head to head · open source
Fathom Lite vs tianji
Fathom Lite has 8,020 GitHub stars, 383 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. tianji has 3,100 stars, 194 forks, 139 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Fathom Lite leads on adoption by 159% (8,020 vs 3,100 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 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 383 | ⑂ 194 |
| 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 is the original open source, self hosted edition of Fathom Analytics — a simple, privacy focused website analytics tool written in Go with a Preact dashboard, released under the MIT licence for people who want to run their own analytics server rather than buy a hosted service.
read the full Fathom Lite overview →
About tianji
Tianji is a self hosted TypeScript project that combines website analytics, uptime monitoring, and server status in one application under the Apache 2.0 license. It is positioned as an all in one insight hub rather than only another Google Analytics alternative, and it lives in the web and product analytics ecosystem alongside tools such as Umami, Google Analytics, uptime monitors, and server status collectors.
read the full tianji overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Fathom Lite or tianji more popular?
Fathom Lite has 8,020 GitHub stars and tianji has 3,100. 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 (8,020 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose tianji if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.