# PostHog vs Fathom in-depth tool comparison - [ ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/c_scale,w_50/Bijan_ba52b08da2) Bijan Boustani](/community/profiles/31729.md) Nov 13, 2024 - [Comparisons](/blog/comparisons.md) PostHog and Fathom Analytics are both alternatives to Google Analytics. In fact, both explicitly call this out on their websites with marketing copy like "Switch to a better Google Analytics alternative." Both products have web analytics dashboards with an emphasis on simplicity and privacy. They're ideal choices for customers that want to analyze and understand web traffic but find Google Analytics to be too complicated. ## How is PostHog different? ### 1\. PostHog offers web analytics, and a lot more [Web analytics](/web-analytics.md) is a core feature of PostHog, but we offer many more tools to help you analyze, test, and observe your site and your product. These include [product analytics](/product-analytics.md), [session replay](/session-replay.md), [surveys](/surveys.md), [experiments](/experiments.md), [feature flags](/feature-flags.md), a [data warehouse](/data-warehouse.md), and more. ### 2\. PostHog has a generous free tier PostHog's ["pay-as-you-go" plan](/pricing.md) includes all of our features for free with an allowance of 1M events per month. For Fathom, pricing starts at $15 per month for 100K data points, increases to $60 per month for 1M data points, and more from there. Beyond PostHog's free tier, we try to be as cheap as possible and [transparent](/docs/billing/estimating-usage-costs.md). Want to know how much we'll charge? See our [pricing calculator](/pricing.md#calculator). PostHog also does not require a credit card to sign up and try the free tier. ## Web analytics Both Fathom and PostHog are [Google Analytics alternatives](/blog/ga4-alternatives.md), so they're ideal for tracking and analyzing your website. Fathom Features **Bounce rate** See the percentage of users that leave after one pageview ✓ ✓ **Conversions** Track actions you want users to take ✓ ✓ **Custom channel types** Create custom channel types by defining rules that match incoming events ✓ ✗ **Entry and exit paths** See the pages users first visit and the last ones before they leave ✓ Entry only **Movement maps** Visualize mouse movements ✗ **Outbound clicks** See the links that take users away ✓ ✗ **Pageviews** Track visitors and their views ✓ ✓ **Sessions** Track unique sessions and their durations ✓ ✗ **Traffic breakdown** See where your visitors and conversions are coming from ✓ ✓ **UTM tracking** Track marketing campaigns with UTM tags ✓ ✓ **Web vitals** Monitor the performance of your website ✓ ✗ **Cookieless tracking** Track users without cookies ✓ ✓ **Snippet install** Install HTML snippet ✓ ✓ **Search tools** Get keyword data and track search ad performance ✗ ✗ **Migration from Google Analytics** Migrate data from Google Analytics ✓ ✓ **Script size** Size of the script that runs on your site 56.8 kb <2 kB In terms of design, both PostHog and Fathom's [web analytics dashboards](/docs/web-analytics/dashboard.md) look similar, which we can see in the screenshots below: ![PostHog web analytics dashboard](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/web_analytics_dashboard_light_bc76a94566.png)![PostHog web analytics dashboard](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/web_analytics_dashboard_dark_42ac39a5f7.png) The big difference is that PostHog includes sessions, where Fathom only includes visitors: ## Product analytics Teams rely on [product analytics](/product-analytics.md) when they need more customization in both capturing and analyzing data. Although not a focus of Fathom, it does offer some basic product analytics features like custom event tracking, but doesn't include any of the custom visualizations of PostHog. Fathom **Custom events** Manually capture custom events and properties wherever they happen ✓ Events only **Custom properties** Add more data to custom events or users ✓ ✓ **Autocapture** Capture events without manual tracking ✓ Pageviews [**Graphs & trends**](/trends.md) Build custom insights and visualizations ✓ ✗ [**Funnels**](/funnels.md) Track users through a sequence of events to find drop-off and improve conversion ✓ ✗ [**Retention**](/retention.md) Track user retention over time to understand how long users stay with your product ✓ ✗ **Cohorts** Combine users based on properties and events for group analysis ✓ ✗ **User profiles** Track personally-identifiable user info like name, email, and usage data ✓ ✗ [**Group analytics**](/profiles.md) Track metrics at a company and account level ✓ ✗ [**User paths**](/user-paths.md) Understand how users navigate through your product and where they get stuck ✓ ✗ **SQL query editor** Write SQL queries directly against your data without a separate data warehouse ✓ ✗ ## Platform Beyond web analytics is where PostHog really shines. We provide all of the tools developers need to build a successful product (and they all work together). Fathom **EU hosting** Access and store your data in