Comparison · a privacy-first analytics alternative
Plausible and Fathom count your traffic: cleanly, privately, no cookie banner. Bearing does that too, then reads the numbers and tells you what to fix.
No cookies · GDPR-friendly · ~2 KB script · free to start
Where they’re the same
If you’re leaving Google Analytics for something private and simple, the good news is that Plausible, Fathom, and Bearing are all cookieless, set no consent banner, never store visitor IP addresses, and load a tiny script. You can switch to any of them and keep that promise. The question is what you get after the numbers come in.
Where Bearing is different
The Heading, not just a chart
An AI growth analyst reads your live numbers, researches your business, reviews your real pages (even on mobile), and writes a prioritised brief: what’s working, what’s broken, and the highest-leverage fix. Plausible and Fathom stop at the chart.
Conversions in dollars
Put a value on one action and Bearing estimates the rest, so your sources and pages are ranked by the money they drive, not raw clicks.
Funnels & dead-ends, found for you
Bearing discovers the path to your goal automatically and shows the step that leaks the most, with no funnel to hand-configure first.
Engagement, read as intent
Time on page and scroll depth tell engagement apart from a quick exit, so a deep read that didn’t convert is treated as the near-win it is, not lumped into “bounce”.
Feature by feature
| Bearing | Plausible | Fathom | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cookieless · no consent banner | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| GDPR-friendly · no IP storage | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Lightweight script | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Goals & custom events | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Funnels discovered automatically (no setup)Plausible supports funnels, but you configure each one by hand. | ✓ | · | · |
| Conversions auto-valued in dollars | ✓ | · | · |
| Reads engagement & the journey, not just bounce | ✓ | · | · |
| A written brief: what to fix, prioritisedThe Heading: an AI growth analyst that researches your business and reviews your real pages. | ✓ | · | · |
| Open-source · self-hostableIf self-hosting matters most, Plausible is the better fit. See below. | · | ✓ | · |
Plausible and Fathom are capable, well-built tools; this table is about what each one does after the data lands, not a knock on either.
Already on Plausible? Import your history when you switch →
When Plausible is the better choice
If you want to self-hostyour analytics or run open-source software you control, Plausible is the better fit and we’d point you there. The same goes if all you want is a clean, fast traffic counter and nothing more. That’s exactly what it’s for. Bearing is for the operator who wants the counting and an analyst on top of it: someone telling you, every week, the one move that actually grows the number.
One ~2 KB script, no cookie banner, free to start. Your first Heading arrives as soon as there’s enough signal to read.