People leave Fathom for one of two reasons, and they lead to completely different answers.
The first is price. Fathom starts at $15 a month for 100,000 pageviews and has no free plan. Their pricing FAQ answers the question "do you have a lower or free option?" with "Nope", followed by an explanation about infrastructure. If the budget is the issue, you want a free tool that is nearly as simple.
The second is that you have outgrown what Fathom is for. It is a traffic tool by design, and if you have started asking which traffic produced revenue, no amount of switching between traffic tools will help.
Both paths are below. The important thing about anyone choosing a Fathom alternative is that they picked Fathom in the first place, which usually means they value not thinking about their analytics. A replacement that needs an afternoon of configuration is not a replacement.
| If you want | Pick | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Free, and nearly as simple | Umami Cloud | Free to 100k events/mo |
| Free with no volume cap | Cloudflare Web Analytics | Free |
| Open source, more depth | Plausible | $9/mo at 10k pageviews |
| Free with a rolling month of history | Simple Analytics | Free, or about $19/mo |
| Which channels bring paying customers | Ripples | Free until $1K MRR |
We build Ripples, which is last on that list and last in the article. Take the recommendation with the discount it deserves. We take no affiliate commission from anyone here.
1. Umami
Free to 100,000 events a month on Umami Cloud. Free at any volume self-hosted. MIT licensed.
The closest thing to Fathom with the price removed. One clean dashboard, cookieless, fast, and a free cloud tier that is a real free tier rather than a trial. There is a retention report, which Fathom does not have.
Self-hosting is genuinely easy if you already run a Postgres somewhere, and MIT licensing means no restrictions on what you do with it.
What you give up against Fathom: some polish, the EU isolation option, and the reassurance of a company whose only product this is. Umami's cloud Pro tier is around $20 a month for a million events if you outgrow free.
Pick Umami if you liked Fathom and mainly want to stop paying for it.
2. Cloudflare Web Analytics
Free, no volume limit, if your site already runs through Cloudflare.
The simplest possible answer. If your DNS is already on Cloudflare, this is a toggle and a script tag, there is no volume cap, and there is nothing to configure or maintain.
It is also the least capable option here. Basic pageviews, referrers, top pages, core web vitals. No goals, no events, no funnels, no retention. If Fathom felt minimal, this is more minimal.
Pick Cloudflare if you want traffic numbers, you want them free, and you genuinely do not need anything else.
3. Plausible
$9/mo at 10,000 pageviews, around $19/mo at 100,000. Open source, AGPL. Self-hostable free. 30-day trial, no free tier.
The obvious sideways move, and worth being clear about the price: below roughly 30,000 pageviews Plausible is cheaper than Fathom, and above that Fathom is cheaper. The two cross, so check both sliders at your own number rather than comparing headline prices.
What you gain over Fathom is depth and openness. Goals on every plan, funnels and custom properties on Business, an ecommerce revenue goal feature, EU ownership and hosting, and source code you can read or run yourself.
What you do not gain is a free tier. Plausible has a 30-day trial, so if price was your reason for leaving, this is not the answer.
Pick Plausible if you want open source or more reporting depth, and price was not the problem.
4. Simple Analytics
Free plan, unlimited pageviews under fair use, capped at 30 days of history. Paid from about $19/mo.
The only tool in this comparison with a free plan that does not expire. The limitation is history: 30 days on the free tier, so no month-over-month comparison and no seasonal view.
For a side project or something new, a rolling month is often all anyone looks at anyway. There is also an AI assistant that answers questions about your data in plain language, which is either useful or a novelty depending on how you work.
Pick Simple Analytics if you want free and a rolling month is enough.
5. Ripples
Free until your project reaches $1K MRR, then $9/mo. One project, or $19/mo for ten.
Ours, and a different product rather than a cheaper Fathom. Traffic, signups, Stripe revenue and Google Ads spend on one screen, attributed to the first touch that brought each person, with payback period and retention split by acquisition channel.
The reason to consider it is if the question that made you look past Fathom was not about price. Fathom will tell you a newsletter sent 71 visitors. It has no way to tell you those 71 became 9 paying accounts worth $261 a month, of whom 7 are still paying in month three. That is not a gap in Fathom, it is a different product.
Where Fathom beats us, plainly: it is simpler, it has a longer track record, it has an EU isolation option, and if you run a lot of small sites its per-plan site allowance is better value than our per-project pricing. And if you have no recurring revenue yet, most of what we add is machinery you cannot use. The full list of what we do not do is public.
Pick Ripples if you sell a subscription and want to know which channels pay back.
What you give up leaving Fathom
Worth saying, because most alternatives posts pretend the tool being replaced had no virtues.
The single screen. Fathom is one page and that is a design achievement, not a limitation. Umami and Plausible are both close, but every one of these tools asks slightly more of you than Fathom does, and Cloudflare asks less by simply having less.
Uptime monitoring. Fathom includes it. None of the four alternatives here do, so if you were relying on it you now need something else, and free options exist.
EU isolation as a product feature. Fathom sells an explicit EU-isolated setup for customers who need it contractually. Plausible is EU-hosted by default and Simple Analytics is Dutch, which covers most cases, but they are not the same thing as a documented isolation option.
A company whose only product this is. Fathom has been independent and profitable for years with no other line of business. That is worth something when you are picking infrastructure you would rather not migrate again in three years.
The one-question version
Was your problem the price, or the ceiling?
Price means Umami, or Cloudflare if you want the absolute floor, or Simple Analytics if a rolling month works. All three are free and all three keep the thing that made Fathom pleasant.
Ceiling means no traffic tool is the answer, including the free ones, and you are looking for something that can see your billing.
Sources
Prices checked August 2026. All of these vendors change pricing without notice.