GrowthBook
A weekend of work, and real gaps remain.
Feature flags and experimentation over your own data warehouse: assign users to variants, then compute the results against the metrics already in your database.
Build me an experiment assignment service and a results query. The statistics are the risk, not the code. STACK - Node service, SQLite for definitions, a JSON snapshot on a CDN for delivery - Results computed in your existing warehouse, not in the service ASSIGNMENT - Hash of experiment key plus subject id, mapped to a bucket in [0,1) - Deterministic and stable: the same subject gets the same variant across services and deploys - A subject already exposed never moves, even if traffic weights change; record the weights in force at exposure EXPOSURE - Log one row per subject per experiment on first exposure only - Batched, asynchronous, and never blocking the request THE ANALYSIS, WHERE EXPERIMENTS ARE USUALLY GOT WRONG - Join exposures to metrics by subject id in the warehouse; never copy metrics into the service - Report the relative difference with a confidence interval, never a bare p-value - Fix the sample size before starting and refuse to display a result before it is reached - Implement one method properly — a sequential test or a Bayesian posterior — and document which GUARDRAILS - Named metrics that must not degrade; the results page shows them beside the primary metric - An automatic kill switch if a guardrail crosses a threshold with the interval clear of zero SRM CHECK - Test the observed split against the intended split every run; a mismatch invalidates the experiment and must be shown loudly Include a README on the hashing scheme, the stopping rule and the SRM test.
What you lose
- Experiment analysis run against your own warehouse, with Bayesian and sequential methods already implemented
- Guardrail metrics that stop a rollout automatically
- SDKs for a dozen languages with local evaluation
- A results interface a product manager can read without a statistician beside them
- The hosting, upgrades and support that the fee actually pays for
If you would rather not build
- Optimizely — paid, enterprise experimentation
The escape hatch
open source · no votes, no paid placement
GrowthBook
$0Feature flags with experiment analysis run against your own warehouse.
growthbook/growthbookfree · open source
Unleash
$0Feature flag server with gradual rollouts, segments and SDKs for most languages.
Unleash/unleashfree · open source
Why this verdict
our own opinion · changed only by a person
66/100
Verdict kinda at 66: the assignment service is a weekend and the product is open source anyway, so self-hosting is a supported path rather than a rebuild. The score is held up by that and held down by the statistics — the sample ratio mismatch check alone catches more bad experiments than any feature.
History
tracked since 9 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten
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 GrowthBook
answered from the record above
Is GrowthBook free?
No — the plan we track is $20 a month. Pro at $20 per seat per month; the platform is open source, so the fee is for the hosted version and the managed features.
Can you replace GrowthBook by building your own?
ALMOST. A weekend of work, and real gaps remain. Replacement score 66 out of 100, build time a weekend. Read what you lose before you decide.
How much does GrowthBook cost?
$20 a month on Pro — $240 a year. Recorded 9 Aug 2026.
What do you lose by replacing GrowthBook?
Experiment analysis run against your own warehouse, with Bayesian and sequential methods already implemented; Guardrail metrics that stop a rollout automatically; SDKs for a dozen languages with local evaluation; A results interface a product manager can read without a statistician beside them; The hosting, upgrades and support that the fee actually pays for. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to GrowthBook?
Yes: GrowthBook, Unleash. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.
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