MixpanelOpenPanel vs Mixpanel
OpenPanel is the open-source Mixpanel alternative: simpler, from $2.50 a month or free self-hosted, and cookie-less. Mixpanel goes deeper for enterprise teams with complex analytics needs.
Pick OpenPanel if
- Startups and medium-sized businesses who want powerful analytics without enterprise pricing
- Privacy-conscious teams requiring EU-only data storage
- Developers who want to self-host and own their data
- Teams looking for both web and product analytics in one tool
Pick Mixpanel if
- Enterprise teams that need experiments with statistics and feature flags
- Teams that want Metric Trees for goal alignment
- Companies with data warehouse pipelines
- Mobile apps that want session replay on iOS and Android
Carl-Gerhard LindesvärdPrices checked Nov 1, 2026
Key differences at a glance
Here's how OpenPanel and Mixpanel compare on the factors that matter most.
| Topic | OpenPanel | Mixpanel |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $2.50/month (5k events), no free tier | $0 for 1M events; first paid tier $140/month for 1.5M events ($100 on yearly billing) |
| Self-hosting | Yes, completely free | No |
| Data location | EU-only (or your own servers) | US default, EU/India optional |
| Cookies | Cookie-free by default | Uses cookies by default |
| Open source | Yes (AGPL-3.0) | No |
Funnels, retention and profiles, with no seat pricing
Pick the events, see where people drop off, who comes back and what each user did. Every report is in every plan; you pay for events, not for the people who look at them.
- Funnels and conversion
- Session or profile based, broken down by any property or cohort.
- Retention and cohorts
- A cohort grid with a weighted average that skips weeks that have not happened yet.
- Profiles and groups
- Every user with sessions, events and revenue, and the company they belong to.
Run it yourself for free
OpenPanel is AGPL and ships as Docker Compose with ClickHouse, Postgres and Redis. One install script, no event limits, your servers, and the same product as Cloud.
- One command
- The install script asks a few questions and brings the stack up.
- The full product
- Self-hosted releases follow Cloud by a month or two.
- Your data stays
- Nothing leaves the box unless you export it to S3 or GCS.
No cookies, so no banner
A visitor is a daily-rotating hash of user agent, IP and site. Nothing is stored in the browser, Cloud data stays in the EU, and the tracker is a few kilobytes.
- Cookie-less by default
- No consent banner for analytics. The salt changes every day.
- EU cloud
- Hosted in Germany, with a GDPR data processing agreement.
- Light SDK
- About 3 KB gzipped. Replay loads separately, only if you turn it on.
Where OpenPanel is a better fit than Mixpanel
OpenPanel shines for teams that value simplicity, privacy, and cost-effectiveness over enterprise complexity.
- Startups watching their budgetStart at $2.50/month instead of dealing with Mixpanel's pricing that can jump to hundreds or thousands as you scale.
- Privacy-first productsCookie-free tracking and EU-only hosting by default. No need to configure data residency or worry about US data transfers.
- Self-hosted requirementsDeploy OpenPanel on your own infrastructure for complete data ownership. Perfect for regulated industries or security-conscious teams.
- Web + product analytics combinedGet Plausible-style web analytics and Mixpanel-style product analytics in one tool, not two separate subscriptions.
- Developer-led teamsOpen source, a 3 KB script, S3 or GCS export of raw events, and your own ClickHouse when self-hosted.
Pricing comparison
OpenPanel is a flat monthly price for an event volume. Mixpanel is free up to 1M events and then priced in volume tiers.
Event-based, transparent
Flat monthly tiers by event volume: $2.50 for 5k events, $20 for 100k, $90 for 1M, $350 for 10M. 30-day free trial, then paid; there is no free tier. Self-hosting is free with unlimited events. Every feature on every tier.
Every tierMixpanelFree up to 1M events a month, including 10K session replays and 10 active feature flags. Growth starts at $140/month for 1.5M events ($100 on yearly billing) and runs to 20M events at $2,289/month. Enterprise is custom. Group analytics and data pipelines are paid add-ons.
Mixpanel pricing page| Events a month | OpenPanel | Mixpanel |
|---|---|---|
| 100k events | $20 | $0 |
| 1M events | $90 | $0 |
| 1.5M events | $180 (2.5M tier) | $140 ($100 yearly) |
| 20M events | $530 | $2,289 ($1,635 yearly) |
Feature comparison
OpenPanel covers the core analytics most teams need, while Mixpanel extends into enterprise-grade experimentation and session replay.
