SaaS analytics is activation, retention, and revenue, not homepage bounce. Mixpanel free covers up to 1 million events a month with unlimited seats. Amplitude Starter covers up to 10,000 monthly tracked users, 12 months retention, session replay on free. PostHog free includes 1 million events, 5,000 replays, flags, and a self-host path. Heap free auto-captures up to 10,000 sessions a month. FullStory is session intelligence on a quote. Hotjar is heatmaps and cheap observe. Google Analytics is free acquisition context, not a subscription ledger. Metabase self-host is $0 license; Cloud Starter about $85 to $100, for revenue questions the event tool will not join to Stripe.
Activation, retention, and revenue. Trial, PQL, and churn, not a generic product-analytics tour. PostHog is the generous free and self-host path.
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A generic product-analytics guide stops at funnels and replays. A SaaS guide has to name trial start, PQL, expansion, and churn as first-class events, and it has to admit when you still need a warehouse plus Metabase. Toolradar data: Toolradar lists 10,429 published tools as of September 1, 2026, including 1,232 published analytics tools, 36% of them free or freemium (65 free-only, 376 freemium, 783 paid).
This guide ranks 8 tools for that SaaS metric set. Mixpanel, Amplitude, PostHog, and Heap are product analytics. FullStory and Hotjar are session and qualitative layers. Google Analytics is acquisition, which SaaS teams still need and still over-trust. Metabase is the cheap BI home for MRR, trial-to-paid, and cohort revenue. We used the same September 2026 catalog pool as the analyst listicle (1,232 tools, 36% free or freemium) and the same free-tier cards as our free product-analytics guide: PostHog 1M events, Mixpanel 1M events, Amplitude 10k MTUs, Heap 10k sessions.
If you are pre-PMF, start on PostHog or Mixpanel free. If you are joining product events to Stripe, add Metabase (or a warehouse) instead of asking Google Analytics for churn.
Top Picks
Picked by editorial review, informed by G2 and Capterra review volume and rating and by media mentions, the signals behind our category rankings. How we rate
Free plan up to 1 million monthly events, unlimited seats, 10,000 session replays. Usage-based after that. Strong on SaaS funnels and retention.
Starting price
From $140 /mo
4.5 (1,518 reviews)
Best for
SaaS teams that think in events (trial, activate, pay) and want unlimited teammates on the free cap
Starter free up to 10,000 monthly tracked users, 12 months retention, session replay included. Behavioral cohorts are the SaaS reason to pick it.
Starting price
Free plan
4.5 (3,059 reviews)
Best for
Product-led SaaS teams that live in cohorts (activated vs paid vs churned) and fit under 10k MTUs on free
1 million free events a month, 5,000 replays, flags, and surveys. Self-host open source removes the cap. The generous free and self-host SaaS path.
Starting price
Free plan
4.5 (1,054 reviews)
Best for
SaaS teams that want events, replay, and flags in one product, or will self-host to keep data and cost in-house
| Tool | Starting price | Rating | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mixpanel | From $140/mo | 4.5 1,518 reviews | SaaS teams that think in events (trial, activate, pay) and want unlimited teammates on the free cap |
| Amplitude Visit | Free plan | 4.5 3,059 reviews | Product-led SaaS teams that live in cohorts (activated vs paid vs churned) and fit under 10k MTUs on free |
| PostHog | Free plan | 4.5 1,054 reviews | SaaS teams that want events, replay, and flags in one product, or will self-host to keep data and cost in-house |
| Heap | Free plan | 4.4 1,139 reviews | SaaS teams that shipped without a tracking plan and need yesterday's activation clicks defined today |
| FullStory | Custom | 4.5 1,119 reviews | SaaS support and product teams that need session-level truth on activation and billing UX, and will pay a quote |
| Hotjar | From $39/mo | 3.8 948 reviews | SaaS marketers and PMs who need heatmaps on pricing and signup, not a full Amplitude cohort practice |
| Google Analytics | Free plan | 4.5 14,975 reviews | SaaS teams that need campaign and site analytics next to a real product tool (Mixpanel, Amplitude, PostHog) and Metabase for revenue |
| Metabase | From $100/mo | 4.4 209 reviews | SaaS teams that have Stripe (or warehouse) data and need MRR, net retention, and PQL-to-revenue joins the event tool will not finish |
- Starting price
- From $140/mo
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.5 (1,518 reviews)
Best for: SaaS teams that think in events (trial, activate, pay) and want unlimited teammates on the free cap
- Pro: 1 million free events and unlimited seats fit a small B2B SaaS before a credit card
- Pro: Funnels and retention are built for subscription questions, not only marketing pageviews
- Pro: 10,000 free replays cover a first pass at 'why did they stall on the paywall'
- Con: Saved reports are capped on free (5 on the cards we use); a real SaaS scorecard outgrows that
- Con: High-chatter instrumentation burns the 1M cap faster than an MTU model would
Mixpanel's free tier (1M events) is generous.
