Heap
FreemiumAuto-capture digital analytics
About Heap
Heap's differentiator is retroactive analytics — it captures every user interaction automatically at install time, so you can define funnels and analyze historical data without having added tracking code first. Mixpanel and Amplitude require you to instrument events before you can analyze them; Heap doesn't. This sounds transformative until you realize it captures a lot of noise by default and the data model gets messy without governance. Pricing is enterprise-heavy: free tier (10K sessions/month), Growth starts around $3,600/year, Pro and Enterprise are custom (typically $20K-$80K+/year). Acquired by Contentsquare in 2023 alongside Hotjar. The autocapture approach means Heap's schema evolves with your product automatically, which helps for retroactive analysis but creates element naming problems when your DOM changes. Session replay is included in most paid plans. Main complaints: query speed slows on large datasets, the pricing tier jumps are steep, and post-Contentsquare acquisition the roadmap has slowed. Competes with Amplitude and Mixpanel; wins when a PM needs to answer questions about behavior that no one thought to track.
Key Features
Pricing Plans
Free
- Up to 10K sessions/month
- Core analytics
- 6 months data history
- 1 project
Growth
- Custom session volume
- Unlimited projects
- Data dictionary
- Advanced features
Enterprise
- SSO/SAML
- Dedicated CSM
- Custom retention
- Premium support
Pros
- Auto-capture means no manual instrumentation
- Retroactive analysis is genuinely unique
- Good for teams without analytics engineering
- Built-in session replay
- Clean interface for non-technical users
- Effort analysis identifies friction automatically
Cons
- Opaque pricing beyond free tier
- Auto-capture can create data noise
- Limited custom event flexibility
- Performance overhead from capturing everything
- Less control than manual instrumentation tools
- Acquired by Contentsquare with unclear future
Best For
- retroactive analytics when you forgot to instrument events before needing the data
- product managers answering questions about historical user behavior
- teams that can justify enterprise pricing for autocapture convenience
- post-launch analysis of flows that were never explicitly tracked
Not Ideal For
- startups on tight budgets (paid plans start at $3,600/year)
- teams that need clean, governed event schemas
- high-traffic consumer apps where autocapture creates massive data volumes
Potential Deal Breakers
- paid plans start at $3,600/year (free tier is only 10K sessions/month)
- autocapture creates schema noise without careful element naming governance
- query performance degrades on large datasets
Data & Privacy
Auto-capture analytics owned by Contentsquare. Captures all user interactions automatically which may include sensitive page content. PII redaction tools available. SOC 2 Type 2 certified. Data exportable. GDPR compliant with DPA.
Who Is This For?
Hands-on tested May 2026
Signup Experience
Email signup with a free tier available, no credit card required. Free plan covers 10K sessions per month. Installing the Heap snippet auto-captures every click, form submission, and page view without writing any tracking code. The retroactive analysis feature lets you define events after the fact using data that was already captured.
For Home Users
Not suited for personal or home use. Requires a web app or product with users to analyze. The auto-capture approach is most valuable for teams that do not have dedicated analytics engineering resources.
For Business Users
Free tier at 10K sessions covers small products and early-stage testing. Growth and Pro plans are custom-priced based on session volume. The auto-capture model eliminates the instrumentation backlog that plagues Mixpanel and Amplitude implementations -- product teams can analyze any interaction retroactively without waiting for an engineer to add tracking. Trade-off is that data volume is higher and requires more cleanup. Best for teams that want analytics breadth without instrumentation overhead.
Our Verdict
Heap's retroactive analytics is a real differentiator — defining funnels on data you already captured is uniquely powerful when someone asks a question you never planned for. The problem is it's expensive, the autocaptured data is inherently noisy, and the Contentsquare acquisition hasn't accelerated the roadmap. For most teams, PostHog or Mixpanel are the better starting point.