sonex vs Fathom Analytics
Fathom has unlimited retention and a long track record, and starts at $45/month with no free plan. sonex starts free, costs $20 at 200k events, and reads revenue from Stripe or Polar natively.
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sonex and Fathom are close cousins: cookieless, no consent banner, and a dashboard that respects your time. The differences are price shape, retention, and revenue. Fathom keeps your data as long as you are a customer and starts at $45 a month. sonex starts free, is $20 at 200,000 events, and reads revenue from your payment provider.
Checked against Fathom’s own pricing and features pages on 2026-08-17, plus a direct measurement of both scripts.
At a glance
| sonex | Fathom | |
|---|---|---|
| Cookies | None | None |
| Consent banner | Not needed | Not needed |
| Entry price | $20/mo, 200k events | $45/mo, 500k pageviews |
| Free plan | 2,000 events/mo, ongoing | 7-day trial, then paid |
| Billing unit | Events (pageviews + custom) | Average monthly pageviews |
| Data retention | 6 months free, 1 year Pro, 5 years Business | Unlimited while a customer |
| Native Stripe/Polar revenue | Yes, all plans | Not documented; custom events or third-party automation |
| Funnels | Pro | Not documented |
| Retention cohorts | Yes | Not documented |
| Attribution models | Yes | Not documented |
| Session-level views | Yes | Not documented |
| Public shared dashboards | Yes | Yes |
| API | Query API | Full API, 600 requests/hour |
| Geography | Country, region, city | Country confirmed |
| Tracker size (brotli, measured) | 2,968 bytes | 1,776 bytes |
| Hosting | Hosted SaaS | Hosted only; EU processing for EU visitors |
Rows marked “not documented” mean we could not confirm them from Fathom’s own pages. We are not going to claim a competitor lacks a feature on the basis of not finding it — check with them if one of those rows decides it for you.
Where Fathom is better
Unlimited retention. Data kept for as long as you are a customer. Ours caps at five years even on Business, and at six months on free. For anyone who cares about the long view, that is a clean win for them.
A lighter script. 1,776 bytes brotli against our 2,968.
Track record and independence. Fathom has been running this business publicly for years, is independently owned with no outside capital, and has a reputation built on doing exactly one thing well. That matters when you are choosing who to trust with a number you cannot independently verify.
EU data processing for EU visitors. A documented isolation option rather than an inference.
A generous API rate limit. 600 requests an hour is a real allowance.
Where sonex is better
Price shape at the bottom. $45 a month is the entry point, and there is no ongoing free plan behind the 7-day trial. Our free plan runs indefinitely at 2,000 events, and Pro is $20 for 200,000 events. If you are starting a project rather than migrating an established one, that difference is the decision.
Revenue from a payment provider. Fathom supports custom events with values, including multi-currency, which is a real capability — but it means revenue comes from the browser, so it is lost whenever the tracker is blocked or a checkout completes off-site. sonex reads Stripe or Polar directly, net of refunds, on every plan.
Reports beyond the single page. Funnels, retention cohorts, attribution models, user journeys and session-level browsing. Fathom’s documented surface is custom events, UTM tracking and shared dashboards; if the deeper reports matter, that is why to look at us.
City-level geography.
Privacy: a tie
Neither sets cookies. Neither fingerprints. Neither requires a consent banner. Both are structurally in the same place, which is that the ePrivacy storage trigger never fires because nothing is stored.
Both are on EasyPrivacy, too. Fathom has four rules against its domains and we have none — and the only reason for that asymmetry is that nobody has noticed us yet, which we wrote up honestly.
Choose Fathom if
- You want data kept indefinitely.
- You want a mature, independently owned product with a long public track record.
- EU processing isolation matters.
- You are comfortable at $45 a month and do not need revenue in the tool.
Choose sonex if
- You want to start free, or you are under $45 a month of value.
- You want revenue read from Stripe or Polar without instrumenting purchase events.
- You want funnels, retention, attribution or session-level views.
- You want city-level geography.
Both tools removed the consent banner, which was the point. What is left is a real difference in what belongs on the dashboard once it is gone.
Facts checked against Fathom’s own pricing and features pages on 2026-08-17. Script sizes measured the same day.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between sonex and Fathom?
- Both are cookieless and need no consent banner. Fathom keeps your data for as long as you are a customer and has a long track record, starting at $45/month with no ongoing free plan. sonex starts free, is $20/month at 200,000 events, and reads revenue natively from Stripe or Polar.
- How much does Fathom Analytics cost?
- $45 a month for up to 500,000 pageviews, with two months free on annual billing. There is a 7-day trial and no ongoing free plan.
- Does Fathom connect to Stripe?
- Not natively as far as their own documentation shows. Revenue in Fathom is tracked through custom events you send, or via third-party automation tools. sonex connects to Stripe or Polar with a read-only key on every plan.
- Are sonex and Fathom both GDPR compliant?
- Both are built to be. Neither uses cookies, fingerprinting or personal data, so neither requires a consent banner. The privacy posture is comparable; decide on retention, price and revenue instead.
sonex is privacy-first web analytics. No cookies, no consent banner, no personal data. Drop one script and read realtime visitors, funnels and a world map in seconds.
Try sonex free