Choose Mixpanel if you have a lean, less technical team that wants fast, readable answers. Choose Amplitude if you have a product-led team that needs deeper behavioural analysis and more customisation. Both track events, so the real decision comes down to who will use the tool, how many events you send and how clean your tracking plan is.
This guide compares the two on features, free plans, pricing and team fit. It also covers what Australian businesses should check on privacy. Near the end you will find short answers to the two other comparisons readers often search alongside this one: Fullstory vs Hotjar, and Intercom vs Drift.
TL;DR
- Mixpanel suits lean teams that want quick, readable insight. Amplitude suits teams that need depth and customisation, according to buyer interviews.
- Mixpanel’s Free plan is capped at 1M events a month. Amplitude’s Free plan includes 2 million events a month.
- Whichever you pick, a clean event plan matters more than the logo on the dashboard. Fix your tagging first.
- Australian teams should check what personal information their tracking collects before switching on any tool.
- For Fullstory vs Hotjar, think of what you need to know (technical friction) versus why users leave (qualitative). For Intercom vs Drift, Drift is being wound down.
Table of Contents
- Mixpanel vs Amplitude at a glance
- Pricing and free plans
- How they differ in day-to-day use
- Which one fits your team?
- Where ecommerce analytics fits in the bigger picture
- Privacy: what Australian businesses should check
- Fullstory vs Hotjar in short
- Intercom vs Drift in short
- Perspective
- How to decide in one week
- Turn your analytics into revenue decisions
- FAQ
- Sources
Mixpanel vs Amplitude at a glance
Both tools are product analytics platforms built on events. An event is an action, such as viewing a product, adding to cart or starting checkout. You send those events, then slice them into funnels, retention curves and user segments. Mixpanel is described as tracking event-based behaviour to measure feature adoption, funnels, retention and user segments. Note that this description comes from Amplitude’s own comparison page.
Amplitude positions itself as a digital analytics platform with AI built in, offering analytics, session replay and experimentation in one place.
| Factor | Mixpanel | Amplitude |
|---|---|---|
| Core idea | Event-based product analytics | Digital analytics platform with replay and experimentation |
| Best for | Lean, less technical teams wanting fast insight | Product-led teams needing depth and customisation |
| Plans | Free, Growth, Enterprise | Free, Plus, Growth, Enterprise |
| Free allowance | 1M events a month | 2 million events a month |
| Pricing basis | Event volume | Event volume and feature needs |
| Learning curve | Readable reports, quicker start | More depth, more to learn |
The plan names and free allowances come from each vendor’s pricing page. The team-fit rows come from buyer interviews rather than the vendors.
Pricing and free plans
Pricing is where most readers start, and the honest answer is that both are event-based. The more events you send, the more you pay, so your tracking plan is a cost lever as well as an analytics one.
Is Mixpanel free to use?
Yes, within limits. Mixpanel’s Free plan is available for as long as you want and is capped at 1M events a month. If you pass the cap, data collection continues but querying pauses until you upgrade to Growth. On the 1M-event Growth plan (for plans purchased after February 2025), additional events are charged at $0.00028 each.
That is a per-event rate, so work out the maths on your own traffic. Ten million extra events at that rate is a very different bill from a hundred thousand. Mixpanel quotes in US dollars, so Australian teams should also allow for exchange-rate movement and any GST treatment with their accountant.
What does Amplitude cost?
Amplitude offers Free, Plus, Growth and Enterprise plans. The Free plan includes 2 million events a month, and pricing beyond that depends on event volume and the features you need. Because feature tiers matter, a team that wants experimentation or session replay should price those in from the start rather than adding them later.
Some comparison pages list lower or higher entry prices and older free allowances. Prices change often, so confirm the current figure on the vendor’s own page before you budget.
What the free tiers really mean for a store
A small Shopify store can burn through events faster than you would expect. Every page view, product view, add to cart and checkout step counts. As a rough illustration, if each visit fires ten events, 100,000 visits a month is already 1 million events. That is a worked example, not a benchmark, so count your own events.
A sensible habit is to track the 15 to 25 events that map to revenue and skip the rest. That keeps you inside a free tier longer and makes dashboards easier to read.
How they differ in day-to-day use
Learning curve and readability
Buyers who compared the two say Mixpanel suits lean, less technical teams wanting fast, readable insight. A founder or marketing manager can usually build a funnel without help from an analyst.
Amplitude tends to reward teams with a dedicated product or data person. The reports are similar in type, but the depth of behavioural analysis and customisation is where it pulls ahead for product-led teams.
Depth of analysis
Both tools cover funnels, retention and segmentation. Amplitude’s pitch is that teams work from a single behavioural data foundation for analytics, session replay and activation instead of juggling specialised tools. That is the vendor’s perspective, and it will appeal if you want fewer logins. If you only need clear funnels and retention, a simpler tool may be all you use.
Replay and experimentation
Amplitude bundles session replay and experimentation into its platform, as its pricing page describes. If you run A/B tests on landing pages or checkout, check which plan tier includes them.
Who uses what
Amplitude’s customer journey product is listed as in use at Atlassian, Canva, Linktree and Octopus Deploy. These are mostly software companies. An ecommerce brand has different needs: fewer feature releases, more focus on traffic quality, conversion and repeat purchase.
Which one fits your team?
Pick Mixpanel when:
- One or two people will own analytics alongside other jobs.
- You want to answer questions like “where do people drop out of checkout?” quickly.
- You expect to stay near a free tier for a while.
Pick Amplitude when:
- You have a product or data person who will build custom analyses.
- You want analytics, replay and experimentation under one roof.
- You expect to run structured tests regularly.
Consider neither yet when: you cannot name the five numbers that decide your month. Tool choice will not fix a missing measurement plan.