the EU ✓ ✓ **API** Capture events, get stats, and make changes via API ✓ ✓ **Collaboration** Share your projects and sites with teammates Invite teammates to collaborate on all features Share web analytics with or without a password **Open source** Audit code, contribute to roadmap, and build integrations ✓ ✗ **Heatmaps** See clicks and mouse movement on your site ✓ ✗ [**Session Replay**](/session-replay.md) Watch real user sessions to understand behavior and fix issues ✓ ✗ [**Experiments**](/experiments.md) Run statistically rigorous A/B/n tests and validate ideas with confidence ✓ ✗ [**Surveys**](/surveys.md) Collect product feedback with no-code surveys and customizable targeting ✓ ✗ [**Feature Flags**](/feature-flags.md) Control feature access with precision and safely roll out changes ✓ ✗ **Server-side SDKs** Capture events and use features from Python, Node, and more ✓ ✗ **Mobile SDKs** Capture events and use features from Android, iOS, and more ✓ ✗ ## Integrations Fathom **CSV exports** Export your data as a CSV ✓ ✓ **Email reports** Send reports to email ✓ ✓ **exports** ✓ ✓ **warehouse\_import** ✓ ✗ **Slack** Alerts and notifications for Slack ✓ ✗ **Stripe** Stripe customer data connector ✓ ✗ **Hubspot** Send and receive data from Hubspot ✓ ✗ **Zapier** Trigger Zapier automations ✓ ✗ **Zendesk** Send and receive data from Zendesk ✓ ✗ **Sentry** Send and receive data from Sentry ✓ ✗ **WordPress** Easily capture data from your WordPress site ✗ ✓ ## Security, compliance, privacy Fathom prides itself on being privacy-friendly, but PostHog stands toe-to-toe with it in terms of features. On top of that, PostHog includes many of the features enterprises need for compliance. Fathom **Data retention** The length of time event data is retained 7 years Forever (as long as you're a customer) **Bot blocking** Block scrapers, crawlers, and other unwanted traffic from stats ✓ ✓ **Reverse proxy** Avoid tracking blockers and capture more data ✓ ✗ **HIPAA-ready** Can be compliant with HIPAA ✓ ✗ **GDPR-ready** Can be compliant with GDPR ✓ ✓ **SOC 2 Type II** SOC 2 security certification ✓ ✗ **2FA** Enforce login with two-factor authentication ✓ ✓ **SAML/SSO** Use SAML or single sign-on authentication Scale ✗ ## Frequently asked questions ### How much do PostHog and Fathom cost? Fathom is a monthly subscription based on usage. Plans start at $15 per month for 100k data points. 1M data points is $60 per month. Price maxes out at $470 per month for 25M data points, beyond which you need to contact them. PostHog is [entirely usage-based](/pricing.md). Its free tier includes: | Feature | Free usage per month | Additional cost | | --- | --- | --- | | Product analytics | 1 million events | From $0.00005/event | | Session replay | 5,000 recordings | From $0.005/recording | | Surveys | 1500 responses | From $0.10/response | | Feature flags and A/B testing | 1 million API requests | From $0.0001/request | | Data warehouse | 1 million synced rows | From $0.000015/row | Basically, we aim to give you the tools you want for as cheap as possible. We split out the products, and features like [group analytics](/docs/product-analytics/group-analytics.md) and [pipelines](/docs/cdp.md) within products, to do this. ### Does PostHog offer a free trial? Fathom offers a free trial, but PostHog doesn't, what gives? Instead of a free trial, PostHog offers a free forever tier as long as you stay under the free limits. You don't even need a credit card, but adding one unlocks all the features (we have billing limits you can use too). ### Can I migrate from Google Analytics to PostHog? Yes, see our [Google Analytics to PostHog migration guide](/docs/migrate/google-analytics.md) for more details. ## Further Reading - [The best Fathom alternatives & competitors, compared](/blog/best-fathom-alternatives.md) - [The 9 best GA4 alternatives for apps and websites](/blog/ga4-alternatives.md) - [The 9 best GDPR-compliant analytics tools](/blog/best-fathom-alternatives.md) Still deciding? Check out our [roundup of the best web analytics tools](/blog/best-web-analytics-tools.md) for more options. Want to just try it already? (Sorry for the shameless CTA.) [Try PostHog - free](https://us.posthog.com/signup)[Schedule a demo](/talk-to-a-human.md) > PostHog is the leading platform for building self-driving products. With a full suite of developer tools – [AI observability](/ai-observability.md), [product analytics](/product-analytics.md), [session replay](/session-replay.md), [feature flags](/feature-flags.md), [experiments](/experiments.md), [error tracking](/error-tracking.md), [logs](/logs.md), and more – PostHog captures all the context agents need to diagnose problems, uncover opportunities, and ship fixes. A [data warehouse](/data-stack.md) and [CDP](/cdp.md) tie it all together, unifying that context into one source agents can read across. You can steer it all from [Slack](/slack.md), [the web app](/ai.md), the desktop ([PostHog Desktop](/desktop.md)), or your own editor via [the MCP](/mcp.md). ### Community questions Ask a question