| Feature | OpenPanel | Mixpanel |
|---|---|---|
| Core analytics | ||
| Event tracking | ||
| Funnels Mixpanel offers more advanced multi-path funnels | ||
| Retention analysis | ||
| User profiles | ||
| Cohorts Mixpanel has more advanced cohort builder | ||
| Custom dashboards | ||
| Real-time data | ||
| Web analytics | ||
| Page views & visitors | ||
| Traffic sources | ||
| Geographic data | ||
| Device & browser stats | ||
| UTM tracking | ||
Show 18 more featuresShow fewer
| Feature | OpenPanel | Mixpanel |
|---|---|---|
| Advanced features | ||
| A/B testing Mixpanel runs experiments with statistics. OpenPanel can break any report down by a variant property, but has no experiment engine. | Variant breakdowns only | |
| Feature flags Mixpanel includes feature flags on every plan (10 active on Free) | ||
| Session replay Mixpanel includes 10K replays a month on Free, 20K on Growth. OpenPanel replay is opt-in, masked by default and not metered. | ||
| Group analytics Both support group/company-level analytics | ||
| Revenue tracking | ||
| AI insights Both offer AI-powered features | ||
| Metric Trees Mixpanel's unique feature for mapping metrics to outcomes | ||
| Notifications/Alerts OpenPanel fires on events and completed funnels to Slack, Discord, email or a webhook. Mixpanel adds threshold and anomaly alerts. | ||
| Privacy & compliance | ||
| Self-hosting | ||
| EU data residency OpenPanel is EU-only; Mixpanel offers EU as an option | ||
| Cookie-free tracking Mixpanel uses cookies by default | ||
| GDPR compliant | ||
| DPA available OpenPanel publishes its DPA at openpanel.dev/dpa | ||
| SOC 2 Type II | ||
| Integrations & data | ||
| REST API | ||
| Data export | ||
| Warehouse connectors OpenPanel exports raw events to S3-compatible storage or GCS every minute; Mixpanel has native warehouse connectors | S3 / GCS export (JSONL) | |
| Segment integration | ||
Technical comparison
For developers evaluating analytics tools, here's how the SDKs and technical implementations compare.
| Topic | OpenPanel | Mixpanel |
|---|---|---|
| SDK size (JS) | About 3 KB gzipped; session replay loads as a separate script only when enabled | ~20+ KB gzippedOpenPanel's lighter SDK means faster page loads |
| Supported platforms |
|
|
| Open source | Yes (AGPL-3.0) | No |
| Self-hosted deployment | Docker Compose (ClickHouse, Postgres, Redis), one-command install script | Not available |
| Database | ClickHouse + PostgreSQL | Proprietary (Arb)Self-hosters can query their own ClickHouse; there is no SQL editor in the dashboard |
| Autocapture | Screen views, outgoing links and data-track attributes; everything else is an explicit call | Full autocapture availableMixpanel can automatically capture clicks, inputs, etc. |
Migrating from Mixpanel to OpenPanel
Switching from Mixpanel to OpenPanel is straightforward thanks to similar API patterns and our built-in import tool.
- 1
Export your Mixpanel data
Use Mixpanel's data export API to extract your historical events if you want to preserve them.
- 2
Import into OpenPanel
OpenPanel has a built-in Mixpanel importer: connect with a service account, your project id and a date range (US or EU residency) and it pulls the history in.
- 3
Install the OpenPanel SDK
Replace the Mixpanel SDK with OpenPanel's lightweight tracker. The API is similar, track(), identify(), and setGlobalProperties() work the same way.
- 4
Update your event calls
Most Mixpanel event calls translate directly. Review your implementation and update any Mixpanel-specific features.
- 5
Verify and go live
Run both tools in parallel briefly to validate data consistency, then switch fully to OpenPanel.
Why consider OpenPanel over Mixpanel?
Mixpanel is one of the most established product analytics platforms, used by product teams worldwide to track user behavior, build funnels, and analyze retention. It's powerful, but that power comes with increasingly complex pricing, a cloud-only architecture, and cookie-based tracking that creates friction for privacy-conscious teams.
OpenPanel provides the core product analytics features most teams actually use, events, funnels, retention, cohorts, and user profiles, in a simpler package with transparent, predictable pricing. Starting at just $2.50 per month, or completely free when self-hosted, OpenPanel is dramatically more affordable than Mixpanel's pricing which can scale to thousands per month as your event volume grows.
Privacy is where the two platforms diverge most sharply. Mixpanel uses cookies by default and stores data on US servers, which means GDPR consent banners and data transfer concerns for European users. OpenPanel is cookie-free by default with EU-only hosting, making compliance straightforward. You can also self-host OpenPanel on your own infrastructure for complete data sovereignty, something Mixpanel simply doesn't offer.
For teams that want Mixpanel-style product analytics without the enterprise pricing, vendor lock-in, or privacy trade-offs, OpenPanel is a compelling open-source alternative that gives you full ownership of your analytics data.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about switching from Mixpanel to OpenPanel.
Try it on your own data
The steps above are what switching from Mixpanel takes. 30-day free trial on Cloud, or self-host for free.
Cloud from $2.50 a month, or self-host for free.