Last updated: January 2026

What Is Amplitude?

If you build a digital product, you have probably bumped into Amplitude. The San Francisco-based platform promises to translate every button-click, screen-swipe, and checkout into crystal-clear insights your whole team can act on. In plain English, Amplitude is a self-service analytics hub that tracks user behavior, explains why people convert (or don't), and lets you trigger experiments, in-app guides, or marketing campaigns—all from one dashboard.

With over 3,000 customers including Walmart, Ford, and Atlassian, Amplitude has become the de facto standard for product analytics. The platform handles billions of events daily and has evolved from a pure analytics tool into a comprehensive growth operating system.

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Key Features Explained

Analytics Core

Amplitude's bread-and-butter charts—funnels, retention curves, cohorts, path analysis—are smoother and faster than ever. You can save metrics, build dashboards for web and mobile, and drill from a macro funnel down to a single user trail in seconds. Unlimited saved charts start on the Plus plan.

The charting engine handles complex queries that would choke traditional SQL dashboards. Want to see how users who completed onboarding in under 5 minutes retain versus those who took longer? That's a few clicks, not a data engineering ticket.

Ask Amplitude (Generative AI)

Typing "Why did weekly active users drop after July?" into a chat box builds the query, runs the math, and surfaces an answer with suggested follow-ups. Under the hood, Ask Amplitude combines large-language models with your product's taxonomy, so non-analysts can explore data without SQL. This democratizes analytics across the entire organization.

Experiment & Feature Flags

Ship A/B/n tests, target by cohort, and view results in the same charts your PMs already trust. Visual page editor and multi-armed bandits available. Sticky bucketing, CUPED variance reduction, and mutual-exclusion groups included in Growth and Enterprise tiers. No more juggling separate experimentation tools.

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Session Replay

Numbers tell you what happened; replays show you why. Turn on the browser SDK, and every user session becomes a filmstrip tied to the events you already track. Click a rage-click spike, watch the replay, then ship a fix. Available on every plan—even the free Starter. This feature bridges the gap between quantitative and qualitative insights.

Activation (CDP)

Formerly Amplitude CDP, Activation unifies identities, cleans data, and syncs behavioral cohorts to ad networks, Braze, Klaviyo, or your warehouse in real time. Predictive cohorts use machine learning to flag users likely to churn or purchase. This turns analytics from passive reporting into active growth engineering.

Guides & Surveys

Drop tooltips, banners, checklists, and NPS prompts exactly when users need them. "Annoyance monitoring" throttles pop-ups automatically, and every guide inherits Amplitude's segmentation and A/B testing muscle. In-app engagement without a separate tool.

Real-World Use Cases

Product Teams

PMs use Amplitude to measure feature adoption, identify friction in user flows, and prioritize roadmap decisions based on actual behavior data.

Growth Marketing

Marketing teams sync behavioral cohorts to ad platforms via Activation, creating lookalike audiences from your best customers. Pair with Klaviyo for email or ManyChat for messaging.

Engineering

Developers use feature flags to ship safely, roll out to percentages of users, and kill underperforming experiments instantly.

Pricing (2026)

See official pricing for current rates.

Starter (Free) — Up to 50K monthly tracked users (MTUs) or 10M events, core analytics, unlimited feature flags, Session Replay, and AI chat in beta.

Plus (from $49/month) — 300K MTUs, unlimited saved charts, behavioral cohorts, web experiment segmentation, live chat support.

Growth (contact sales) — Custom MTUs, advanced behavioral analysis, causal insights, predictive audiences, real-time streaming, full Experiment, dedicated CSM.

Enterprise (contact sales) — Cross-product analytics, granular permissions, multi-armed bandits, warehouse-native analytics, SCIM, EU data residency.

Pros and Cons

What We Like

Generous free tier (50K MTUs)—actually usable for startups

AI-powered natural language queries democratize data access

Session replay included on all plans

Experiment and feature flags built-in—no separate tool needed

Real-time cohort syncing to marketing tools via Activation

Warehouse-native option for data purists

What Could Be Better

Learning curve for tracking plan setup—requires upfront planning

Growth/Enterprise pricing requires sales call

Mobile session replay still maturing

Can be overkill for simple websites without complex user journeys

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Amplitude vs. Alternatives

vs. Mixpanel: Mixpanel is more affordable for smaller teams with simpler pricing. Amplitude offers deeper experimentation, CDP features, and session replay.

vs. Google Analytics: GA4 is free but lacks product analytics depth. Amplitude excels at funnels, cohorts, retention, and behavioral segmentation that GA4 can't match.

vs. Heap: Heap auto-captures everything which is convenient but noisy. Amplitude requires intentional tracking but offers more control and cleaner data.

vs. PostHog: PostHog is open-source and developer-focused. Amplitude is more polished for cross-functional teams and non-technical users.

For social monitoring alongside product analytics, see Brand24. For e-commerce analytics, pair with Synder for financial insights.

FAQ

Is there a free plan?

Yes. Starter is free and includes up to 50K MTUs, 10M events, unlimited feature flags, and AI chat. Plenty for early-stage apps and MVPs.

What data sources does Amplitude connect with?

SDKs for web, iOS, Android, React Native, Unity, and server-side. Warehouse data (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift) and real-time streaming via Amazon Kinesis and Google Pub/Sub. Activation syncs to ad platforms, email tools, and back to your warehouse.

How technical do you need to be?

Engineers define the tracking plan initially, but once events flow, product managers and marketers can slice data or launch feature flags without code. AI chat lowers the learning curve significantly.

Who is Amplitude best for?

Teams building SaaS, e-commerce, or mobile apps focused on user engagement. If you care about retention, onboarding, or monetization, it fits. Pure content sites may find setup overhead heavy.

What support does Amplitude provide?

All plans include Amplitude Academy and community forums. Plus adds chat, Growth unlocks named CSM, Enterprise gets 1-day SLA plus professional services.

Final Verdict

Amplitude feels less like an analytics tool and more like a growth operating system. From a free plan that actually works to AI-assisted exploration, it bridges the gap between raw events and revenue-driving action.

If your roadmap depends on understanding customer behavior at speed, Amplitude is hard to ignore. Pair it with Klaviyo for customer engagement and Synder for financial analytics to build a complete data stack.

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