Motion Analytics vs Fathom.
Fathom and Motion Analytics want the same thing: simple, private, cookie-free analytics that respect the people you measure. Fathom has done it well since 2018. The differences come down to the engine underneath, the price, and a couple of features each of us made a deliberate call on.
| AT A GLANCE | Motion Analytics | Fathom |
|---|---|---|
| Cookies | None | None |
| Consent banner | Not required | Not required |
| Counts | Exact, sampled at high volume | Exact at any scale |
| Cheapest paid plan | 250k, unlimited sites | $15 for 100k |
| Sites | Unlimited | Unlimited on every plan |
| Funnels | Yes, wildcard URL steps | No, by design |
| Data retention | 90 days, 12 months coming | Forever |
| EU data isolation | Recorded at the edge | Yes, a headline feature |
| Performance grades | Yes, MotionScore | No |
| Performance CI gate | Yes, MotionScore Guard | No |
| API and MCP | REST and MCP for agents | API, no MCP |
| Open source | No | No |
The common ground is most of it
Neither of us uses cookies, neither needs a consent banner, both ship a tiny script and a dashboard you can read at a glance, and neither is open source. If you have used Fathom and liked the shape of it, Motion Analytics will feel immediately recognisable. The interesting part is the handful of places we diverged.
The price
Fathom starts at $15 a month for 100,000 pageviews. Motion Analytics gives a larger monthly allowance for less, across every site on your account. Both let you track unlimited sites; the difference is that our pageview budget is one allowance shared across them rather than a per-plan figure you have to size up front.
Fathom's model is admirably clean in return: every feature is on every plan, retention is forever, and counts never sample. Ours trades some of that for the lower price, which the next two sections are honest about.
Funnels and performance grades
Fathom deliberately does not do funnels. It is a considered choice on their part to stay simple, and it is a fair one. Motion Analytics does: you can build a funnel from wildcard URL steps like /examples/* and custom events, and watch conversion between each step over time.
And as with every comparison here, every page in your dashboard carries a live MotionScore performance grade from real field data. Fathom does not measure performance, because Fathom is not also a performance lab.
Two more things follow from being that lab. The same grade can gate your CI through MotionScore Guard, failing a build that regresses a page's animation performance, and the whole dashboard is queryable from a REST API and an MCP server, so a coding agent can pull your numbers and funnels directly. Fathom has a read API; it does not grade performance or expose an MCP endpoint.
What Fathom does better
Fathom has been doing this since 2018 and it shows. Counts never sample, data is kept forever on every plan, and EU data isolation is a first-class, marketed feature: EU visitor data is processed on EU infrastructure and does not leave it. Our edge model is global rather than EU-pinned, and our retention is 90 days today with 12 months on the way.
It is also a mature, polished, profitable product with years of trust behind it. Motion Analytics is new. If forever retention, exact counts or guaranteed EU isolation are on your list, Fathom has them today and we do not.
If you want exact counts, retention that never expires or hard EU data isolation, Fathom is the safer call and a lovely product. If you want funnels, performance grades and pricing that comes in well under Fathom's, on a tool that is younger but moving fast, that is us. The live demo runs on real traffic, so have a look.