Virling vs Fathom: a Fathom Analytics alternative with revenue
Fathom Analytics is simple, hosted traffic analytics. Virling reads your payments and joins each one to the visit before it, and you can run it yourself.
| Virling | Fathom | |
|---|---|---|
| Open source | Yes, AGPLv3 | Fathom Analytics: no. Fathom Lite, the older self-hosted version, is MIT |
| Self-host | Yes, one Rust binary with embedded storage. No Postgres, ClickHouse or Redis. | Fathom Analytics is hosted only. Fathom Lite is self-hosted with no support; its last release, v1.3.1, was in January 2023 |
| Revenue | Read from Stripe, Paddle, Shopify, WooCommerce, Dodo Payments, Polar, LemonSqueezy, Creem or RevenueCat with a key, no event code | Event values you send from your own code, in cents |
| Retention by first-payment channel | Yes. Customers are grouped by the channel of their first payment, and renewals keep it | See their docs |
| AI assistant visits | Yes. AI assistants are their own channel, with revenue | Yes. An AI source group for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and others |
| AI crawler fetches | Yes. Pages each AI company's bots read; every fetch once you add the server snippet | Blocked bot requests are counted by type; AI crawlers are not listed as their own group |
| AI answers tracking | Yes. Your buyer questions asked to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini every week. Paid hosted plans, or your own keys when self-hosting | No. Their docs say AI measurement covers visits, not how often an AI tool mentions you |
| MCP server | Yes, read-only | Not in their docs. There is an API |
| Price | Free to self-host. Hosted: $19 a month, or $79 a month for agencies. Every hosted plan starts with a 14-day free trial. | From $15 a month for 100,000 pageviews. 7-day free trial with a card; no free plan |
Based on Fathom's public docs and pricing, checked on 1 November 2026: pricing, traffic sources, ecommerce, bot detection, Fathom Lite, Lite releases. See their site for current features and pricing. Something out of date? Tell us.
When Fathom is the better fit
You want simple, cookieless traffic analytics that someone else hosts, with AI visits grouped for you, and you only need revenue as event values you send from your own code.
When Virling is the better fit
You want payments read from your provider and joined to the visit before them, retention by first-payment channel, AI crawler and AI answer tracking, or the option to run it on your own server.
Frequently asked questions
Does Fathom Analytics track revenue?
Fathom records a value with each event you send from your own code, in cents. Virling reads Stripe, Paddle, Shopify, WooCommerce, Dodo Payments, Polar, LemonSqueezy, Creem or RevenueCat directly, with no event code.
Can I self-host Fathom?
Fathom Analytics is hosted only. Fathom Lite is a separate self-hosted version under MIT, without support; its last release was v1.3.1 in January 2023. Virling is open source and runs as one binary on your server, or hosted.
When is Fathom the better fit?
When you want simple, cookieless traffic analytics that someone else runs, and revenue as event values from your own code is enough.
Related reading
- Cookieless analytics and revenue: what you lose and keep
- Is AI search traffic worth anything? How to measure it
- How to track Stripe revenue by traffic source
Other comparisons: Virling vs DataBull, Virling vs DataFast, Virling vs Google Analytics, Virling vs Matomo, Virling vs Mixpanel, Virling vs Plausible, Virling vs PostHog, Virling vs Triple Whale and Virling vs Umami.