Leaving Amplitude?
Amplitude is enterprise product analytics: priced by usage (monthly tracked users and event volume) so a spike inflates the bill, with a free tier and a self-serve Plus plan but a sales call for Growth and Enterprise, and it leans on event taxonomy and schema planning for its deeper reports. smolanalytics is self-serve, cheap, yours to own, tells you what to fix, and lets your own AI answer questions for free.
the same week, counted both ways
These are our own numbers for this site, not a benchmark we designed to win. Over 7 days a JavaScript pixel — which is what Amplitude uses — recorded 33 visitors. Reporting from the server over the same week recorded 940 fetches by 11 AI crawlers across 174 pages.
Those reads happen whether or not anyone clicks through. When an assistant answers in place there is no visit for Amplitude to record, and nothing in its reports says so.
Not a knock on Amplitude: no pixel can see this, because these crawlers execute no JavaScript. It is a different data source, and ours reports both halves on one log. Measured 2026-08-21 · recomputed hourly, never hand-typed.
is smolanalytics a good Amplitude alternative?
Yes, if Amplitude's price or weight is the problem. Amplitude is enterprise product analytics: priced by monthly tracked users, so a traffic spike inflates the bill, often sold through a sales call, and it expects event taxonomy and schema planning before you get value. Its own CEO has said pricing is the top cited issue for adopting Amplitude. smolanalytics is an isolated instance per project, free for 14 days on the full trial, then $19/month, self-serve, no call, and your data exports in one file, any time. You drop one snippet and ask a question in plain English; it leads with a verdict on what to fix, and your own Claude or Cursor answers over MCP on your own model, computed from the same reports the dashboard renders. And if the product you measure is itself an AI agent, the same engine computes its observability from those events (tool-call latency p50/p90/p99, error taxonomy, and conversation health like re-ask and resolution), which Amplitude does not do. It is built for builders and small teams who want the answer, not for an enterprise that needs Amplitude's depth and governance.
why people leave Amplitude
“For the last 5 years, pricing is the top cited issue for adopting Product Analytics generally and Amplitude specifically.”
Amplitude's CEO, on X
Amplitude vs smolanalytics
| Amplitude | smolanalytics | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it is built for | enterprise teams with analysts | builders and small teams who want the answer |
| Pricing model | by usage (tracked users and event volume), spikes inflate it | flat and cheap, $6 per million overage, self-serve |
| Getting started | taxonomy planning for precision, or one-snippet Autocapture to start | drop one snippet, ask a question, done |
| Own your data | hosted only, on their servers | an isolated instance per project, exports in one file |
| Tells you what to fix | charts, dashboards, and paid AI agents | a verdict, every morning |
| Ask in plain English | their own AI feature | your own AI over MCP, free, computed not guessed |
when to keep Amplitude
- You are an enterprise with a data team that needs Amplitude's depth: advanced behavioral cohorts, enterprise-scale experimentation, and governance at scale. smolanalytics ships A/B experiments, feature flags, heatmaps, surveys, and a session inspector, but stays lighter than Amplitude's enterprise platform and does not replace that.
- Budget and analyst time are not your constraint, and you want the full experimentation-and-analytics platform in one place.
Self-serve in 30 seconds
# no sales call, no taxonomy workshop npx smolanalytics init # paste your project key, it wires the snippet + MCP
The answer, without the enterprise weight or the sales call. Start the 14-day trial, and ask your own AI anything: no model to pay for, no number it can make up.
questions
Is smolanalytics a good Amplitude alternative?
Yes, if Amplitude's price or weight is the problem. Amplitude is priced by monthly tracked users (a spike inflates the bill), often sold through a sales call, and expects taxonomy planning before you see value. smolanalytics is self-serve, free for 14 days on the full trial, then $19/month; you drop one snippet and ask a question in plain English, it leads with a verdict on what to fix, and your own AI answers over MCP for free. It is deliberately narrower than Amplitude's enterprise platform: it ships A/B experiments and feature flags, but not enterprise-scale experimentation or data governance.
Why is it so much cheaper than Amplitude?
It does not price by monthly tracked users, so a traffic spike does not blow up the bill, and it never meters sites or teammates. Pricing is flat with $6-per-million overage, self-serve with no sales call, an emailed receipt for every charge, and a dashboard that never locks. The engine stores about 7 bytes per event, which is why the flat price holds.
Can I move my Amplitude data over?
Yes. Take an Amplitude Export (the Export API's gzipped JSON) and hand it to your connected coding agent: your project page's import card writes the exact prompt, and the agent converts each row (event_type becomes the event name, user_id the distinct id, event_time the timestamp, event and user properties merged) and streams it to POST /v1/events with your write key — the same documented ingest endpoint as the SDKs, with a 3-event preview before anything is sent. Your history comes with you instead of starting from zero.
What does Amplitude do that smolanalytics doesn't?
Amplitude's enterprise depth: large-scale experimentation, advanced behavioral cohorts, and data governance for big teams. smolanalytics now ships A/B experiments, feature flags, heatmaps, surveys, and a session inspector too; it stays deliberately lighter than Amplitude's enterprise platform, for builders who want funnels, retention, paths, and a straight answer on what to fix, that they own and can ask in plain English.
Get the verdict, not another dashboard.
You shipped all quarter; this tells you which of it did anything. It finds what changed, names who it hit, prices it when the metric carries revenue, and shows the receipt when it heals itself. Mark a finding acted and it verifies the fix when the metric recovers. One snippet, your data exports in one file. 14-day trial at Pro limits, no card.