Is twelvebit cheaper than DataFast?
Yes, at 10k and 100k events, for the first 10 paid places. They get 50% off Starter or Growth for as long as they stay subscribed: Starter is $4.50 instead of $9, and Growth is $9.50 instead of $19. A cancel or a plan change ends it. See pricing for the places left.
Without the launch price, no. From 10k through 10M events a month, Starter is $9 then $19, $29, $49, $69, $89, $129 and $169. Growth is $19 through $339 on the same steps. DataFast's public pricing config lists those same eight numbers. Both bill yearly at ten times the monthly price. DataFast's homepage calls that "2 months free."
Above 10M, DataFast publishes $199 for Starter and $399 for Growth. twelvebit does not publish a price there. The pricing page says to write to hello@twelvebit.io for a custom plan. If you already know you will pass 10M events and you want the number on a page before you talk to anyone, DataFast is the clearer offer.
The plan shapes match too. DataFast's FAQ says Starter is 1 website, 1 team member and 3 years of data, and Growth is 30 websites, 30 team members, 5+ years, social mentions on X and Reddit, and link attribution. twelvebit Starter is 1 site and 1 person with 3 years of data. Growth is up to 30 sites and 30 people, 5+ years of data, social mentions on X, Reddit and Hacker News, and X link attribution.
What an "event" includes is not identical on the pages we could read. twelvebit counts page views and custom events. Pings (time on page), bot and AI crawler hits, identify calls and outbound links are free. DataFast prices "monthly events" and the homepage does not list exclusions. Do not assume a visit that is free on one tool is free on the other.
Where does each product keep the data?
twelvebit processes analytics data in the European Union. The app runs in Frankfurt, Germany, on Vercel's EU region. The database runs on a netcup server in Vienna, Austria. Vercel is a US company; the region is EU. IP addresses are used while a request is handled and are not stored. The details are on security and data.
DataFast's data processing agreement, read on 20 October 2026, says: "Most of our infrastructure is located outside the EU, including in the United States." It names the subprocessors AWS, Vercel, Mapbox, OpenAI, MongoDB, Upstash, TinyBird and ClickHouse, and says EU and EEA personal data is transferred internationally under those vendors' safeguards, including standard contractual clauses where relevant. DataFast's privacy policy says it is governed by the laws of Singapore. If you need the analytics data processed in the EU, twelvebit is the one that says it does that. If a US and multi-vendor setup is fine for you, DataFast says so in its own DPA rather than hiding it.
What is the free trial?
DataFast is the easier trial. The homepage says "14-day free trial. No card required," and the FAQ says you can try it for 14 days and that you do not need a credit card. The plan card says "$0.00 due today. No card required."
twelvebit Starter and Growth start with a 14-day trial. You add a card on the checkout page and pay nothing that day. The charge runs at the end of the trial unless you cancel before. That is a real reason to start on DataFast if you do not want a card on file yet.
Do you need a cookie banner?
It depends on the law that applies to you. This page is not legal advice. Both tools use cookies by default, and both offer a cookieless mode.
In cookie mode, twelvebit sets two first-party cookies: _tb_vid for one year and _tb_sid for 30 minutes. In cookieless mode it stores nothing on the device. The visitor id is a hash of the IP address, the user agent, the site and a salt that changes each day. The IP address is not stored. See the privacy docs.
DataFast's default script, /js/script.js, uses cookies. The public script on 20 October 2026 sets datafast_visitor_id with a 365-day lifetime and datafast_session_id with a lifetime of 1/48 of a day, which is 30 minutes. The cookieless script is a different file, /js/script.cookieless.js. DataFast says it does not use cookies for visitor identification, that session storage may be used for the tab, and that the server id is a hash of signals such as the IP address, the user agent, the site and a salt that rotates about every 24 hours. DataFast says this mode is designed so you usually do not need a cookie banner for DataFast, and that long-range revenue attribution is weaker. twelvebit makes the same tradeoff in cookieless mode: a visitor is new each day. The Shopify cookie guide explains why "no cookies" is not, by itself, an exemption from consent.
How do coding agents set each one up?
This is the largest product difference, and it is not the price.
twelvebit is built so a coding agent does the install. You paste one prompt into Claude Code, Codex or Cursor. The agent adds the script, tracks the few actions that matter, writes analytics.yaml in the repo, pushes that plan, connects the MCP server, and checks that the first events arrived. The file is the source of truth for event names and props. npx twelvebit check can fail a CI job when the code and the plan drift. See agent setup and the tracking plan docs.
DataFast also has an MCP server, a CLI and a REST API, and the FAQ answers "yes" to all three. The MCP endpoint is https://datafa.st/api/mcp. Agents can query analytics, visitors, revenue and funnels, and can manage websites, goals and alerts. That is real, and it is on the product today. What we did not find, in the docs index or in llms.txt, is a tracking plan that lives in your repo, or a single prompt that instruments the app and checks the plan in CI. DataFast's install docs start from a script tag, a platform plugin, or datafast login for an account that already exists. If your agent needs to read the numbers, both tools can do that. If your agent needs to own the event names in git, that is twelvebit.
Which payment providers connect?
