Amplitude

KEEP IT

The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying.

Behavioural analytics at company scale: events in, cohorts and experiment results out, with the same definitions shared across product, growth and marketing teams.

Promptfree, for everyone, and the only version there is

Do not rebuild Amplitude. Build the thin layer that answers your own questions and leave the warehouse to do the work.

WHAT TO BUILD INSTEAD
- A typed event client for web and mobile that writes to your existing warehouse (BigQuery, Snowflake or Postgres) and nowhere else
- A schema file listing every event and its properties, checked in and reviewed like code
- dbt models producing three tables: sessions, funnel steps and weekly retention cohorts

THE CLIENT
- One function, track(name, properties), with the name typed against the schema so a typo fails at build time
- Batching, retry with backoff, and a queue that survives a page unload
- No third-party script, no cookie: a first-party id in localStorage, replaced by the user id after sign-in

THE MODELS
- Sessionise raw events with a 30-minute inactivity window
- Funnels as a SQL macro taking an ordered list of event names and a window
- Retention as first-seen cohort by week, materialised nightly

THE DASHBOARD
- Metabase or a handful of server-rendered pages over the models; do not write a chart library
- Every chart states the window and the last event timestamp it saw

WHAT THIS DELIBERATELY DOES NOT DO
- Live cohort sync into ad platforms
- Experiment analysis — use the statistics library in the warehouse, not a home-made t-test
- Sub-second interactive exploration over billions of rows

Include a README explaining the schema review process and the cost per terabyte scanned, because that is the bill this replaces.

What you lose

Behavioural cohorts that recompute continuously and can be pushed into ad platforms and email tools
Experiment analysis wired to the same events, with sequential testing rather than a naive p-value
Cross-platform identity: the same person on web, iOS and Android counted once
A warehouse-native mode that reads your own Snowflake or BigQuery rather than a second copy of the data
Governance and access control that a security review will actually accept

If you would rather not build

Mixpanel — paid, similar event model, cheaper at low volume
Heap — paid, autocapture rather than instrumentation

The escape hatch

open source · no votes, no paid placement

PostHog

Product analytics, session replay and flags in one self-hostable stack.

PostHog/posthogfree · open source

Snowplow

Event pipeline that lands raw, validated events in your own warehouse.

snowplow/snowplowfree · open source

Why this verdict

our own opinion · changed only by a person

28/100

Verdict no at 28: the events are yours and the warehouse can hold them, but what Amplitude sells is speed of exploration and shared definitions across teams that do not write SQL. A build gets you the numbers and loses the audience for them.

History

tracked since 9 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten

Interest · last 30 days

Nothing recorded yet. This chart fills in once the page has visitors, votes or prompt copies — it will not draw a flat line to look busy.

Questions about Amplitude

answered from the record above

Is Amplitude free?

No — the plan we track is $61 a month. Plus starts around $61/month billed annually for a low monthly-tracked-user allowance; Growth and Enterprise are quoted on request.

Can you replace Amplitude by building your own?

KEEP IT. The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying. Replacement score 28 out of 100, build time longer than it saves. Read what you lose before you decide.

How much does Amplitude cost?

$61 a month on Plus — $732 a year. Recorded 9 Aug 2026.

What do you lose by replacing Amplitude?

Behavioural cohorts that recompute continuously and can be pushed into ad platforms and email tools; Experiment analysis wired to the same events, with sequential testing rather than a naive p-value; Cross-platform identity: the same person on web, iOS and Android counted once; A warehouse-native mode that reads your own Snowflake or BigQuery rather than a second copy of the data; Governance and access control that a security review will actually accept. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.

Is there an open-source alternative to Amplitude?

Yes: PostHog, Snowplow. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.

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