A Fathom Analytics alternative
Fathom is polished, cookieless, and privacy-first, but it is web analytics only. smolanalytics is also cookieless, adds product analytics (funnels, retention, cohorts), and lets you ask questions in plain English.
is smolanalytics a good Fathom Analytics alternative?
Yes, if you want product analytics on top of Fathom's privacy stance. Fathom is a paid, hosted, cookieless web-analytics tool with a single clean dashboard and no free tier, only a trial, and it stays web analytics only. smolanalytics is also cookieless with no consent banner, but it does web and product analytics from one snippet: visitors, referrers, funnels, retention, paths, and cohorts. It leads with a daily verdict on what to fix, and you can ask it questions in plain English, either from a dashboard bar or from your own Cursor or Claude over MCP. Each project runs on its own isolated instance and your data exports in one file, any time. Pricing is a 14-day trial at Pro limits with no card, then from $19 a month. Keep Fathom if you only want clean, hosted web analytics and its EU-isolation routing.
where Fathom stops (as of mid-2026)
“You start with a free trial and then pay a fair, sustainable monthly price based on your average monthly page views.”
Fathom's pricing page
“Fathom does not use cookies, so you do not need a cookie consent banner under GDPR.”
Fathom's privacy docs
“EU isolation and custom domains are not available on self-hosted Fathom Lite, only on the hosted version.”
Fathom's docs
Fathom Analytics vs smolanalytics
| Fathom Analytics | smolanalytics | |
|---|---|---|
| Cookieless, no banner | yes | yes |
| What it measures | web analytics only | web + product analytics from one snippet |
| Funnels, retention, cohorts | no | yes, all included |
| Deployment | hosted (Lite is maintenance-mode) | hosted, one isolated instance per project |
| Getting an answer | read the dashboard | ask in plain English, a verdict on what to fix |
| Ask from your editor | no | MCP, your own AI answers free, computed not guessed |
| Free tier | no, trial then paid | no, 14-day trial at Pro limits then from $19 |
when to keep Fathom
- You only want clean, hosted web analytics and you value Fathom's polish, its single-page dashboard, and its EU-isolation routing, with zero ops on your side.
- You do not need funnels, retention, or cohorts, and you are happy paying a hosted plan rather than running anything yourself. Fathom does that job well.
Set up in 30 seconds
# cookieless too, plus funnels and retention npx smolanalytics init # paste your project key, it wires the snippet + MCP
Same cookieless, no-banner privacy, plus funnels and retention. Point Claude or Cursor at it and ask anything: no model to pay for, no number it can make up.
questions
Is smolanalytics a good Fathom Analytics alternative?
Yes, if you want product analytics on top of Fathom's privacy stance. Fathom is a paid, hosted, cookieless web-analytics tool with a clean single dashboard and no free tier, only a trial. smolanalytics is also cookieless with no consent banner, but adds product analytics (funnels, retention, paths, cohorts) from the same one snippet, leads with a daily verdict on what to fix, and lets you ask questions in plain English from a dashboard bar or your own editor over MCP. Each project runs on its own isolated instance and your data exports in one file, any time. Keep Fathom if you only want clean hosted web analytics.
Is smolanalytics cookieless like Fathom?
Yes. smolanalytics has a cookieless mode with no consent banner required, the same privacy stance Fathom is known for. It does not set cookies and does not need a GDPR consent popup. The difference is scope: Fathom stays web analytics only, while smolanalytics also does product analytics (funnels, retention, cohorts) from the same snippet.
Do I own my data with smolanalytics?
Yes. Each project runs on its own isolated instance, nothing is pooled with other tenants, nothing phones home, and you can export everything in one file whenever you want, so leaving is always a download. Pricing is a 14-day trial at Pro limits with no card, then Pro $19 a month for 2M events or Scale $49 for 5M.
What does Fathom do that smolanalytics doesn't?
Fathom offers EU-isolation routing (processing EU traffic in the EU) and a fully managed, polished hosted product with zero ops, which some teams want above all. smolanalytics does not ship Fathom's exact managed EU-isolation routing, though each project's data lives on its own isolated instance and exports in one file, any time. smolanalytics stays lightweight but is no longer bare: it now ships heatmaps, surveys, feature flags, A/B experiments, and an event-based session inspector, and the one thing it does not do is pixel-perfect DOM session recording.
Get the verdict, not another dashboard.
You shipped all quarter; this tells you which of it did anything. It finds what changed, names who it hit, prices it when the metric carries revenue, and shows the receipt when it heals itself. Mark a finding acted and it verifies the fix when the metric recovers. One snippet, your data exports in one file. 14-day trial at Pro limits, no card.