head to head · open source
Fathom Lite vs tianji
Fathom Lite has 8,034 GitHub stars, 388 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. tianji has 3,118 stars, 199 forks, 139 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. Fathom Lite leads on adoption by 158% (8,034 vs 3,118 stars). Fathom Lite is written in Go under MIT; tianji is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Fathom Lite has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, tianji 6%. tianji was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (analytics, google-analytics), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Fathom Lite | tianji | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.0K | ★ 3.1K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-03-18 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 388 | ⑂ 199 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Fathom Lite if
- You weight community size — 8.0K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick tianji if
- You want the tianji feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and tianji fits your workflow better
About Fathom Lite
Fathom Lite simple website analytics ============================== Fathom Lite is a previous and open source version of Fathom Analytics (a paid, hosted Google Analytics alternative). It was the very first version of our software, and has been downloaded millions of times! While we are no longer adding features to this Lite version, we will be continuing to maintain it long term and fix any bugs that come up. Fathom Lite vs Fathom (hosted) Today’s Fathom Analytics is a hosted product with simple pricing based on monthly pageviews. The same core capabilities are included on every plan: for example API access, up…
read the full Fathom Lite overview →
About tianji
Tianji All in One Insight Hub Website analytics + Uptime Monitor + Server Status = Tianji All in one project! Motivation During our observations of the website. We often need to use multiple applications together. For example, we need analysis tools such as GA / umami to check pv/uv and the number of visits to each page, we need an uptime monitor to check the network quality and connectivity of the server, and we need to use prometheus to obtain the status reported by the server to check the quality of the server. In addition, if we develop an application that allows open source deployment, we often need a…
read the full tianji overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Fathom Lite or tianji more popular?
Fathom Lite has 8,034 GitHub stars and tianji has 3,118. Fathom Lite has the larger community by that measure.
Are Fathom Lite and tianji free?
Both are open source. Fathom Lite is licensed under MIT and tianji under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Fathom Lite and tianji?
Fathom Lite is written in Go and tianji in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Fathom Lite or tianji?
Choose Fathom Lite if you want the larger community (8,034 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose tianji if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.