Head to head
Fathom Analytics vs Matomo
Nothing to configure, or nothing withheld. Scored on ten weighted measures, with every price read on the same day.
Fathom Analytics
7.4/10
No. 5 of 30
Matomo
7.0/10
No. 8 of 30
These two sit at opposite ends of the same principle. Both want you off Google Analytics. Fathom gets you there by removing almost everything; Matomo by giving you all of it on your own hardware.
The choice is not really about features. It is about whether somebody in your organisation will operate a PHP and MySQL application, indefinitely.
The verdict
It depends on who is available to run it.
Take Matomo if you need depth or ownership. Funnels, user flows, A/B testing, multi-channel attribution, heatmaps, session recording, a tag manager and roll-up reporting across properties are all there, and self-hosted the raw data never leaves your infrastructure with no sampling applied. For a regulated organisation that is frequently the only acceptable answer, and the software costs nothing.
Take Fathom if nobody will operate a server. Fifty sites for $15, a script tag, and a dashboard a client reads unaided. The failure mode for self-hosted Matomo is quiet rather than dramatic: archiving falls behind, the dashboard goes stale, nobody notices for a quarter, and the organisation concludes open source was not ready.
On hosted pricing the comparison narrows. Matomo Cloud starts at €22 a month for 50,000 hits, and it meters hits rather than pageviews, so events count too. That is more than Fathom charges for twice the volume and fifty sites.
Side by side
| Fathom Analytics | Matomo | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall score | 7.4 / 10 | 7.0 / 10 |
| Rank on this list | No. 5 of 30 | No. 8 of 30 |
| From | $15 per month | Free self-hosted; cloud from €22 |
| What that buys | 100,000 monthly pageviews; events count against the same allowance | On-premise is free; Matomo Cloud starts at €22 a month for 50,000 hits |
| Free tier | No. A 7-day trial | Yes, the entire on-premise product |
| Cookies | None, so no consent banner | Optional, and it runs cookieless if configured |
| Script size | Under 2 KB | Tens of kilobytes |
| Hosting | Canada, with EU isolation available | Your own servers, or EU cloud |
| Trading since | 2018 | 2007, as Piwik |
| Price | $15/mo at 100k pageviews | Free self-hosted; Cloud from €22/mo at 50k hits |
| What you operate | Nothing | PHP, MySQL, archiving, patching, backups |
| Sites included | 50 on every plan | Unlimited self-hosted; 30 on Cloud |
| Funnels and flows | Not offered | Included at every level |
| Heatmaps and recordings | Not offered | Included; small allowances on Cloud |
| Metering unit | Pageviews, and events count too | Hits, which includes events and downloads |
| Data ownership | Hosted only | Total, if you self-host |
The ten measures, scored
| Measure | Fathom Analytics | Matomo |
|---|---|---|
| Insight quality | 8 | 8 |
| Privacy architecture | 9 | 8 |
| Value for money | 8 | 7 |
| Setup and time to data | 9 | 4 |
| Script weight | 9 | 3 |
| Analytical depth | 5 | 9 |
| Behaviour tooling | 1 | 7 |
| Data ownership | 7 | 10 |
| Accuracy | 8 | 7 |
| Vendor conduct | 5 | 7 |
| Weighted overall | 7.4 | 7.0 |
Higher is better. The overall figure is the weighted mean, relative to the 30 tools on this list. How this works.
Which one should you pick
Choose Matomo if
The data must stay on your infrastructure, or you need real analytical depth, and somebody will keep the application patched and archiving.
Choose Fathom Analytics if
Nobody wants to run a server, you look after several sites, and simplicity is the feature you are buying.
Common questions
Is Matomo harder to run than Fathom?
Considerably. Fathom is a hosted script tag with nothing to operate. Self-hosted Matomo is a PHP and MySQL application needing patching, backups and archiving jobs that must be configured and monitored as the database grows. Matomo Cloud removes that at €22 a month.
Which is cheaper?
Self-hosted Matomo is free of charge but not of cost once you count the server and the operating time. On hosted plans Fathom is cheaper and includes fifty sites, and Matomo meters hits rather than pageviews so events consume the allowance too.
Does either offer heatmaps?
Matomo does, with Cloud allowances of 1,500 heatmap pageviews and 150 session recordings a month. Fathom offers none at any price.
Do both avoid the cookie banner?
Fathom always, because it has no cookies to disable. Matomo can, if you configure it for cookieless operation with IP anonymisation, which is configuration you have to get right rather than a property of the design.
Both entries above are desk reviews written from published evidence, and every judgement is my opinion rather than a statement of fact. Read the full reviews for Fathom Analytics and Matomo, or tell me where I have got something wrong.