7 Best Amplitude Alternatives in 2026

Amplitude positions itself as an all-in-one growth analytics platform. It is built for teams that want deep behavioral insight, not just surface-level metrics. You can analyze retention, cohorts, funnels, experiments, and feature adoption in one system, with AI tools layered on top to accelerate exploration and forecasting.

But depth comes with tradeoffs. Pricing increases as your tracked users grow, and there is a clear jump between self-serve tiers and enterprise contracts. That shift can create budget pressure and slower procurement cycles. At the same time, Amplitude has a steep learning curve, particularly for teams without dedicated analytics expertise, and many advanced capabilities sit behind higher-tier plans.

So the real question becomes: Do you need maximum analytical depth, or operational simplicity? And as your product scales, will the pricing model scale comfortably with it?

In short, Amplitude delivers power and flexibility, but not simplicity or predictable scaling at every stage. When cost control, transparency, or ease of use become higher priorities, teams often begin evaluating alternatives. This guide outlines seven options to consider in 2026, with verified pricing and clear comparisons.

7 best Amplitude alternatives in 2026

1. Mixpanel

Mixpanel is the closest structural competitor to Amplitude. Both platforms are built around event-based product analytics with funnels, retention curves, user segmentation, and cohort analysis. Both are used primarily by product and growth teams at software companies. The main practical differences between them are pricing transparency, the event-versus-MTU billing model, and the relative depth of each platform's AI and experimentation features.

Mixpanel's event-based pricing is often meaningfully more predictable than Amplitude's MTU model for teams that track a large number of anonymous or low-engagement visitors. The free plan includes 1M events per month with core analytics features. Beyond that, the Growth plan charges approximately $0.00028 per event above the 1M monthly free threshold, which is transparent and calculator-friendly; teams can estimate their monthly cost from their event volumes without a sales conversation.

🌟 Key features

• Funnel analysis with step-level breakdowns, time-to-convert, and hold-out comparisons
• Retention analysis with cohort grids and customizable retention intervals
• User path analysis (Flows) for mapping common journeys through the product
• Behavioral segmentation and cohort creation from event data
• Event-based pricing with a public calculator for cost estimation
• Session replay on Growth plan (20,000 monthly replays included)
• Data Pipelines add-on for exporting events to BigQuery, Snowflake, or Redshift
• Unlimited user seats across all plan tiers

➕ Pros

• Event-based pricing is more transparent and predictable than Amplitude's MTU model for many products, particularly those with high visitor-to-user ratios
• The Growth plan's public pricing calculator lets teams estimate costs without a sales conversation, which Amplitude's Growth tier does not offer
• Unlimited user seats on all plans removes the team-size friction that some analytics tools impose
• Core analytics capabilities, including funnels, retention, and user paths, are comparable to Amplitude at the same tier level

➖ Cons

• Session replay is less integrated and less capable than Amplitude's equivalent feature; the 20,000 monthly replay allowance on Growth requires careful quota management
• Feature flags, A/B experimentation, and in-app surveys are not included natively; teams that want these features alongside analytics need separate tools or Mixpanel add-ons
• Data Pipelines (for data warehouse exports) and Group Analytics (for account-level analysis) are add-ons that can add $15,000+ annually to the base contract cost
• Event-based pricing can escalate at scale in the same way MTU pricing does; teams that instrument many event types per user can generate high event volumes quickly

💲 Pricing

Mixpanel's free plan includes up to 1 million events per month with core analytics features, limited to 5 saved reports per user and no behavioral cohorts. The Growth plan includes the first 1M events free each month, then charges approximately $0.00028 per event beyond that threshold, with volume discounts at higher tiers. At 10M monthly events the estimated cost is around $2,520/month. The Enterprise plan is custom-quoted, typically starting around $25,000/year. Group Analytics and Data Pipelines are paid add-ons.

2. PostHog

PostHog is an open-source developer platform that covers product analytics, session replay, feature flags, A/B experiments, error tracking, and surveys in a single stack. It is the alternative that most directly addresses the two gaps that most frequently drive teams away from Amplitude: the cost of the Growth tier and the absence of a self-hosted option. PostHog can be self-hosted under the MIT license, and its usage-based free tiers are meaningfully more generous than Amplitude's for teams with modest traffic.

