Two mature product analytics platforms that now overlap on almost everything.
| Mixpanel | Amplitude | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 1M events per month, 10K session replays, no card required | 2M events per month, 10K session replays, no card required |
| Paid entry plan | Growth: usage-based, first 1M events free, scales to 20M events per month | Plus: usage-based, first 2M events free, scales to 70M events per month |
| Enterprise | Custom pricing, very high event volumes, dedicated support | Growth and Enterprise tiers, custom pricing |
| Pricing model | Per event, with volume discounts | Per event; the old published $49 per month Plus price is gone |
| Session replay | 10K per month free, up to 500K per month on Growth | 10K free, 20K on Growth, 50K on Enterprise per month |
| Experiments and flags | Included; metered by monthly experiment users, flags capped by plan | Included; limited on Free, expands with tier |
| Analysis depth | Strong core reports, simpler to learn | Deeper behavioral cohorts and exploration, steeper curve |
| AI features | Natural-language querying, growing | AI agents and AI-visibility tracking built into 2026 plans |
| Startup program | First year free for companies under 5 years old with up to $8M raised | Free tier alone covers 2M events, which many early teams never exceed |
| Best fit | Teams that want answers fast | Teams building a formal growth and experimentation practice |
Both vendors moved from seat- and user-based pricing to event-based billing, and both keep a genuinely useful free plan. Mixpanel's free plan includes up to 1 million events per month, 10,000 session replays, and a small experimentation allowance. The paid Growth plan keeps the first million events free and bills usage beyond that, up to 20 million events per month, with enterprise deals custom-priced above that. Mixpanel also runs a startup program that gives qualifying companies, under five years old with up to 8 million dollars raised, their first year free.
Amplitude's free plan carries a bigger allowance, 2 million events per month, plus 10,000 session replays and limited experiments. The Plus plan works the way Mixpanel Growth does, first 2 million events free, then usage-based billing up to 70 million events per month. Amplitude used to publish a $49 per month starting price for Plus but had moved to usage-only pricing by mid-2026. Growth and Enterprise are custom-quoted and mostly gate collaboration features, permissions, higher replay volumes, and unlimited experimentation rather than core analytics.
For both vendors, the number that predicts your bill is not the sticker price, it is your event volume, and that is a function of how you instrument. A tracking plan that logs every scroll and hover will cost several times one that tracks meaningful actions only.
I lean Mixpanel for small teams without a dedicated analyst. The interface gets you from a question to a chart faster, and in practice that decides whether a team keeps using the tool after the first month. Funnels, retention, and flows cover most of what an early product team actually asks.
The economics are friendly at small scale too. A million free events per month absorbs a typical early-stage product, and the Growth plan grows with usage instead of forcing a plan jump. The startup program can push the paid decision out a full year for qualifying companies.
The trade-off shows up later. Very complex behavioral questions, layered cohort logic, and large-organization governance are areas where Amplitude has historically been stronger, and if you expect to land there, factor in the cost of migrating instrumentation.
I lean Amplitude when the team plans to run a real experimentation and growth practice rather than just read dashboards. Its behavioral cohort tooling goes deeper, its experimentation stack is mature, and the governance features on the upper tiers fit organizations where many teams share one analytics platform.
The free tier is also simply bigger. Two million events per month is double Mixpanel's allowance, and the Plus plan's ceiling of 70 million events gives you a long runway before you ever talk to sales. If you want to defer procurement conversations as long as possible, that runway matters.
The cost is learning curve. Amplitude rewards teams that invest in taxonomy and training, and it punishes casual use; I have seen licenses go unused because nobody got past the setup. Budget onboarding time, not just subscription dollars.
First, most early-stage teams never leave the free tier of either product. The deciding question is not which paid plan is cheaper, it is which free tier fits your growth path and how painful switching would be once your instrumentation and saved reports live in one of them.
Second, your real cost is instrumentation, not subscription. The engineering time spent defining events, naming them consistently, and maintaining the tracking plan dwarfs the software bill at most companies. Routing events through a neutral layer, a CDP or your warehouse, keeps you portable between these two vendors and makes the choice reversible.
Third, the old framing is stale. For years the shorthand was Amplitude for enterprises, Mixpanel for startups. Both companies now sell hard into both segments, both added session replay, flags, and experiments, and both restructured pricing around events. Comparisons written before roughly 2024 describe products that no longer exist in that form.
These are near-peers, but I no longer think that means flip a coin. My default is Mixpanel for a small team that mainly needs answers from its data quickly, and Amplitude when behavioral depth or a formal experimentation program is the point, or when the bigger free allowance matters. Run both trials against the same two weeks of real events, have the actual end users build three reports in each, and pick the one they finished in. Then protect the choice by keeping your event instrumentation portable, because the vendor you pick today is not the last pricing change you will see.