What to check before you commit
Buyers consistently stress team technicality, analytical depth and getting event tagging right. Poor tagging breaks funnels in either tool.
If neither free tier covers your volume, one published suggestion is a 30-day dual instrument: send the same 15 to 25 core events to both, measure report speed and how readily your team adopts each, then negotiate with both. That is a practical way to compare on real use rather than marketing material.
Where ecommerce analytics fits in the bigger picture
Product analytics tells you what shoppers do on your site. It does not tell you which ad produced the buyer, or what the buyer is worth over time. Most ecommerce brands need three layers working together:
- Onsite behaviour: funnels, drop-offs and segments, which is where Mixpanel or Amplitude sit.
- Attribution: connecting spend on Google and social to revenue. Our post-iOS attribution guide covers the practical side for Australian stores.
- Retention and lifetime value: what happens after the first order. See our retention-first LTV plan.
If you are mapping revenue to GA4 as well, our 90-day ecommerce digital strategy shows how we structure that reporting.
Privacy: what Australian businesses should check
Any analytics tool collects data about people. In Australia, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner says that under APP 3, entities should take particular care with automated collection methods such as third-party tracking pixels, because they could inadvertently collect sensitive information, which generally requires consent.
In practice:
- Decide which user properties you actually need. Do not send health, financial or other sensitive details as event properties.
- Keep your privacy policy in step with what the tool collects.
- Ask where data is stored and how it is transferred overseas, since both vendors are international. Your lawyer or privacy adviser can answer this for your situation.
- Review session replay settings so form fields are masked.
Some Australian SaaS teams choose privacy-focused analytics to avoid consent-banner overhead, and EU-hosted options are seen as attractive for APP 8 considerations. That is a trade-off worth raising with your adviser rather than a rule.
Fullstory vs Hotjar in short
These two tools sit beside product analytics rather than against it. They show you what visitors see and do through session replay, heatmaps and feedback.
One comparison frames Hotjar as stronger on voice of customer and UX visibility, which helps you see why users drop off, and Fullstory as stronger for finding the technical errors and friction points to fix. Treat that as an analyst’s view, not a fixed rule.
On free plans, FullstoryFree (updated effective 10 August 2025) includes 30,000 sessions a month and 10 user seats. Hotjar’s Observe Basic and Ask Basic plans are free. Limits change, so check the current plan pages.
For a Shopify store, replay is most useful on checkout and product pages. Pair it with a structured test plan, like the one in our Shopify conversion rate optimisation guide.
Intercom vs Drift in short
This one is simpler than it looks. One 2026 comparison reports that Salesloft announced Drift’s gradual sunset in March 2026, while Intercom is active and expanding its Fin AI agent. If you are choosing now, Intercom is the live option.
Intercom’s pricing page shows seat pricing from $19 a month, with Fin outcomes at $0.99 each. In plain terms, you pay a fixed amount per support seat, plus a usage-based charge for AI resolutions. Budget for both parts, especially if you expect many chats.
Perspective
We see the same pattern with the ecommerce brands we mentor. They spend weeks comparing analytics tools, then discover the real issue is that nobody agreed which numbers drive revenue.
Our view is simple: start from the commercial question, not the tool. Where do shoppers leave? Which channels bring buyers who come back? What does it cost to get a customer? Once those are written down, almost any good event-based tool will answer them, and the cheaper, more readable one usually wins for a growing brand.
Our senior strategists work hands-on with your team and do not outsource the thinking. That means your tracking plan, your funnel and your ad data are set up to support one goal: scaling revenue. We design our strategies to be data-driven, and we would rather you pick a tool you will actually open every week.
Liza
How to decide in one week
- Write your five decision metrics. For example: conversion rate, add-to-cart rate, checkout completion, repeat purchase rate and cost per acquisition.
- List your 15 to 25 core events that feed those metrics, with consistent names.
- Estimate monthly event volume and compare it with each free allowance (1M for Mixpanel, 2 million for Amplitude).
- Name the owner. If it is a marketer, lean towards the more readable tool. If it is a product analyst, depth matters more.
- Check privacy settings and update your policy before launch.
- Review after 30 days. Have people opened the dashboards? Did they change a decision?
If the answer to the last question is no, the problem is usually the questions, not the software.
Turn your analytics into revenue decisions
If your store gets traffic but struggles to turn it into sales, tools alone will not close the gap. We work with emerging ecommerce brands on strategy, advertising, conversion and email, with senior strategists involved directly.
Our 12 Week DOUBLE Your Revenue Challenge is built around a structured plan for lifting revenue, and our Convert More Customers page explains how we approach site conversion.
Prefer to talk it through first? Start on our work with us page.
FAQ
Is Mixpanel better than Amplitude?
Neither wins outright. Buyers say placeholder
Is Mixpanel free to use?
Yes, up to a limit. The Free plan runs indefinitely with a cap of 1M events a month. After that, data keeps being collected but querying pauses until you move to Growth.
Does Amplitude have a free plan?
Yes. According to its pricing page, the Free plan includes 2 million events a month. Paid plans are Plus, Growth and Enterprise, priced on event volume and features.
Is Drift still available compared with Intercom?
Drift is being wound down: Salesloft announced a gradual sunset in March 2026. Intercom remains active and is expanding its Fin AI agent, so it is the safer choice for a new setup.
Sources
- Mixpanel pricing documentation
- Amplitude pricing
- Amplitude: best digital experience analytics tools
- Alium Research: Amplitude vs Mixpanel
- Customer journey analytics in Australia
- Mixpanel vs Amplitude 2026
- OAIC: APP 3 collection of solicited personal information
- Web analytics software in Australia
- Hotjar vs FullStory comparison
- FullstoryFree plan
- Hotjar plans
- Drift vs Intercom 2026
- Intercom pricing
