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Amplitude vs Pendo
The numbers side by side
18 of the 43 features we record differ, though 7 of those are values we have not confirmed on one side. Pendo’s script is 169.0 KB heavier than Amplitude’s.
| What we check | Amplitude | Pendo |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Active | Active |
| Cookies in the browser | Optional mode | Optional mode |
| Where it runs | Cloud | Cloud |
| Data in EU | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | No | No |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Entry price | Free | Free |
| At 100k / month | Free (events) | On request (users) |
| Script, gzip | 64.0 KB | 233.1 KB |
| Data retention | 2 years | 7 years |
Prices are monthly, without VAT, in the vendor’s currency, and are comparable only between tools that bill in the same unit. See how we check every value.
Where the feature lists differ
Values come from each vendor’s own pages. “Partly” means the feature has limits or is only on some plans.
| Feature | Amplitude | Pendo |
|---|---|---|
| Live visitor countTracking & Reporting | Partly | No |
| Top referrersTracking & Reporting | Yes | Partly |
| UTM campaign trackingTracking & Reporting | Yes | Partly |
| Country & city breakdownTracking & Reporting | Yes | Partly |
| File download trackingTracking & Reporting | Yes | Partly |
| 404 / error trackingTracking & Reporting | No | Partly |
| Data retentionPrivacy & Compliance | 2 years | 7 years |
| WordPress pluginSetup & Integrations | Yes | No |
| Proxy / first-party domainSetup & Integrations | Yes | Partly |
| Public APISetup & Integrations | Yes | Partly |
| Public shareable dashboardSetup & Integrations | Yes | No |
| ShopifyPlatforms & frameworks | Yes | Not confirmed |
| GhostPlatforms & frameworks | Partly | Not confirmed |
| SquarespacePlatforms & frameworks | Partly | Not confirmed |
| WixPlatforms & frameworks | Partly | Not confirmed |
| ReactPlatforms & frameworks | Partly | Not confirmed |
| Next.jsPlatforms & frameworks | Yes | Not confirmed |
| DrupalPlatforms & frameworks | Not confirmed | Partly |
Where they match
25 features have the same value in both
- Pageviews & visitors Yes
- Top pages report Yes
- Device, browser, OS Yes
- Bounce / engagement Yes
- Time on site Yes
- Custom events Yes
- Goals / conversions Yes
- Funnels Yes
- Outbound link tracking Partly
- Cookieless by default Partly
- No personal data collected (vendor’s position) No
- No consent banner needed (vendor’s position) No
- Data hosted in EU Yes
- Data hosted in US Yes
- Self-hostable No
- Open source No
- Bot & spam filtering Yes
- Single-snippet install Yes
- Data export (CSV/JSON) Yes
- Google Search Console connector No
- Email digests Yes
- Slack / webhook alerts Partly
- Unlimited sites on entry plan Yes
- Google Tag Manager Yes
- Server-side tracking Yes
Price by traffic volume
Amplitude
Pendo
- Free · up to 500 monthly tracked usersFree
- Higher volumesOn request
What the numbers say
The two price rows count different objects, so they do not line up. Amplitude bills by events. Pendo bills by monthly active users, which its pricing FAQ defines as unique visitors active in the app over the last 30 calendar days, and states that neither the number of applications nor of sessions changes the bill. A hundred thousand events and a hundred thousand people are not the same measurement, which is why one column shows a free plan and the other a price given on request.
The free plans differ in kind as well. Amplitude’s runs without a time limit, asks for no card and allows two million events a month. Pendo Free covers up to 500 monthly active users over a rolling 30 days, and its help centre lists what stays outside: web analytics, Data Explorer, session replays, a CNAME and third-party integrations. Past that limit you can no longer create guides, surveys or segments, and reports switch to trends drawn from a random sample of 500 visitors.
The script row shows a wide gap, and the reason is what each file does. Amplitude’s browser SDK collects analytics, with autocapture for page views, sessions, form interactions, file downloads and campaign attribution. Pendo’s agent also delivers in-app guides and surveys, so more of the product runs inside the page. Its install example asks for a visitor ID a person can read, such as an email address, because that ID appears in Pendo reports, so what you put there decides which personal data leaves your site.
Both store in the EU by different arrangements: Amplitude in an EU data centre chosen at signup, Pendo in separate US, EU, Japan and Australia environments that do not replicate. Retention says how long a vendor keeps data, not how far back you can look: on Pendo Free, event data is shown in the interface for 12 months.
Who picks which
Amplitude answers the question of one hosted service for product and web analytics. The marketing analytics section reports traffic by channel and by campaign; charts travel through public links or embed codes; there is a vendor WordPress plugin and a Google Tag Manager template. Migrations from Mixpanel or PostHog projects are documented, and Google Analytics 4 history arrives through BigQuery.
Pendo suits a team that wants analytics and in-app guidance from the same tool. Tagging is retroactive: pages and features you tag later show usage from the day the script went live, on the free plan too. Bot traffic is dropped from a published crawler list, with room for 20 suspected bots of your own. Three limits shape the work: dashboards are shared only with users inside your subscription, the API has no endpoints for exporting funnel, path or retention reports, and most analytics data is aggregated hourly.
Questions and answers
Can the two price columns be compared?
No, and the unit beside each figure says why. A product used by few people who do a great deal sits in one place on an event ladder and somewhere else on a ladder counted in users. Express your own traffic in each vendor’s unit instead.
Does either free plan cover a marketing website?
Amplitude’s does, within its monthly event allowance, and autocapture picks up page views and campaign attribution without extra code. Pendo Free does not: web analytics is one of the features its help centre places outside the free plan.
Where is the data kept, and can the region change later?
The choice is made early on both sides. Amplitude sets the region when the organization is created, and the browser SDK then has to point at the EU server zone. Pendo’s environments are separate installations that, in the vendor’s words, do not replicate data between each other, so treat that as a choice you make once.