Fathom vs Google Analytics

Notice the third row. Fathom's allowance covers events and API calls as well as page views, across all your sites. The next section shows what that does to the bill.

Fathom sells one plan. Every feature is in it, and the price rises only with volume: page views and custom events, added up across all your sites (pricing). API calls count too, so ten requests cost the same as ten page views (API docs).

There's no step below 100,000, so a site with 5,000 page views pays the same $15 as one with 99,000. From there the plan climbs in steps to $470 at 25 million, and above that the price is custom. Paying yearly costs ten months.

Here's what that means for three kinds of site.

Notice the SaaS site. Its 150,000 events push it past the 500,000 step, so it pays $60 a month, not $45.

Every plan includes at least 50 sites, and the 1 million plan includes 75. More come in packs of 50 for $10 a month, up to 750 extra (site packs). Stay well over your allowance in consecutive periods and Fathom asks you to upgrade. If you don't, it locks the dashboard and API but keeps collecting (limits).

The trial is 7 days and needs a card, and Fathom emails you before the first charge (trials). GA4 is free with no monthly cap. Nora is free up to 1 million visitors a month without a card; it counts visitors, not page views.

Our read: if you run several sites, want no consent banner for analytics and never open GA4's explorations, $15 a month buys one page with your traffic, sources, pages and events. If you rely on Google Ads conversions or funnels, it doesn't replace GA4 yet.

We installed each tool alone on a test page and opened it in Chrome four ways: as a person who moves the mouse and scrolls, and as three kinds of bot. One announces it's automated. One hides that. One clicks without moving the mouse, the way AI agents click. No data reached Fathom or Google: apart from fetching each script, our lab answered every request itself.

Notice the cookie row. GA4 left _ga and _ga_<property> in the browser, each for 400 days, which is Chrome's limit; Google asks for two years. Fathom and Nora left nothing. Fathom's script does check one localStorage key, which you set yourself to leave out your own visits (script).

Now the bot rows. Fathom's script doesn't check for automated browsers, so it sent a page view for all three, as GA4 did. Fathom sorts traffic on its servers instead: a list of bot user agents with AI scrapers among them, data-centre IP ranges, requests with no user agent, and methods it keeps private (bot detection). The browser as shipped announced HeadlessChrome in its user agent, which a list like that can catch. The disguised browser and the agent-style click looked like ordinary Chrome.

Our read: nothing Fathom documents looks at how a page is used, so from a home connection those two would likely pass.

Ad blockers block both. EasyPrivacy lists cdn.usefathom.com, and also cdn-eu.usefathom.com, the address of Fathom's EU-only script. Fathom stopped offering custom domains on 1 March 2023, saying ad blockers blocked those too; sites that had one keep it (changelog). So pages that say Fathom gets past ad blockers are out of date. Nora isn't on it.

One more thing on weight. Google's 154 KB is its tag with nothing configured. On a real site, it's heavier.

Fathom is a Canadian company (imprint). By default it routes visitors from the EU, the UK, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein to its EU servers in Falkenstein, Helsinki and Nuremberg, and removes the IP address there (EU isolation). Then it stores the anonymised record on its US infrastructure (data isolation): AWS, with ClickHouse Cloud as the analytics database (subprocessors).

Notice the first two rows. Where a request is handled isn't where the data is kept: Fathom handles EU visitors in the EU and stores the record in the US, and Google doesn't say where it stores it.

If you're doing a privacy review, three details matter.

• Fathom processes personal data. It says it handles the IP address and user agent on your behalf, and points to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework for transfers (Fathom).
• Bots are kept apart. The ones Fathom detects are stored away from your stats, with their IP address (data journey).
• The EU-only script is about routing. cdn-eu.usefathom.com sends every visitor through the EU. Fathom doesn't say it changes where the data is stored (EU isolation).

GA4 collects EU, UK and Swiss traffic through servers in those regions and drops the IP address before logging. Then it forwards the data to Google's Analytics servers, without saying where they are (Google). Google relies on the same framework for transfers from the EEA (Google). Nora is hosted in the United States, on Google Cloud.

On consent, Fathom set no cookies and stored nothing in our lab, and it says its analytics need no banner (Fathom). Google's policy requires consent for GA4's cookies from visitors in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland (Google).

Our read: if your review needs EU visitors handled inside the EU, pick Fathom over Nora.

Run both and the numbers won't match. Fathom tells you to expect that (Fathom). Five things cause most of the gap.

• Consent. In Europe, GA4 counts only visitors who accept its cookies. Google estimates the rest only for sites with at least 1,000 declined events and 1,000 consenting users a day (Google), and most small sites never get there. Fathom has no banner to decline.
• A visitor lasts one day. Fathom's visitor signature changes at midnight UTC, so the same person on Monday and Tuesday is two visitors (Fathom). For a site on New York time in summer, that day turns over at 8 pm. GA4 keeps one user per cookie for up to 400 days.
• Bots. Fathom drops the bots it detects before they reach your stats, and shows you how many. GA4 drops known bots and never says how many (Google). On the first site running Nora, 3.3% of the page views its script saw over nine days in October 2026 were bots or AI agents.
• Fathom's 2026 rebuild. Its new engine went live on 28 February 2026. Since then Fathom carries a visit's first referrer across every later page, so Direct shrinks, and it counts bounces over a 24-hour window, so bounce rates fall (V4, metrics). Time on page comes from a ping sent when the page is hidden or left, capped at 30 minutes (Fathom). If you compare with Fathom numbers from before March 2026, you're mixing two methods.
• Ad blockers. EasyPrivacy blocks both, so neither sees those readers.

