundle team members, shared segments, shared annotations and embedded dashboards. Fathom's model is shared dashboards with optional password protection rather than seat based team management. If you need real multi user accounts with roles, look at Plausible's Growth or Business tiers.

Depth of analysis

Here the direction reverses.

Plausible ships funnels and user journeys, ecommerce revenue attribution, custom properties, saved and shared segments, automatic scroll depth tracking from 1 to 100 percent with no tag manager setup, a Search Console connection that puts search queries in the dashboard, and tracking of referral traffic from AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude. Funnels, journeys, revenue attribution, custom properties, the Stats API and the Looker Studio connector all sit on the Business tier.

Fathom covers pages, referrers, sources, devices, browsers, countries, UTMs, events with revenue, live visitors, instant filters, saved dashboard views and a GA4 importer. It does not offer funnels, and it is unusually direct about that: its features page states that if a feature is not listed there or documented in the help centre, it is not part of the software.

Winner: Plausible. Funnels and segmentation are the difference between "how many people came" and "where they dropped." If you need to answer the second question, Fathom will not do it and does not claim it will.

But note the reversal on revenue. Fathom includes ecommerce and event revenue tracking on every plan with no extra fee, and lets you assign different currencies per event. Plausible gates ecommerce revenue attribution to Business. If revenue tracking is the only advanced feature you need, Fathom gives it to you at $15 while Plausible charges $39 at the same traffic level.

Data retention

Fathom keeps your data forever while you are a customer. Its pricing page puts it as: 2, 4 or 8 years? How about forever. Historical data stays available back to your first day of trialling.

Plausible keeps 3 years on Starter and Growth and 5 years on Business, with higher retention available on Enterprise.

Winner: Fathom. For most people 3 years is plenty and this will never bite. For anyone doing long horizon year over year analysis, or anyone who simply hates losing data, forever is forever.

What happens when you exceed your plan

Both vendors handle spikes gracefully, but the failure mode differs and it is worth knowing.

Fathom states it will never turn your analytics off for occasional traffic spikes. If you go over for two months in a row, they tell you they are upgrading you, and you can stay or cancel.

Plausible will not charge you for a single month over. If you exceed for two consecutive months they notify you and ask you to upgrade. If you do not upgrade within a week, your dashboards are temporarily locked. Data keeps being collected in the background and dashboards unlock automatically at the start of the next cycle if usage drops back, or immediately on upgrade.

Winner: Fathom. Neither is predatory and Plausible does not lose your data, but a locked dashboard on the week you went viral is exactly the week you wanted to look at it.

Open source, self hosting and where your data lives

Plausible is open source under AGPLv3, with the full codebase on GitHub, and it can be self hosted. That matters twice over: you can audit exactly what the script collects rather than trusting a claim, and you have an exit that does not depend on the company existing. Plausible reports 20,000 paying subscribers and states that all visitor data is processed on servers owned and operated by European companies and never leaves the EU.

Fathom is closed source and deliberately not self hostable. Its FAQ answers the question directly: no, Fathom is a hosted solution, because that is how they guarantee CDN performance and how they ensure EU visitor data is processed in the EU. Fathom's EU isolation feature routes EU visitor data through EU located infrastructure while intelligently routing everything else.

Winner: Plausible, if either auditability or self hosting is on your list. If neither is, this dimension decides nothing: both are cookie free, both operate without consent banners under GDPR, and both sell software rather than data. For a strict EU only data residency requirement Plausible's position is cleaner, because all data sits on EU owned infrastructure rather than being routed by visitor origin.

Script weight and site speed

Both vendors lead with lightness, so we measured rather than quoting marketing. Fetched directly on 17 August 2026:

• Plausible's plausible.io/js/script.js: 2,841 bytes uncompressed, 1,283 bytes gzipped.
• Fathom's cdn.usefathom.com/script.js: 6,905 bytes uncompressed, 2,071 bytes gzipped.

Winner: Plausible, technically. Both are trivial. The gap is under 1 KB compressed, a rounding error against a single hero image. Do not choose on this. The comparison both vendors are actually making is against Google Analytics: Plausible claims its script is 54 times smaller than GA and saves each visitor 135 KB of JavaScript.

Trials, discounts and buying

Plausible: 30 day free trial, no credit card, with full Business features and limits unlocked during the trial. Nonprofits, educational institutions and open source projects get 15 percent off annual Business plans.

Fathom: 7 day free trial, no credit card. Fathom has never run a discount and states it never will, including Black Friday, on the grounds that everyone should pay the same price. It also does not do sales calls or live demos, pointing you instead at a recorded walkthrough and a public demo dashboard.

Winner: Plausible on trial length. Thirty days with the top tier unlocked is enough to run a real seasonal comparison. Seven days is enough to confirm the script fires. Fathom's no discount policy is a philosophy, not a defect, but it does mean nonprofits pay list.