The free cloud tier includes 1M product analytics events and 5,000 session recordings per month. Each product module has its own separate billing cap, so a team that only uses analytics and session replay is not paying for surveys or feature flags they do not use. The data model is shared across all modules, which means session recordings can be filtered and linked from cohort analysis without any re-identification step.

🌟 Key features

• Full product analytics: conversion funnels, retention cohorts, user path analysis, and raw SQL querying
• Session replay synchronized with product events, console logs, and network requests
• Feature flags and A/B experiments integrated with the same user data as analytics
• Error tracking linked directly to affected session recordings
• In-app surveys with conditional logic and response analysis
• Mobile session replay for iOS, Android, React Native, and Flutter
• LLM analytics for teams building AI-powered products
• Self-hosting via Docker Compose under the MIT license

➕ Pros

• The free cloud tier gives 1M product analytics events and 5,000 session recordings per month, which is more generous than Amplitude's free tier and covers meaningful evaluation on real traffic
• Self-hosting under the MIT license satisfies data residency and compliance requirements that Amplitude's cloud-only infrastructure cannot meet
• Mobile session replay for iOS and Android is included at every pricing tier, which Amplitude does not offer at all
• Each product module bills separately, allowing teams to control spending per feature area without committing to a single usage pool

➖ Cons

• Platform depth and configuration requirements assume a technical audience; non-developer teams without engineering support may find onboarding more involved than Amplitude's polished UI
• Usage-based billing across multiple product meters makes monthly cost estimation harder than Amplitude's fixed-price Plus plan
• AI-powered analysis and behavioral forecasting are less developed than Amplitude's equivalent features
• Production-scale self-hosting beyond Docker Compose requires significant infrastructure investment with no service-level agreement

💲 Pricing

PostHog's free tier includes 1 million product analytics events per month, 5,000 web session recordings, 2,500 mobile recordings, 1 million feature flag requests, and 1,500 survey responses. Paid product analytics events start at $0.00005 per event beyond 1M. Paid session replay starts at $0.005 per recording beyond 5,000 per month. PostHog is free to self-host under the MIT license.

3. Heap (now part of Contentsquare)

Heap was acquired by Contentsquare in December 2023 and is now part of the Contentsquare platform. Its capabilities remain available as a distinct Product Analytics module within Contentsquare, and existing customers continue to access the platform through their Heap accounts. The defining characteristic of Heap is its autocapture model: every user interaction is recorded from the moment the snippet is installed, without requiring developers to define and instrument individual events in advance.

This is a meaningful advantage over Amplitude for teams with limited engineering bandwidth or rapidly changing products. Amplitude requires developers to instrument events before data is available for analysis. Heap captures everything and allows teams to define events retroactively from the recorded data, which means that questions about user behavior can be answered using interactions that were never explicitly tagged.

🌟 Key features

• Autocapture of every user interaction without manual event instrumentation
• Retroactive event definition: define behavioral events from captured data after the fact
• Funnel analysis, retention analysis, and user path analysis built from autocaptured data
• Behavioral cohort creation and segmentation
• Account-level analytics for B2B SaaS teams tracking company-level behavior
• Integration with Contentsquare's heatmaps, session recordings, and voice-of-customer tools
• Sense AI (Contentsquare's AI assistant) for natural language querying of behavioral data
• Data warehouse integrations available on Pro and Premier plans

➕ Pros

• Autocapture eliminates the instrumentation overhead that Amplitude requires, which is particularly valuable for teams with small engineering teams or frequent product changes
• Retroactive event definition means that behavioral questions can be answered from past sessions without having anticipated them in advance
• Integration with Contentsquare's session replay and Hotjar's survey tools gives Heap customers access to a broader experience analytics platform than Amplitude provides
• No risk of missing important event data due to incomplete instrumentation

➖ Cons

• The acquisition by Contentsquare has introduced some pricing and roadmap uncertainty for existing Heap customers; the product's long-term standalone position within the Contentsquare platform is still evolving
• Paid plan pricing is fully custom-quoted with no public price list, making cost estimation without a sales conversation impossible
• Session replay is an add-on, not included in the base Growth or Pro plans
• The volume of autocaptured data can make it harder to focus analysis on meaningful events; teams without a data governance discipline may find their data layer becoming noisy over time

💲 Pricing

Heap's free plan includes core analytics charts, up to 10,000 monthly sessions, and 6 months of data history. The Growth plan scales with session volume and includes 12 months of data history, unlimited users, and Sense AI; pricing requires installing the free snippet to receive an estimate. The Pro and Premier plans are custom-quoted and include session replay as an add-on. All paid plan pricing requires contacting Heap's sales team.