Fathom shows its bot filter at work. Since 14 April 2026, a bot icon on the dashboard counts the requests it blocked, split by reason (data-centre IP, bot user agent, no user agent) and by country (changelog, docs). Since 20 September 2026 you can switch the filter off for a site, for proxies that make people look like bots (changelog). And since 7 October you can remove spam from past data (changelog).

Its AI tab arrived on 2 October 2026. It groups visits from ten tools (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, DeepSeek, Grok, Meta AI, You.com and Poe) by referrer and by utm_source tag, and it covers your history as well as new visits (Fathom). A visit with neither a referrer nor a tag still shows as Direct. Since 6 October Fathom also has Luna, an assistant that can read your stats when you allow it (Luna).

Google Analytics 4 drops known bots using Google's research and the IAB list. The filter is always on and shows no count (Google). Its AI Assistant channel, added on 13 May 2026, matches the referrer against a list of assistants (Google). Visits from agentic browsers such as ChatGPT Atlas and Perplexity Comet show up as ordinary Chrome, often as Direct (MarTech).

Nora keeps every page view and labels it person, AI agent or bot, with the test that caught it (a signature check, the name it gives, how it behaves, machine signs). In our lab it labelled the headless browser a bot and the agent-style click an AI agent. The disguised browser that never touched the page passed as a person, as it did everywhere.

None of the three sees crawlers such as GPTBot or ClaudeBot, which fetch pages without running scripts. That takes your server or CDN logs.

GA4 links to Google Ads. Its key events can become Ads conversions, and its audiences can be used for remarketing (Google). Fathom has nothing like it.

Fathom does show your paid traffic, without a Google tag. Add UTM tags through the campaign's final URL suffix and Fathom credits the visit, and every event later in that visit, to the campaign. Clicks carrying a gclid count as Paid/Campaign even without tags (Fathom). Revenue goes on an event as a value in cents (ecommerce).

What it doesn't do is send conversions back to Google Ads. Fathom documents no way to, and it says a feature it doesn't document doesn't exist (Fathom). If your bids run on conversions, keep Google's tag for them.

One trap when you test: Fathom gives each visitor-day its first source. If you visited your own site earlier today, a test click on your ad stays credited to that first source, so test from a fresh private window (Fathom).

One allowance is shared across at least 50 sites, with an all-sites view and unlimited email reports for one site or many (all sites, pricing). Each client can get their own share link, with a password and an end date, up to 100 per site. People with a link can filter and download the dashboard but can't change settings (sharing).

There are no team accounts yet. Fathom says it's adding user accounts and will announce them when they ship (Fathom). GA4 is free for client sites too, with up to 2,000 properties in one account (Google). Nora's agency features belong to Pro, which is coming.

Where GA4 is ahead

• Google Ads. Conversions from key events, and audiences for remarketing.
• Funnels and paths in Explorations. Fathom says funnels and journeys are being built (Fathom).
• Richer events. Up to 25 parameters on each (Google). A Fathom event is a name and an optional value (Fathom).
• Raw data. Events in BigQuery, free up to 1 million a day (Google). Fathom offers custom CSV exports.
• Users across days, followed by cookie.

Where Fathom is ahead

• One page. No cookies, and nothing stored in the browser.
• Every feature on every plan, with 50 sites included and Search Console since February 2026 (Fathom).
• Bots in the open. It shows how many it blocked, by reason and country.
• AI traffic, tagged links included. Its AI tab counts tagged ChatGPT links and covers your whole history.
• Exact counts. Fathom says it counts every visitor, with no estimates (Fathom). GA4 hides small rows behind thresholds.
• Full history for as long as you subscribe; it's queued for deletion after you cancel (Fathom). GA4 keeps the event-level data behind explorations 2 or 14 months (Google).

Features from each maker's pages on 13 October 2026.

We read reviews and threads about both. The same few things come up again and again. Here they are, in our words, with links to where people said them.

1. Start the trial with both tags running. Seven days covers each weekday once, so keep comparing into the first paid month before you trust the gap (switch guide).
2. Import your GA4 history. Page-view data comes in by day, without events, and can take up to 48 hours. Universal Analytics data can't come across, because Google deleted it (importer).
3. Don't overlap the dates. Import days Fathom already recorded and they'll count twice.
4. Rebuild conversions as events with trackEvent, adding a value for revenue. Each event uses up your allowance.
5. Tag your ads with UTMs, and keep Google's tag if your Ads bidding uses conversions.
6. Connect Search Console to keep seeing search terms.
7. Remove GA4, then check whether your cookie banner still has anything to ask about.

Nora is for you if you'd pay Fathom's $15 only to drop GA4's cookies, and you want to know how much of your traffic is people. It's free up to 1 million visitors a month, sets no cookies, weighs 2.7 KB, and labels every page view person, AI agent or bot, with the test that caught it. You also get live visitors, pages, sources (AI assistants among them), countries, goal pages, a weekly email and CSV export.

It gives up things Fathom has today. It can't import your GA history, it has no Search Console data or API, agencies and custom events wait for Pro, and your data is in the US. It launches on 1 November 2026, so it has no track record; Fathom has run since 2018. If any of that matters to you, Fathom is the better pick.

Nora Lab, the research team at Nora Analytics, ran every test on this page the same way for each tool. Here is exactly how, so you can judge the results yourself.

The full method, with what each visitor stands for, is on How we test. Every result from the lab run is public as JSON.