Amplitude vs Mixpanel: Event Prices and Day-One Defaults

The short answer: between 1 and 2 million events a month, Amplitude costs nothing while Mixpanel's Growth plan bills from the first event past 1 million: $185 a month billed annually at 2 million, or $259 billed monthly. At 10 million, Amplitude's Plus estimator showed $576 a month billed annually against Mixpanel's $840 (both checked on 26 October 2026 on the Amplitude and Mixpanel pricing pages). Price favours Amplitude at every volume the two pages share. Mixpanel earns its place on other lines: two years of data kept by default on every plan, the free one included, and multi-touch attribution on its self-serve Growth plan.

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Price your own volume before reading either vendor's chart:

1. Work out a year at your volume. For example, at 5 million events a month billed annually, Amplitude Plus comes to 12 x $225 = $2,700 a year and Mixpanel Growth to $5,256, a difference of $5,256 - $2,700 = $2,556, using Amplitude's estimator on its pricing page and the breakdown on Mixpanel's.
2. Start from the events you send today. Export last month's event counts by name from whatever collects them now and sort by volume. The top few names show what either tool would bill you for, and which of them nobody reads.
3. Check how far back your reports reach. Amplitude gives 1 year of data access on Free and 2 on Plus, per its pricing page; Mixpanel's default retention policy deletes data after 2 years on Free, Growth and Enterprise, per its own. A board deck that compares this quarter with the same quarter two years ago needs more than either default.

Both products do the same core job: events from a website or app become funnels, retention curves and cohorts, with session replay, experiments and feature flags alongside. The differences sit in the price curve and in a handful of settings chosen before the first event arrives.

Same events, two rulebooks

Read on 26 October 2026: Amplitude's pricing page, Browser SDK docs and MCP docs; Mixpanel's pricing page, JavaScript SDK docs, EU residency guide and MCP docs.

What decides it

The band between 1 and 2 million

Below 1 million events both are free. Above 2 million both bill per event. In between, Amplitude's Free plan still covers you and Mixpanel's estimator starts at $100 a month billed annually for 1.5 million, per its pricing page. A product growing through that band pays nothing on one and a few thousand a year on the other.

Settings that are hard to change later

Both regions have to be chosen up front. Amplitude's EU data storage is set for the organisation during signup, after which the SDK's serverZone setting sends data there, per its Browser SDK docs. Mixpanel's EU residency guide has the option ticked per project at creation, and events sent to the wrong region's host are not ingested. Mixpanel's SDK also carries UTM parameters forward across later events by default; its JavaScript docs recommend turning that off with stop_utm_persistence for its attribution models. Decide it before launch, or campaign credit shifts when you change it.

Consent, in both SDKs

Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive requires consent, after clear and comprehensive information, before information is stored on or read from a visitor's device, outside what is strictly necessary for a service the user asked for. Both SDKs store an identifier by default, and neither falls under Google's Consent Mode, whose overview lists only Google's own tags. The switch is yours to wire: Amplitude's setOptOut, or Mixpanel's opt_out_tracking_by_default with opt_in_tracking once the banner reports a yes. The banner side is in consent-friendly EU analytics.

Prices at five volumes

Per month in USD, from Amplitude's estimator on its pricing page and Mixpanel's pricing breakdown on its pricing page, checked on 26 October 2026. Above 20 million, Mixpanel moves to Enterprise pricing; Amplitude's Plus estimator runs to 70 million. Startups get a year free on both, on different terms: Amplitude's Growth plan for fewer than 20 employees and under $10 million raised, Mixpanel's Startup Plan for companies under 5 years old with up to $8 million raised.

One agent step during a dual-run month

Send the same events to both free tiers for a month, then connect both MCP servers to one assistant. Ask each for the same funnel over the last 30 days, signup to first project, and for the conversion rate at each step. A person then checks why the two disagree before reading anything into it: which event names each funnel used, the conversion window each applied, and whether one property was filtering internal traffic. Mixpanel's MCP docs list tools that create dashboards, cohorts and experiments as well as read data, and Amplitude's MCP docs list tools that edit charts and the tracking plan, so ask for reads only during the test.

Choose Amplitude if the job is

• A product that sends between 1 and 2 million events a month and has no analytics budget yet, which Amplitude's Free plan covers.
• Running past 20 million events on a self-serve plan, up to the 70 million on Plus.
• Experiments, session replay and guides on the free plan, with 2 million events a month behind them, per its pricing page.

Choose Mixpanel if the job is

• Two years of history on the free tier, with no upgrade needed to keep last year's data.
• Multi-touch attribution on a self-serve plan, Growth.
• A startup under five years old that can use the free year with 1 billion events, per Mixpanel's pricing page.

Start free, and fix the region first

Both free tiers carry the full test above, with unlimited seats and no card. Run it before committing to either price curve.

Settle the region before that test sends its first event. Mixpanel's project setup stores data on its US servers unless someone selects EU Data Residency at creation, and its EU residency guide says a project created in the wrong region has to be rebuilt and its data migrated without Mixpanel's help; the default gets a project live in minutes and leaves the cost of correcting it with you. On Amplitude, the same choice sits in the signup flow.

FAQ

Which is cheaper at 10 million events a month?

Amplitude, at $576 a month billed annually against Mixpanel's $840, or $720 against $1,176 on monthly billing, per the Amplitude and Mixpanel pricing pages, checked on 26 October 2026.

Can a Mixpanel project move to the EU later?

No. Its EU residency guide says you create a new project with the right storage option and migrate the existing data yourself.

Is Mixpanel's MCP server switched on for my team?

For Free and Growth accounts created after 1 August 2026, yes, by default; an organisation admin can turn it off under Settings, Org, Overview, and each user sees only the projects they already have access to, per Mixpanel's MCP docs.