4. Pendo

Pendo occupies a distinct category in the product analytics space. Where Amplitude focuses primarily on behavioral data analysis, Pendo combines product analytics with in-app guidance, NPS surveys, user onboarding flows, tooltips, checklists, and resource centers. For SaaS companies whose primary analytics use case involves feature adoption, onboarding completion, and user guidance rather than deep funnel or retention analysis, Pendo is often a more purpose-built fit than Amplitude.

Pendo's analytics engine is built around monthly active users rather than events, which tracks feature adoption, module usage, and user engagement patterns across a product. The in-app guide builder allows non-developer teams to create, target, and A/B test onboarding flows and tooltips directly in the Pendo interface without additional engineering work. Session replay is included from the Core plan upward.

🌟 Key features

• Product analytics with feature adoption tracking, module usage analysis, and user journey visualization
• In-app guides: tooltips, walkthroughs, modals, banners, and checklists built and deployed without code
• NPS surveys and in-app feedback collection with segmentation and targeting
• User onboarding flow design and A/B testing within the Pendo guide builder
• Pendo Listen for AI-powered synthesis of customer feedback across support tickets, reviews, and interviews
• Session replay included from Core plan upward
• Roadmap and prioritization tools connected to user feedback and analytics data
• Mobile SDKs for iOS and Android app analytics and in-app guidance

➕ Pros

• The combination of in-app guides, NPS, and analytics in a single tool is more purpose-built for SaaS onboarding and adoption teams than Amplitude's equivalent feature set
• Non-developer teams can build, target, and test in-app guides without engineering involvement, which removes a common bottleneck in deploying onboarding improvements
• Mobile SDKs for iOS and Android bring analytics and in-app guidance to native mobile apps
• Pendo Listen provides AI-powered synthesis of qualitative customer feedback, which Amplitude does not offer as an integrated capability

➖ Cons

• Pricing is entirely opaque: no public plan pricing exists, and real-world contracts typically range from $8,000/year for small Base configurations to over $100,000/year for enterprise deployments, according to customer reports on procurement platforms
• The Base plan does not include session replay; that feature requires upgrading to Core, which typically doubles the contract cost
• Pendo's behavioral analytics depth, particularly cohort retention analysis and advanced funnel breakdowns, is less sophisticated than Amplitude's at equivalent price points
• Annual contracts only, with no monthly billing option, creating a significant commitment before teams fully validate the platform

💲 Pricing

Pendo offers a free plan for up to 500 monthly active users with basic analytics, in-app guides (Pendo-branded), and NPS surveys. Paid plans, including Base, Core, Pulse, and Ultimate, are all custom-quoted via sales with pricing based on monthly active users and selected features. Real-world customer data suggests Base configurations start around $8,000/year, while mid-market implementations typically land in the $25,000–$60,000/year range. Session replay requires the Core plan or above.

5. Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 is the most widely deployed analytics platform in the world and the default free baseline for web and mobile app analytics. For teams evaluating Amplitude primarily because of cost, GA4 is the most obvious comparison: it is free with no session caps, no MTU limits for standard properties, and no paid tier required for the core reporting feature set.

GA4 differs from Amplitude in both architecture and purpose. Amplitude is built for product analytics: answering behavioral questions about feature usage, retention, and user journeys through a product. GA4 is built primarily for web analytics: tracking traffic sources, sessions, goals, and conversions across a website or app. The overlap is significant enough that GA4 can substitute for Amplitude in many web-focused use cases, but its cohort analysis, user-level behavioral queries, and event exploration are less intuitive and less capable than Amplitude's equivalent tools for product teams.

