Alternatives · 2026
Ranked, scored and explained. What each one does better, what you give up, and when staying put is the right call.
Amplitude has the most generous free tier in product analytics at two million events a month, so cost is rarely the trigger. Complexity is. Amplitude rewards someone who understands behavioural cohorts and punishes teams who installed it hoping the tool would supply the hypothesis, and half-configured implementations that nobody trusts are common enough to be a pattern rather than an accident.
The second reason is fit: it is regularly bought to measure a marketing website, which is the wrong instrument for that job at any price.
When to stay put. Keep Amplitude if somebody's job includes answering behavioural questions and they are genuinely using cohort and pathfinder analysis. Nothing else here goes as deep into which early behaviour predicts retention, the free tier gives you the whole platform rather than a cut-down version, and every plan has unlimited seats.
| Tool | From | Free tier | Cookies | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mixpanel | Free then usage-based | Yes, 1M events a month with unlimited seats | Yes, by default | 6.5 |
| PostHog | Free then usage-based | Yes, and it is the most generous on this list | Yes, by default | 7.1 |
| Statsig | Free then usage-based | Yes, and unusually large | Yes, by default | 6.3 |
| Heap | Free then quoted | Yes, with a session limit | Yes, by default | 5.8 |
| Absolutely Analytics | $9 per month | No free tier. A 30-day trial of the exact tier you picked | None, so no consent banner | 8.9 |
| Matomo | Free self-hosted; cloud from €22 | Yes, the entire on-premise product | Optional, and it runs cookieless if configured | 7.0 |
The direct rival and usually the right move if complexity was the problem. Clearer funnel and retention reports that a product manager can build unaided, unlimited seats, and experiments and flags now on the free plan.
From Free then usage-based. Yes, by default. Full review →
The answer if you want breadth rather than depth. Analytics, replay, flags, experiments, error tracking and surveys in one tool, open source, with a free tier most teams never exceed.
From Free then usage-based. Yes, by default. Full review →
The answer if the questions were causal rather than descriptive. An experimentation platform with proper statistical machinery, and a warehouse-native mode so events never leave your infrastructure.
From Free then usage-based. Yes, by default. Full review →
The answer if the recurring pain was failing to instrument things in advance. Autocapture with retroactive event definition means a question asked today can be answered with months of history.
From Free then quoted. Yes, by default. Full review →
The answer if you are measuring a website. It costs $9, weighs 1,270 bytes, needs no consent banner and no taxonomy, and answers the questions a marketing site actually has.
From $9 per month. None, so no consent banner. Full review →
The answer if you need depth with ownership. Funnels, user flows, cohorts and attribution on hardware you control, free to self-host.
From Free self-hosted; cloud from €22. Optional, and it runs cookieless if configured. Full review →
Yes, noticeably. Mixpanel's core funnel and retention reports are buildable by a non-specialist in an afternoon. Amplitude's analytical model rewards someone who understands behavioural cohorts, which is a strength if you have that person and a trap if you do not.
Amplitude, on volume: 2 million events a month against Mixpanel's 1 million and PostHog's 1 million. Amplitude also gives the full platform on the free plan. PostHog's free tier is broader across flags and error tracking rather than deeper on events.
No. It is heavy, it sets cookies, it needs consent in the UK and EU, and its analytical model expects an event taxonomy a content site does not have. Use a cookieless web analytics tool and keep Amplitude for the product.
Moderately. The SDK instrumentation layer is portable in principle, since most product analytics tools consume similar event shapes, but cohort definitions, computed properties and saved charts have to be rebuilt rather than exported.
These are desk reviews and the ordering reflects my own weighted scoring, which is published in full. There are no affiliate links on this page and no vendor has paid to appear on it. Read the full Amplitude review, or send me a correction.