Heap

KEEP IT

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

Product analytics that captures every click, form change and page view automatically, so you can define an event after the fact and still have the history for it.

Promptfree, for everyone, and the only version there is

Do not rebuild autocapture. Build named events instead, and accept the trade.

THE TRADE, STATED PLAINLY
- Autocapture means you can answer a question you had not thought of yet. Named events mean you cannot. That is the whole difference, and it is worth understanding before you start

STACK
- One endpoint appending to Postgres, a dashboard page

EVENTS
- name, properties as JSON, hashed visitor, timestamp
- A shared constants file so an event name is never a string literal at a call site

FUNNELS AND RETENTION
- A funnel is an ordered list of names and a window; one self-join per step
- Retention is a cohort by first-seen week against activity in later weeks

IF YOU WANT A LITTLE AUTOCAPTURE
- One delegated click listener recording the nearest element with a data-track attribute
- That attribute is the contract; anything without it is deliberately not recorded

Include the schema, a funnel query, a retention query and the click listener.

What you lose

Autocapture: the ability to define a metric today and still see last quarter, because everything was recorded
A virtual event layer that survives a front-end refactor without losing the series
Data governance over an event stream nobody had to name in advance
The storage and query engine that makes retroactive analysis affordable

If you would rather not build

Mixpanel or Amplitude, for named events with a generous free tier
Your own event table, if you know what you want to measure

The escape hatch

open source · no votes, no paid placement

PostHog

Has autocapture, session replay and flags, self-hostable.

PostHog/posthogfree · open source

Countly

Self-hosted product analytics with a plugin system.

Countly/countly-serverfree · open source

Why this verdict

our own opinion · changed only by a person

28/100

Verdict no at 28. The point of Heap is answering questions you had not asked yet, and that is a storage and query problem rather than an application one.

History

tracked since 10 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 Heap

answered from the record above

Is Heap free?

Quoted per account on session volume rather than published as a monthly price, so there is no headline figure to record.

Can you replace Heap 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 Heap cost?

Heap has no public headline price. The tier we track is the entry plan.

What do you lose by replacing Heap?

Autocapture: the ability to define a metric today and still see last quarter, because everything was recorded; A virtual event layer that survives a front-end refactor without losing the series; Data governance over an event stream nobody had to name in advance; The storage and query engine that makes retroactive analysis affordable. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.

Is there an open-source alternative to Heap?

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

Related entries

same category first, most replaced first

All 21 in Analytics

Coming soon

Every week, something stops being worth paying for.

New verdicts, prices that moved, entries added. One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click.

free forever · no tracking pixel · every prompt stays free on the site