🌟 Key features

• Free with no traffic limits for standard properties
• Event-based tracking for web and mobile (iOS and Android via Firebase)
• Funnel exploration, cohort analysis, and path analysis in the Explore module
• Native integration with Google Ads, Search Console, BigQuery, and Looker Studio
• Predictive audiences using Google's machine learning
• Cross-device and cross-platform user identity stitching
• Real-time reporting and audience creation for advertising activation
• Google Analytics 360 for enterprise with SLA, higher data limits, and unsampled exports

➕ Pros

• Completely free for standard properties with no session, event, or MTU limits; the cost comparison with Amplitude's Growth tier is significant for budget-constrained teams
• Native BigQuery export (free for standard properties) gives data teams access to raw event data for SQL-based analysis without additional pipeline tooling
• Native integrations with the entire Google ecosystem, including Ads, Search Console, Display & Video 360, and Looker Studio, make GA4 the natural choice for teams with significant Google Ads spend
• Firebase integration extends identical analytics to iOS and Android apps with the same event model

➖ Cons

• Product analytics depth is noticeably weaker than Amplitude: cohort retention analysis, user-level behavioral queries, and event exploration require more configuration and produce less intuitive outputs
• The Explore module, which houses the more advanced analytical capabilities, has a steeper learning curve and produces results that are harder to share and collaborate around than Amplitude's chart-based interface
• Data sampling applies to Explore reports for high-traffic properties; only 360 users get fully unsampled exports
• No session replay, no feature flags, no in-app surveys, and no experimentation tooling without additional third-party tools

💲 Pricing

Google Analytics 4 is completely free for standard properties with no event or session limits and a BigQuery export included. Google Analytics 360 is an enterprise tier starting at approximately $50,000/year, offering higher data limits, unsampled reporting, and SLA-backed support.

6. Matomo

Matomo is the most established open-source web analytics platform, and the primary alternative for teams that need either full data ownership through self-hosting or GDPR-compliant cloud analytics processed entirely within the EU. Where Amplitude processes all data on US infrastructure with no self-hosted option, Matomo offers both a self-hosted deployment with no event limits and a cloud option that stores data in Frankfurt, Germany.

Matomo's analytics capabilities are broader than session recording tools like Mouseflow but narrower than Amplitude as a product analytics platform. Standard reports cover traffic sources, user journeys, event tracking, goal completion, and ecommerce funnels. Cohort analysis, heatmaps, session recordings, A/B testing, and form analytics are available as premium features, either bundled in the cloud plan or as separately purchased plugins on the self-hosted version.

🌟 Key features

• Self-hosting under an open-source license with no event volume limits
• 100% data ownership: all data stays on your infrastructure or on Matomo's EU-based cloud
• GDPR, CCPA, and ePrivacy compliance with cookieless tracking options
• Traffic source analysis, user journey mapping, goal tracking, and ecommerce reporting
• Cohort analysis, funnels, and A/B testing available as premium features
• Heatmaps and session recordings included in the cloud Business plan
• Google Analytics importer for migrating historical data
• Tag Manager included at no extra cost
• 100+ integrations and plugin marketplace for extending the platform

➕ Pros

• Self-hosting under an open-source license means zero per-event costs and full control over where data is stored, which addresses data residency requirements that Amplitude cannot meet
• The cloud Business plan at €29/month for 50K hits/month includes heatmaps, session recordings, A/B testing, and funnels, which is a broad feature set for the price compared to Amplitude's Plus tier
• Cookieless tracking options mean no cookie consent banner is required in many EU configurations, which reduces friction for site visitors
• Unlimited raw data history on the self-hosted version, versus Amplitude's 2-year limit on the Plus plan and data access controls on higher tiers

➖ Cons

• Product analytics depth is weaker than Amplitude: behavioral cohort analysis is less sophisticated, user-level querying is more limited, and the overall analytical interface is less intuitive for product teams
• Self-hosting requires technical knowledge to install, maintain, and keep secure; for teams without server management experience, the operational overhead is significant
• On the self-hosted version, advanced features like funnels (€193/year), session recordings (€219/year), and cohorts (€94/year) are separate plugins that add to the total cost
• No native feature flags, A/B experimentation SDK, or in-app survey tooling

💲 Pricing

Matomo On-Premise is free to self-host under an open-source license with no event limits. Premium plugins for self-hosted installations, including funnels, session recordings, A/B testing, and cohorts, are purchased separately from the plugin marketplace. Matomo Cloud Business starts at €29/month (approximately $32/month) for 50,000 hits/month, covering 30 websites, 30 team members, 24 months of raw data retention, and all premium features including heatmaps and session recordings. Enterprise pricing is custom-quoted for over 10 million hits/month.

