Should I self-host Fathom Analytics?

What you lose

• Fathom's managed uptime and their EU isolation guarantees on paper
• Email reports arrive from your cron now

What you're paying Fathom Analytics for

• pageview analytics
• event tracking
• GDPR-friendly stats
• email reports

Ranked alternatives

1. Plausible CE

The same privacy-first analytics dashboard the vendor sells, on your own domain, with no pageview meter counting against you.

plausible/analytics · ★ 28,463 · last commit 0d ago · AGPL-3.0

2. Umami

Pageviews, referrers and custom events on a hostname you own, from one container and a PostgreSQL, with no monthly event meter.

umami-software/umami · ★ 38,146 · last commit 0d ago · MIT

Hardware

Runs comfortably on a real VPS (2 GB+).

The tested compose file (our evidence, CI-booted)

# Plausible Community Edition — the rare case where the SaaS and the self-host are the
# same software. Secrets are throwaway test values: openssl rand -base64 48
services:
  plausible:
    image: ghcr.io/plausible/community-edition:v3
    container_name: plausible
    restart: unless-stopped
    command: sh -c "/entrypoint.sh db createdb && /entrypoint.sh db migrate && /entrypoint.sh run"
    depends_on:
      plausible-db:
        condition: service_healthy
      plausible-events-db:
        condition: service_healthy
    environment:
      BASE_URL: http://localhost:8000
      SECRET_KEY_BASE: "GLVzDZW04FzuS1gMcmBRVhwgd4Gu9YmSl/k/TqfTUXti7FLBd7aflXeQDdwCj6Cz"
      DATABASE_URL: postgres://plausible:plausible@plausible-db:5432/plausible_db
      CLICKHOUSE_DATABASE_URL: http://plausible-events-db:8123/plausible_events_db
      DISABLE_REGISTRATION: "false"
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "wget -qO- http://localhost:8000/api/health || exit 1"]
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 36
      start_period: 30s

  plausible-db:
    image: postgres:16-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: plausible
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: plausible
      POSTGRES_DB: plausible_db
    volumes:
      - plausible-pg:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U plausible"]
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 12

  plausible-events-db:
    image: clickhouse/clickhouse-server:24.12-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - plausible-ch:/var/lib/clickhouse
    ulimits:
      nofile:
        soft: 262144
        hard: 262144
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "wget -qO- http://localhost:8123/ping || exit 1"]
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 24
      start_period: 20s

volumes:
  plausible-pg:
  plausible-ch:

Verification

# Fathom Analytics — verdict log

- **Date:** 2026-08-10
- **Verdict:** YES — worth it
- **Protocol:** v1 (2GB reference env, Docker preinstalled, AI assistant: claude-code)

## Setup evidence (shared)

- This verdict rides on the same replacement verified for `plausible-plausible` — see `compose/plausible-plausible.yml` and its log.

## The call

Fathom charges $15/mo for privacy-friendly analytics; Plausible and Umami are the same promise as software you run. The Plausible compose on this scoreboard is already boot-verified — same replacement, same math, one more subscription that's really a database with a chart on top.

Verdict history

• 2026-08-10: unscored → YES — Initial verdict: Fathom charges $15/mo for privacy-friendly analytics; Plausible and Umami are the same promise as software you.