Plausible advantages

• Funnels, user journeys and saved segments. Fathom has no equivalent.
• Automatic scroll depth tracking from 1 to 100 percent with no setup.
• Search Console integration and AI referral traffic tracking in the dashboard.
• Open source under AGPLv3 with a public codebase you can audit, and self hosting as a real exit.
• All data on EU owned infrastructure, never processed by US cloud providers.
• 30 day trial with full Business features, and 15 percent off annual Business for nonprofits, education and open source projects.
• Cheapest option at very high volume if you only need one site: $169 at 10M pageviews.
• Team management, shared segments and shared annotations on Growth and above.

Fathom advantages

• Cheaper at nearly every traffic level. $15 at 100k pageviews against $19 to $39.
• 50 sites included on every plan, scaling to 350. Plausible gives 1, 3 or 10.
• Forever data retention while you remain a customer.
• Ecommerce and event revenue tracking on every plan, with per event currencies, not gated to a top tier.
• Full API access with 600 requests per hour on every plan, where Plausible's Stats API is a Business feature.
• No dashboard lockout when you exceed your plan. They upgrade you and you decide.
• One plan, one decision. No tier matrix to reason about, plus a GA4 importer for your historical data.
• 25 percent lifetime partner commission if you refer clients, which matters to agencies.

Choose Plausible if you...

• Need funnels or user journeys to see where people drop, not just where they landed.
• Want to segment and save audience views rather than filter ad hoc.
• Care about auditing the tracking code, or want the option to self host.
• Have a hard EU only data residency requirement.
• Want scroll depth, Search Console data and AI referral sources without extra tooling.
• Run one or a few sites where the site limit is not binding.
• Are a nonprofit, school or open source project and want the 15 percent discount.
• Want a long trial before committing.

Choose Fathom if you...

• Run more than 10 sites. This alone decides it.
• Want the lowest possible bill for straightforward traffic reporting.
• Need ecommerce revenue tracking without paying for a top tier to get it.
• Want your historical data to stay available indefinitely.
• Get spiky traffic and do not want a dashboard lockout during the spike.
• Prefer one plan and one number over a tier matrix.
• Are migrating from GA4 and want the historical import.
• Are an agency and want a lifetime referral commission on clients you bring over.

Conclusion

You can pick either of these and be fine. They solve the same job to a similar standard, and both are run by people who publish their prices and honour them. The tiebreakers are narrow and concrete: count your sites, and decide whether you need funnels. More than ten sites points to Fathom. Needing funnels or segmentation points to Plausible. Everything else is preference.

What both share is a boundary. Each will tell you a page converts at 2.1 percent. Neither will change the page, and neither will tell you whether changing it made you more money, because that answer lives in your payment processor rather than your pageview log. If that is the job you are actually hiring for, Humblytics pairs privacy-first analytics with no code A/B testing and Stripe verified revenue attribution from $79 per month, so a test resolves to a charge instead of a click.

If you just need to know what happened on your site without a cookie banner, buy the cheaper one and get back to work.

Frequently asked questions

Is Plausible or Fathom cheaper?

Fathom, at almost every traffic level. At 100,000 monthly pageviews Fathom is $15 per month against Plausible at $19 (Starter), $29 (Growth) or $39 (Business). At 500,000 pageviews it is $45 against $49 to $99. The exception is very high traffic on Plausible's cheapest tier: at 10 million pageviews Plausible Starter is $169 against Fathom's $200. Both give two months free on annual billing. Prices verified on both vendors' pricing pages 17 August 2026.

How many websites can I track on each plan?

Fathom includes at least 50 sites on every plan, rising to 75 at 1M pageviews and up to 350 on the largest published tier, with extra sites sold in packs of 50 for $10 per month. Plausible includes 1 site on Starter, up to 3 on Growth and up to 10 on Business; beyond that you need an Enterprise quote. For anyone running a portfolio of sites this is the biggest single difference between the two products.

Does Fathom have funnels?

No. Fathom does not offer funnels or user journey analysis. Its features page states that any feature not listed there or documented in its help centre is not part of the software. Plausible offers funnels and user journeys on its Business tier, which is $39 per month at 100,000 pageviews.

Do custom events count against my pageview limit?

Yes, on both. Fathom's pricing FAQ states that custom event tracking and API requests are counted as if they were pageviews. Plausible's subscription documentation states that your tier is based on total pageviews plus custom events, including outbound link clicks, file downloads, form submissions and 404 tracking. Pageview goals do not count on Plausible. Budget above your raw pageview number on either platform if you track events heavily.

Which one is open source, and can I self host?

Plausible is open source under the GNU Affero General Public License v3, with the codebase public on GitHub, and it can be self hosted on your own server. Fathom is closed source and does not offer self hosting; its FAQ answers the question with a direct no, citing CDN performance and its EU data processing guarantees as the reasons.

What happens if I go over my pageview limit?

Fathom states it will never switch your analytics off for a spike; if you exceed for two consecutive months they notify you that they are upgrading you, and you can accept or cancel. Plausible also ignores a single month over, but if you exceed for two consecutive months and do not upgrade within a week of their notice, your dashboards are temporarily locked. Data keeps collecting during the lock and dashboards unlock automatically the next cycle or immediately on upgrade.

How long does each one keep my data?

Fathom keeps your data forever while you remain a customer, with history available back to your first trial day. Plausible keeps 3 years of data on Starter and Growth and 5 years on Business, with longer retention negotiable on Enterprise.