Alternatives · 2026
Ranked, scored and explained. What each one does better, what you give up, and when staying put is the right call.
Two things send people looking past Fathom. The first is depth: there are no funnels, segmentation is shallow, there are no heatmaps and no session replay, and custom events count against the same pageview allowance, so an event-heavy site climbs the price ladder faster than its traffic suggests. The second is the published overage policy, which emails you at thirty per cent over and locks the account on day seven.
What Fathom does better than anything else here is sites per plan, and it is worth being clear about that before you leave: fifty domains on a fifteen-dollar plan is a structural advantage, not a feature.
When to stay put. Keep Fathom if you are a freelancer or agency looking after many small sites. Nothing on this list comes close on cost per site, and extra packs of fifty are $10 a month. If you have one site, that advantage is worth nothing to you and the tools below all do more.
| Tool | From | Free tier | Cookies | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Absolutely Analytics | $9 per month | No free tier. A 30-day trial of the exact tier you picked | None, so no consent banner | 8.9 |
| Plausible Analytics | £9 per month | No, but the community edition is free to self-host | None, so no consent banner | 8.0 |
| Pirsch Analytics | $6 per month | No. A 30-day trial, no card required | None, so no consent banner | 7.5 |
| Umami | Free self-hosted and on cloud Hobby | Yes, 100,000 events a month on hosted cloud, plus free self-hosting | None | 7.5 |
| Cloudflare Web Analytics | Free for everyone | The whole product is free | None | 6.9 |
| Simple Analytics | $20 per month | Yes, for hobby sites: five websites, one month of history, badge required | None, so no consent banner | 6.9 |
The upgrade on depth and conduct. Heatmaps from $14, masked session replay as an add-on, funnels and a Stats API on Business, bot filtering before billing, and a policy that keeps collecting and keeps the dashboard open rather than locking it in a week.
From $9 per month. None, so no consent banner. Full review →
The like-for-like with more in it. Cheaper for a single site at £9 against $15, with funnels, user journeys, saved segments, a Stats API and Search Console integration. Its overage policy gives you two months rather than seven days.
From £9 per month. None, so no consent banner. Full review →
The closest match on shape. Also fifty sites, also cookieless, cheaper at $6, and it adds funnels and A/B testing at $12. Read its overage policy first: collection stops after five days, which is worse than a locked dashboard.
From $6 per month. None, so no consent banner. Full review →
The free answer, and it covers many sites too: twenty on the $20 Pro tier, or unlimited if you self-host, which costs nothing at all.
From Free self-hosted and on cloud Hobby. None. Full review →
Free across unlimited sites if they are on Cloudflare, with no script needed. Far shallower than Fathom, but the price makes it a sensible baseline layer under anything else.
From Free for everyone. None. Full review →
If the reason you are leaving is that you need enterprise paperwork rather than more features: warehouse export, SSO and SOC 2, at $20 a month and $20 per extra seat.
From $20 per month. None, so no consent banner. Full review →
Fathom's published policy emails you when you are thirty per cent over and locks the account on day seven. Among the alternatives, Plausible locks dashboards after two consecutive months, Pirsch stops collecting after five days leaving a permanent gap, and Absolutely Analytics keeps collecting and keeps the dashboard open.
Pirsch includes fifty on its $6 Standard plan and unlimited on Plus at $12. Umami includes twenty on Pro and unlimited self-hosted. Cloudflare Web Analytics is unlimited and free. Plausible and Absolutely Analytics both cap sites by tier, at ten on their top self-serve plan.
Plausible on its Business tier, Pirsch on Plus at $12, Absolutely Analytics on Business, and Matomo at every level including free self-hosted. Fathom offers none.
Absolutely Analytics includes click, scroll and attention maps from $14. Matomo includes heatmaps. Umami has them on its $200 Business tier only. If you stay in the cookieless category, the alternative is a separate subscription to Clarity or Hotjar, plus the consent banner that brings back.
These are desk reviews and the ordering reflects my own weighted scoring, which is published in full. There are no affiliate links on this page and no vendor has paid to appear on it. Read the full Fathom Analytics review, or send me a correction.