- Starting price
- Free plan
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.5 (3,059 reviews)
Best for: Product-led SaaS teams that live in cohorts (activated vs paid vs churned) and fit under 10k MTUs on free
- Pro: Behavioral cohorts and retention are why growth teams stay on Amplitude past the free month
- Pro: Replay on Starter means you can watch a failed activation without buying FullStory on day one
- Pro: 12 months of free retention is long enough to see a quarterly SaaS cycle
- Con: 10,000 MTUs is a user cap, not an event cap. A high-traffic free tier burns it faster than Mixpanel's 1M events
- Con: Paid Growth is quote-ish and can jump hard; model MTUs before you fall in love with a cohort
Amplitude's Free plan is genuinely useful: 2M events a month forever with no credit card, session replay (10,000 sessions a month), unlimited seats, and unlimited feature flags.
Watch out
Pricing scales with event volume (Plus) or is custom event-based pricing (Growth, Enterprise), so products that send many events per user cost more as they grow.
- Starting price
- Free plan
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.5 (1,054 reviews)
Best for: SaaS teams that want events, replay, and flags in one product, or will self-host to keep data and cost in-house
- Pro: 1 million free events plus flags means an activation experiment can run without a second vendor
- Pro: 5,000 free replays and surveys cover qualitative work Hotjar would otherwise own
- Pro: Self-host is the path when free-tier math or policy kills Mixpanel or Amplitude cloud
- Con: Identified events can cost more once you pass free; a logged-in SaaS is mostly identified
- Con: The all-in-one UI is a learning curve compared with Mixpanel's narrower product-analytics surface
PostHog's pricing is quite generous, especially with its robust free tier offering 1M events and unlimited seats.
Watch out
Overage fees for events beyond free tier
- Starting price
- Free plan
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.4 (1,139 reviews)
Best for: SaaS teams that shipped without a tracking plan and need yesterday's activation clicks defined today
- Pro: Auto-capture lets you define trial and activation events after the fact, which is the usual SaaS regret
- Pro: 10,000 free sessions and six months of history are enough to learn whether Heap is the model
- Pro: Core funnels and retention exist on free, not only on the quote
- Con: Crossing the session cap can lock the dashboard until you upgrade, a hard stop on a growing SaaS
- Con: Paid tiers start in the thousands per year; the jump from free is steep
Heap's pricing is fair for its Free and Growth tiers, offering good value for startups and growing businesses.
Watch out
Exceeding the monthly session limit of your plan requires an upgrade before you can view your data again.
- Starting price
- Custom
- Free plan
- No
- Rating
- 4.5 (1,119 reviews)
Best for: SaaS support and product teams that need session-level truth on activation and billing UX, and will pay a quote
- Pro: Frustration signals next to a session explain a churn ticket better than a Mixpanel bar chart alone
- Pro: Search across sessions for 'clicked cancel' is a SaaS-shaped workflow
- Pro: Pairs with Mixpanel, Amplitude, or PostHog as the qualitative layer, which is the correct architecture
- Con: Quote-led, usually far above PostHog's free replay allotment or Hotjar's observe plans
- Con: Does not replace event analytics for PQL and retention math
FullStory's pricing is on the expensive side, especially for smaller businesses.
Watch out
Overage fees for exceeding session limits
Hotjar
Heatmaps, recordings, and feedback. Free limited observe plus paid plans from a few tens of dollars a month. The cheap qualitative SaaS layer.
