Amplitude vs Plausible Analytics

Amplitude is a digital analytics platform from San Francisco, founded in 2012 by Spenser Skates, Curtis Liu and Jeffrey Wang and listed on Nasdaq (AMPL) since its 2021 direct listing. It started as event-based product analytics for mobile apps and now helps product, growth and marketing teams see how people use their apps and websites and what drives conversion and retention.

The platform combines product and web analytics (funnels, retention, cohorts, journeys), session replay and heatmaps, feature flags and A/B testing, in-app guides and surveys (from the 2024 Command AI acquisition) and audience syncing to ad and messaging tools. AI agents can monitor dashboards, explain metric changes and answer questions, and an MCP server exposes Amplitude data to AI tools. Free covers 2 million events a month; Plus is usage-based; Growth and Enterprise are custom-priced through sales.

It fits product-led companies that need self-serve analysis for non-technical teams. Mixpanel is the closest rival with simpler pricing; PostHog is cheaper and open source with an engineering focus; Pendo is stronger on in-app guidance for B2B software; Google Analytics is free but built for marketing attribution.

In July 2026 Amplitude dropped the fixed 49 dollar Plus tier based on monthly tracked users for event-based pricing from 0 dollars, and the Free plan now includes session replay, guides and AI agents. Startups with under 20 employees and under 10 million dollars raised can apply for a free year of Growth.

Plausible is a lightweight, privacy-first web analytics service built as a direct alternative to Google Analytics. The tracking script is under 1 KB, no cookies are set, and no personal data is stored, so most sites can use it without a consent banner under GDPR, PECR and CCPA.

The dashboard fits on a single page: visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, visit duration, top sources, top pages, countries, devices, plus goals, funnels and custom properties on the Business plan. Google Search Console integration pulls in search terms. Everything is also available through a stats API.

Plausible is open source (AGPL) and can be self-hosted for free as the Community Edition; the hosted service runs on EU infrastructure and is operated by a bootstrapped company in Estonia.

Plausible is developed by a small, fully remote team and is funded entirely by subscriptions, with its revenue and plans discussed openly. For site owners in Turkey, the absence of cookies simplifies KVKK cookie consent in most setups, although legal teams should still review the configuration. Agencies can manage many client sites from one account and share read-only dashboards through links, which keeps client reporting simple.