GrowthBook

growthbook.io

ALMOST

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.

Promptfree, for everyone, and the only version there is
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

$0

Feature flags with experiment analysis run against your own warehouse.

growthbook/growthbookfree · open source

Unleash

$0

Feature 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

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 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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