Amplitude vs Umami

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.

Umami is a simple, privacy-focused web analytics tool created by Mike Cao and maintained by Umami Software. The code is open source under the MIT licence and can be self-hosted for free, and the company also runs Umami Cloud. It collects pageviews, visitors, referrers, devices, browsers, countries and custom events without cookies or personal data, so in many setups no consent banner is required.

The dashboard is minimal and fast, with realtime data, page and referrer breakdowns, UTM tracking, custom events and properties, and a reports section that adds funnels, retention, goals, user journeys and attribution. Teams can share access, publish public dashboards and use the REST API to pull data elsewhere. Self-hosting runs on Postgres or MySQL with Docker or one-click deploys to Vercel and Railway. Umami Cloud has a free Hobby tier for one website, paid Pro and Business plans with more events, longer retention and team features, plus Enterprise options.

Umami fits developers, indie makers, agencies and small teams who want free, private analytics they control. It has fewer integrations than Plausible, its advanced reports are newer and less mature, self-hosting requires a database, and it offers far less depth than Google Analytics for advertising attribution. Plausible is the more polished paid alternative, Fathom is another privacy-first hosted option, Matomo covers more GA-like features, and Google Analytics remains necessary for many advertisers.