- 4.6 on Capterra (545 reviews)
- 4.3 on G2 (345 reviews)
- 2.4 on Trustpilot (52 reviews)
- Starting price
- From $39/mo
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 3.8 (948 reviews)
Best for: SaaS marketers and PMs who need heatmaps on pricing and signup, not a full Amplitude cohort practice
- Pro: Cheap observe plans sit far below a FullStory quote for pricing-page heatmaps
- Pro: Recordings plus surveys explain a failed trial start without instrumenting every click first
- Pro: A free limited tier exists, unlike FullStory's quote-only path
- Con: Not a product-analytics tool. You will not get SaaS retention curves or PQL cohorts here
- Con: Session caps on cheap plans run out on a busy app, which is when PostHog free replay is the better default
Hotjar (now Contentsquare) offers solid heatmaps and recordings but pricing got complicated after the merger.
Watch out
Three separate products (Observe, Ask, Engage) each billed independently
Google Analytics
GA4 is free. Acquisition, campaigns, and site funnels. Required context, the wrong system of record for subscription churn.
- 4.7 on Capterra (8,101 reviews)
- 4.5 on G2 (6,870 reviews)
- 3.6 on Trustpilot (4 reviews)
- Starting price
- Free plan
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.5 (14,975 reviews)
Best for: SaaS teams that need campaign and site analytics next to a real product tool (Mixpanel, Amplitude, PostHog) and Metabase for revenue
- Pro: Free, universal, and good enough for 'which campaign started the trial'
- Pro: Marketing agencies already speak GA4, which reduces translation cost
- Pro: Keeps paid-media questions out of your Mixpanel event quota
- Con: Pageviews and sessions are not trial, PQL, or churn. Do not run the board meeting from GA4 alone
- Con: Identity across app and billing is weaker than Mixpanel, Amplitude, or PostHog on logged-in users
Google Analytics offers an incredibly generous free tier that is more than sufficient for the vast majority of websites, making it exceptionally fair and market-leading.
- Starting price
- From $100/mo
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.4 (209 reviews)
Best for: SaaS teams that have Stripe (or warehouse) data and need MRR, net retention, and PQL-to-revenue joins the event tool will not finish
- Pro: Self-host at $0 license is the cheapest way to chart MRR next to product events you export
- Pro: Cloud Starter near $100 is still cheaper than a second enterprise analytics quote
- Pro: SQL and ask-a-question cover 'what did paid teams do' when Mixpanel cannot see invoices
- Con: Not an event SDK. You still need Mixpanel, Amplitude, PostHog, or Heap for in-app behavior
- Con: You must model trial and subscription tables; Metabase will not invent them
Metabase's pricing is generally fair, offering a generous Open Source tier for self-hosting.
What SaaS Analytics Actually Measures
SaaS analytics tracks signed-up users through activation, habit, paywall, expansion, and cancel. The events have names: trial_started, pql_hit, subscription_started, feature_used, churned. Mixpanel, Amplitude, PostHog, and Heap store those events and build funnels and retention. FullStory and Hotjar show why a step failed. Google Analytics shows how people arrived. Metabase queries the warehouse or Stripe-adjacent tables for the money.
This is distinct from a generic product-analytics list, which can stop at "funnels and cohorts." A SaaS shop that only watches pageviews in Google Analytics will not see PQL or net revenue retention.
Why Trial, PQL, and Churn Need Different Tools Than Pageviews
Google Analytics is free and fine for campaigns. It is a weak subscription ledger. Mixpanel and Amplitude earn their paid rungs when you live in behavioral cohorts (who activated, who paid, who churned). PostHog puts flags and replays next to those events so an activation experiment does not require a fourth vendor. Heap auto-capture saves you when nobody instrumented trial_started. FullStory is the expensive "watch the session" layer. Hotjar is the cheap qualitative layer. Metabase is where finance-grade revenue lands if the event stream cannot join to invoices.
Paying Amplitude plus FullStory plus a BI tool is a real stack. Paying Google Analytics only and calling it SaaS analytics is how churn stays a surprise.
Key Features to Look For
SaaS events, not pageviews (Essential)
Trial, activation, PQL, paid, expand, churn must be events you can funnel. Google Analytics pageviews are not that model.
Free-tier meter (events vs MTUs vs sessions) (Essential)
Mixpanel and PostHog meter events (1M free). Amplitude meters MTUs (10k on Starter). Heap meters sessions (10k). High-event B2B fits event caps better than MTU caps.
Join to revenue (Essential)
Product tools show who clicked. Metabase (or a warehouse) shows who paid and what MRR did. Plan the join; do not hope GA4 invents it.
Replay next to the funnel (Important)
PostHog bundles replay on free. Amplitude includes replay on Starter. FullStory is replay-first on a quote. Hotjar is the cheap heatmap path.
