Fathom is one of the pioneers of privacy-first analytics — simple, fast, and respectful of user data. sourcebeam shares those values but takes a different approach to pricing, adds built-in revenue tracking, and opens your data to AI analysis.
$5/mo
vs $15/mo minimum
<1 KB
vs ~6 KB script
Pay-as-you-go
vs fixed tiers
Affordable from day one, not a trial. Fathom offers a 30-day free trial, then starts at $15/month for 100,000 pageviews. sourcebeam starts at just $5/month for 10,000 events — no trial countdown, no feature restrictions. For personal projects, side projects, or early startups that are still finding product-market fit, this means you can have real analytics from day one at a fraction of the cost.
True pay-as-you-go, not tiered plans. Fathom uses fixed pricing tiers: $15/month for 100K pageviews, $25/month for 200K, and so on. If your traffic fluctuates seasonally — a common pattern for ecommerce, content sites, and SaaS with launch cycles — you are either overpaying during quiet months or hitting limits during busy ones. sourcebeam charges based on actual usage. If your traffic drops 50% next month, your bill drops with it. No tier management, no upgrade/downgrade friction.
Revenue tracking is built in. Fathom tracks pageviews, events, and conversions — but it does not connect those to actual revenue. With sourcebeam, you connect your Stripe account and every checkout is automatically attributed to the visitor, session, referrer, and campaign that drove it. You can see not just which pages get the most traffic, but which traffic sources actually generate money. This changes how you prioritize marketing spend and content investment.
Your data speaks to AI. sourcebeam exposes a read-only API that is designed for LLM consumption. You can connect it to Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI tool and ask questions about your analytics in plain English. "Which blog post drove the most signups this month?" "Compare my traffic sources week over week." Instead of navigating dashboards and building custom reports, you get answers in seconds. Fathom has an API, but it is not optimized for AI integration.
A lighter footprint on your site. Fathom's tracking script weighs around 6 KB (gzipped). That is already lightweight compared to Google Analytics, but sourcebeam takes it further with a sub-1 KB script. For performance-obsessed teams optimizing Core Web Vitals, every kilobyte matters — especially on mobile connections. The smaller script also means faster time-to-first-byte and less render-blocking JavaScript.
Visitor journeys, not just aggregates. Fathom focuses on aggregate metrics — total pageviews, unique visitors, bounce rate. sourcebeam also tracks individual visitor journeys across multiple sessions. You can see how a specific visitor discovered your site, which pages they explored, how many sessions it took before they converted, and what their total revenue contribution is. This level of detail helps you understand the actual paths people take to become customers.
Under 1 KB. No npm packages. No build step.
| sourcebeam | Fathom | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at $5/mo | ||
| True pay-as-you-go pricing | ||
| AI-ready API | ||
| Visitor journeys | ||
| Revenue tracking (Stripe) | ||
| Under 1KB script | ||
| Cookie-free tracking | ||
| One-line setup | ||
| Conversion goals | ||
| Real-time data | ||
| EU data isolation | ||
| Email reports | ||
| Uptime monitoring |
Fathom offers EU-isolated hosting, email reports, and uptime monitoring — useful extras if those are important to your workflow.
At 100K pageviews/month: Fathom charges $15/month. sourcebeam charges roughly $19/month. Close in price, but sourcebeam includes revenue tracking and the AI API at no extra cost.
At 500K pageviews/month: Fathom charges $50/month. sourcebeam charges roughly $59/month. Still comparable, with sourcebeam offering more granular usage-based billing and no risk of overpaying during low-traffic months.
At 10K pageviews/month: Fathom charges $15/month (their minimum plan). sourcebeam starts at $5/month. For small sites, blogs, and side projects, this is the biggest difference.
At 10K pageviews/month, Fathom charges $15/month. sourcebeam starts at $5/month. For small sites and side projects, this is the biggest difference.
Fathom is a mature, battle-tested product with years of proven reliability. If you need EU-isolated data hosting for compliance reasons, built-in uptime monitoring, or scheduled email reports, Fathom delivers those out of the box. It also has a longer track record and a larger community.
But if you want affordable pricing for small projects, usage-based billing that scales with your actual traffic, built-in revenue attribution, or the ability to query your analytics with AI — sourcebeam is designed for exactly that.
Starting at $5/month. Takes 30 seconds to set up.