7. Smartlook

Smartlook is a qualitative analytics platform that covers session recordings, heatmaps, event tracking, and funnel analysis across web and native mobile apps. It is the lightest and fastest-to-deploy option in this list for teams that primarily want session replay alongside funnel analysis and event tracking, without the broader product analytics depth that Amplitude provides.

Two capabilities make Smartlook stand out. Retroactive event creation means that teams can define a behavioral event today and Smartlook surfaces every historical instance from previously recorded sessions, which eliminates the instrumentation burden that Amplitude requires before data is available. Native SDKs for iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, and Unity cover mobile surfaces that Amplitude does not record with session replay. For teams that value seeing what users actually did, rather than just what events they triggered, Smartlook's session-first approach is more intuitive than Amplitude's event-first model.

🌟 Key features

• Continuous session capture of every user visit without sampling or manual activation
• Retroactive event creation: define an event today and surface all historical instances in past recordings
• No-code event picker for defining interactions without developer involvement
• Heatmaps, scroll maps, and clickmaps generated from session recording data
• Funnel analysis with step-level breakdowns by device, country, and browser
• Native mobile SDKs for iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, and Unity
• Crash reports linked to affected session recordings
• Cross-platform journey tracking for users moving between web and mobile

➕ Pros

• Session replay is the primary interface for analysis, which makes user behavior more immediately intuitive than Amplitude's chart-based model, particularly for teams that are new to behavioral analytics
• Native mobile SDKs for iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, and Unity cover the mobile surfaces that Amplitude does not record with session replay at any tier
• Retroactive event creation eliminates the instrumentation planning that Amplitude requires before analysis is possible
• Starting at $55/month for the Pro plan, Smartlook is significantly cheaper than Amplitude's equivalent Growth tier for teams with modest session volumes

➖ Cons

• Analytics depth is meaningfully shallower than Amplitude: cohort retention analysis, predictive audiences, and advanced behavioral segmentation are not available
• No in-app surveys, user onboarding flows, or feature management tooling
• Event-level analysis is less powerful than Amplitude's; Smartlook is optimized for session-first analysis rather than quantitative behavioral modeling
• The free plan caps at approximately 3,000 sessions per month, which is low for products approaching meaningful traffic

💲 Pricing

Smartlook's free plan includes approximately 3,000 sessions per month with heatmaps and funnels included, and 1 month of data retention. The Pro plan starts at $55 per month (billed annually) for 5,000 sessions per month with 3 months of data retention. Higher-volume plans scale upward. Enterprise plans are custom-quoted.

Final thoughts

The better question is not which tool is best. It is what is actually limiting your team today. Is it unpredictable pricing? Or is it the effort required to maintain instrumentation?

If cost clarity is the issue, Mixpanel offers transparent forecasting, while PostHog provides modular pricing so you only pay for what you use. If engineering overhead is the bottleneck, Heap’s autocapture model reduces tracking setup and speeds up insight generation.

For adoption-focused teams, Pendo emphasizes in-app engagement and feedback, not just measurement. For privacy-sensitive organizations, Matomo delivers full data control through self-hosting. If your needs are limited to web analytics, GA4 may be sufficient, while PostHog remains stronger for teams that need integrated replay and mobile coverage.

Got an article suggestion? Let us know

Explore more

7 Best Amplitude Alternatives in 2026

Looking for Amplitude alternatives? Compare 7 tools in 2026 including Mixpanel, PostHog, Pendo, and Matomo, with pricing verified from official sources.

7 Best FullStory Alternatives in 2026

FullStory's opaque pricing and session volume costs push teams to look for alternatives. Here are the 7 best FullStory alternatives in 2026, with honest pricing breakdowns and feature comparisons.

7 Best Microsoft Clarity Alternatives in 2026

Microsoft Clarity is free and unlimited, but it has real gaps. Compare 7 top alternatives in 2026, including PostHog, Hotjar, Smartlook, and FullStory, with verified pricing and honest trade-off breakdowns.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.