Flags and experiments on the activation path (Important)
PostHog includes flags on the free plan. Shipping a PQL experiment without flags means another vendor or a weekend of if-statements.
Self-host PostHog or Metabase (Nice to have)
Both can run in your perimeter. That is the generous free path when event volume or data policy kills a SaaS free tier.
Mistakes to Avoid
- ×
- ×
Picking Amplitude Starter (10k MTUs) for a high-traffic consumer-ish free tier, or Mixpanel 1M events for a chatty instrumented app, without checking the meter.
- ×
- ×
Skipping a revenue join. If Stripe never meets product events, you do not have SaaS analytics. That is a Metabase (or warehouse) job.
- ×
Treating this list as the generic product-analytics guide. The job here is trial, PQL, and churn. Feature-adoption tourism is a different article.
Expert Tips
- →
- →
If you want flags on the activation experiment, start on PostHog (1M events plus flags free, or self-host) before you add a fourth vendor.
- →
If you forgot to instrument, Heap auto-capture (10k sessions free) is the retroactive path. Then name the SaaS events on purpose.
- →
Keep Google Analytics for campaigns. Keep Metabase for MRR. Keep one of Mixpanel, Amplitude, or PostHog for behavior. That is a complete SaaS stack.
- →
The Bottom Line
SaaS analytics is activation, retention, and revenue. Mixpanel and PostHog give 1 million free events (PostHog also flags, replay, and self-host). Amplitude Starter is 10,000 MTUs with replay. Heap auto-captures 10,000 sessions. FullStory is quote-led session intelligence. Hotjar is cheap qualitative. Google Analytics is free acquisition, not churn. Metabase is the $0 self-host or about $100 Cloud path for trial-to-paid and MRR. Of 1,232 published analytics tools on September 1, 2026, 36% are free or freemium (65 / 376 / 783). This list is the SaaS metric stack, not a generic product-analytics tour.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best analytics tool for SaaS in 2026?
For in-app SaaS events, start on PostHog or Mixpanel (both 1 million free events; PostHog adds flags, replay, and self-host) or Amplitude if you prefer cohorts and fit under 10,000 monthly tracked users. Add Metabase for MRR and trial-to-paid. Keep Google Analytics for campaigns. Add Hotjar or FullStory for sessions. Heap if you need auto-capture after the fact.
How is this different from a best product-analytics guide?
A generic product-analytics guide ranks funnels and replays. This one insists on trial, PQL, paid, expansion, and churn, plus a revenue join in Metabase. Google Analytics is included as acquisition context and called out as the wrong churn system of record. PostHog is called the generous free and self-host path on purpose.
Is Google Analytics enough for a SaaS product?
No. GA4 is free and useful for campaigns and the marketing site. Subscription activation, PQL, and churn need Mixpanel, Amplitude, PostHog, or Heap. Revenue needs Metabase or equivalent warehouse BI. Using only Google Analytics is the usual SaaS measurement mistake.
Why is PostHog the free and self-host path?
PostHog's cloud free plan includes 1 million events, 5,000 session replays, feature flags, and surveys with no time limit. The open-source edition can be self-hosted so the event cap goes away if you run the stack. Mixpanel matches the 1 million event free cap but does not bundle flags the same way. Amplitude free is an MTU cap (10,000).
Do I still need Metabase if I have Mixpanel or Amplitude?
If you must join product events to Stripe invoices, taxes, and contracted MRR, yes. Mixpanel and Amplitude answer who clicked and who retained as a user. Metabase self-host ($0 license) or Cloud Starter (about $85 to $100) answers who paid and what revenue did. SaaS analytics is both.
Cite this page: Toolradar, "Best Analytics for SaaS in 2026", updated September 2026, https://toolradar.com/guides/best-analytics-for-saas
Sources
Prices and plan details on this page come from each vendor's own pricing page, re-checked by the Toolradar pricing tracker:
- Mixpanel pricing, checked
- Amplitude pricing, checked
- PostHog pricing, checked
- Heap pricing, checked
- FullStory pricing, checked
- Hotjar pricing, checked
- Google Analytics pricing, checked
- Metabase pricing, checked
Spotted an outdated price or a wrong fact? Suggest a correction: we check it against the vendor's own page. Work for one of these vendors? Claim your listing to update it yourself.
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