The lists overlap, and the homepage FAQ is shorter than the docs. DataFast's FAQ says native integrations are Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, Polar and Shopify, that you can connect more than one, and that a payments API covers the rest. Separate docs also cover Paddle checkout, Dodo Payments and WooCommerce. The payments API is POST https://datafa.st/api/v1/payments.
twelvebit connects Stripe, Polar, Lemon Squeezy, Paddle, Dodo Payments, Shopify and WooCommerce, and records other providers with POST /api/v1/payments from your server, not from the browser. Revenue is credited to the visit before the payment. The revenue attribution page and the ecommerce page describe the reports. We did not find a payment provider that one tool supports and the other has no path for, among the ones named above.
What about Shopify?
The install is different, and the difference matters now. Shopify has rejected new script tags since 1 October 2026 and will stop injecting them into storefronts on 1 March 2027. The Shopify changelog has the dates.
The twelvebit Shopify app is an App Store app. It loads the script with an app embed block, which the merchant turns on in the theme editor, and it joins orders with a web pixel. There is no theme code to paste. Older twelvebit connections that used a custom app and a script tag are a separate path; those tags stop with everyone else's on 1 March 2027.
DataFast's Shopify doc, read the same day, still says to create a custom app in the Shopify Dev Dashboard and to enable write_script_tags "to install the DataFast tracking script," then paste the client id and secret into DataFast. That was a normal install before October 2026. It is not a path Shopify still allows for new tags. If you are choosing an analytics app for a Shopify store today, read that doc against Shopify's changelog before you rely on it.
Which ad platforms connect?
twelvebit imports ad spend from Meta Ads, with a read-only token, from Google Ads, with a script that you paste into the Google Ads account, and from Amazon Ads, with Sign in with Amazon. The Ads page shows spend, visitors, customers and revenue for each campaign, and one return on each dollar of spend across the platforms. Google Ads clicks are matched to campaigns by gclid.
Amazon sales are a separate source. Connect your Amazon seller account and twelvebit shows Amazon orders next to your website revenue, with the share that came from ads. Amazon does not say which visit an order came from, so Amazon sales are Amazon's totals and are never credited to a website visit.
DataFast's Meta Ads doc, read on 22 October 2026, imports spend for the Meta campaigns you select and shows ROAS when a payment provider is connected. We did not find Google Ads or Amazon Ads spend, or Amazon sales, in DataFast's docs. If Meta is your only ad platform and you do not sell on Amazon, both tools cover it.
Who tracks AI crawlers?
Both do, from your server, because crawlers do not run the browser script. twelvebit has a bot list (AI answers, indexing, training) and POST /api/v1/bots. Those hits are not billable events. The docs are at bot and AI crawler tracking.
DataFast documents the same shape of setup: an npm package, @datafast/ai-crawl, called from your server or proxy, plus a public directory of crawler identities. The pricing config next to the plan prices sets an included allowance of 100,000 AI bot requests and packs of 1 million at $9 a month, up to 50 packs. The homepage plan card lists "100K AI bot requests" among the features. If a busy site is crawled hard, that allowance is a line on the DataFast bill that twelvebit does not have.
The scripts themselves are close in size. On 20 October 2026 the public DataFast script gzipped to 5,256 bytes and the public twelvebit script gzipped to 5,705 bytes. Neither is a large tag.
Choose DataFast when
- You want to try it without a card. DataFast's homepage and FAQ say the trial is 14 days and that no card is required.
- You want a tool with a large published user count. On 20 October 2026 the DataFast homepage said “Loved by 27,133 users.” twelvebit does not publish a customer count.
- You are above 10 million events a month and want a price on the page. DataFast lists a 10M+ step. twelvebit asks you to email for a custom plan.
- You install from a no-code tool DataFast already documents, such as Webflow, Framer, Bubble, Wix, Squarespace, Ghost, Podia, Kajabi or Google Tag Manager, and you do not need a tracking plan in the repo.
Choose twelvebit when
- You want a coding agent to install the tracker from one prompt, write analytics.yaml in the repo, and check that the code still matches the plan.
- You want analytics data processed in the EU. The twelvebit app runs in Frankfurt and the database runs in Vienna.
- You run Google Ads or Amazon Ads as well as Meta Ads. twelvebit imports spend from all three and shows the return of each campaign. DataFast's ad docs cover Meta Ads.
- You sell on Amazon as well as on your own site. twelvebit shows your Amazon sales next to your website revenue. We did not find an Amazon integration in DataFast's docs.
- You are on Shopify and you do not want a script tag. The twelvebit app uses an app embed and a web pixel. DataFast's Shopify guide still tells you to create a custom app with the write_script_tags scope.
- You track AI crawlers and do not want those hits on the bill. twelvebit does not count bot and AI crawler hits toward the plan.
Move from DataFast to twelvebit
Keep the DataFast script while you compare. Paste the twelvebit setup prompt into your coding agent and tell it which DataFast goals you use, so it adds them to analytics.yaml. Connect the same payment provider in twelvebit. Run both for a week, then remove the DataFast script. twelvebit imports Plausible exports, not DataFast history, so the old numbers stay in DataFast. DataFast's own FAQ says it can import Plausible data today, and that Google Analytics is next. It does not say it imports twelvebit.
A longer list of tools, including when to stay, is on DataFast alternatives. Also compare twelvebit vs Plausible, twelvebit vs Fathom and Google Analytics alternatives.
Sources
Facts about other tools come from their own pages, read on 20 October 2026. Prices change; check the vendor's page before you decide. Write to hello@twelvebit.io if something here is out of date.