Heap vs Kissmetrics
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentKissmetrics compared with Heap
Both stake their pitch on autocapture, so the differentiator is what happens after capture. Heap invests in retroactive analysis and automated insight surfacing over a very complete dataset, sold mostly through a sales process with quote-based pricing. Kissmetrics publishes its per-event rates, offers a free workspace, and puts revenue attribution and Populations at the centre. Heap is the deeper analysis engine; Kissmetrics is the one a small business can buy on a card this afternoon.
Choose Heap if
Product and growth teams at small to mid-sized software companies who want analytics that answer questions retroactively without a tracking-plan project, and who value not having to negotiate engineering time for every new metric.
Choose Kissmetrics if
Small SaaS and ecommerce teams that need person-level analytics (identity resolution, funnels, cohorts, and revenue attribution) without an analytics engineer, and that want transparent event-based pricing with a free tier rather than a sales call.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Heap | Kissmetrics |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Product Analytics | Product Analytics |
| Starting price | Free up to 10,000 monthly sessions; the Growth tier is commonly reported at around $3,600 per year (free plan available) | Free for 100,000 events per month; paid plans from $99 per month ($79 per month billed annually) (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Session-based subscription, billed on monthly sessions rather than seats or events. Four tiers: Free, Growth, Pro, and Premier. Only the free plan has a published limit; Growth gives a self-serve estimate after you install the snippet, and Pro and Premier are quoted by sales against your session volume on an annual commitment. Session replay, additional projects, and extra years of data retention are separately priced add-ons. | Usage-based on monthly tracked events, with the per-event rate falling as volume rises. A permanently free workspace covers 100,000 events a month with three seats. Paid plans start at Growth and step through Silver and Gold rate bands automatically as volume grows, with a negotiated Custom band above 5 million events. Annual billing takes a flat 20 percent off. |
| Free plan | Up to 10,000 monthly sessions, 6 months of data history, core charts, unlimited enrichment sources, and SSO, with no technical support | 100,000 events per month, 3 seats, autocapture, dashboards, live view, AI chat, and the core funnel, cohort, and activity reports |
| Free trial | Free plan rather than a time-limited trial; paid-tier trials arranged through sales | No time-limited trial; the free workspace is the trial, and no card is required |
| Best for | Product and growth teams at small to mid-sized software companies who want analytics that answer questions retroactively without a tracking-plan project, and who value not having to negotiate engineering time for every new metric. | Small SaaS and ecommerce teams that need person-level analytics (identity resolution, funnels, cohorts, and revenue attribution) without an analytics engineer, and that want transparent event-based pricing with a free tier rather than a sales call. |
| Setup time | Under an hour to install the snippet or mobile SDK and begin capturing. The real work starts afterwards: defining the virtual events that matter, wiring identify calls, and connecting enrichment sources typically takes a week or two of part-time effort before dashboards are trustworthy. | Minutes for the snippet and first data, with autoconfiguration proposing dashboards on the same day. Budget one to two weeks of part-time work to define custom events, set event roles, and connect billing before the revenue reports are trustworthy. |
| Learning curve | Low to start, moderate to do well. Building a chart is easy; writing virtual event definitions that stay correct through front-end changes is a skill, and so is resisting the urge to define an event for every interaction now that doing so is free. | Low for reading dashboards and asking questions through the AI chat. Moderate for the part that actually decides data quality: naming events consistently, assigning roles, and calling identify at the right moment so anonymous history aliases cleanly. |
| Platforms | Web (JavaScript snippet), iOS and Android SDKs, React Native, Google Tag Manager, Server-side libraries | Web (JavaScript snippet), Google Tag Manager, Segment, iOS SDK, Android SDK, Server-side APIs, Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, WordPress |
| Compliance | GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA (with BAA on qualifying plans), ISO 27001 | GDPR, CCPA |
| Founded | 2013 | 2008 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | Saint Petersburg, Florida, United States |
| Ownership | Acquired by Contentsquare; deal announced September 2023 and completed December 2023 | Privately held by Kissmetrics Holding Inc. after a 2023 sale and a 2025 merger with Sandstorm Analytics |
Strengths and limitations
Heap
Strengths
- Autocapture removes the single biggest failure mode in product analytics, which is discovering that the event you need was never instrumented.
- Retroactive event definition means a new metric has months of history on the day it is created, rather than starting a clock.
- Non-technical users can define events visually on the live site, so analytics work does not queue behind engineering.
- Illuminate genuinely surfaces findings nobody queried for, which is rare in a category where most tools only answer what you already thought to ask.
Limitations
- Autocapture produces a very large and noisy raw surface; without ongoing governance the event list becomes unusable and teams end up doing the taxonomy work they hoped to avoid.
- Virtual events defined against CSS selectors break silently when the front end is refactored, and a definition that is too loose quietly overcounts across all historical data at once.
- Paid pricing is opaque: Growth requires installing the snippet before you see a number, and Pro and Premier are sales-quoted with no published anchor.
- Data retention caps at twelve months on standard tiers, so year-over-year comparison requires paying for extra retention or exporting to a warehouse.
Kissmetrics
Strengths
- Person-level identity resolution is the original design, not a feature bolted on, so cross-device journeys and pre-signup history hold together properly.
- Autocapture plus autoconfiguration removes the instrumentation project that historically kept product analytics out of reach for small teams.
- Revenue attribution is a first-class report rather than an integration, which makes the tool legible to founders and marketers, not only analysts.
- Transparent published per-event pricing with a falling unit rate, no quote required until 5 million events a month.
Limitations
- The company is small and has changed ownership twice since 2023 (an Acquire.com sale in 2023, then a merger with Sandstorm Analytics in 2025), so continuity is a real diligence question rather than a formality.
- The public review base is thin and largely dated; recent third-party evidence about the rebuilt platform is scarce compared with Mixpanel, Amplitude, or PostHog.
- No session replay or heatmaps, so diagnosing why a step fails requires a second tool alongside it.
- Autocapture makes the event meter move quickly, and overages roll onto the next invoice automatically rather than pausing collection.
Pricing compared
Heap
Session-based subscription, billed on monthly sessions rather than seats or events. Four tiers: Free, Growth, Pro, and Premier. Only the free plan has a published limit; Growth gives a self-serve estimate after you install the snippet, and Pro and Premier are quoted by sales against your session volume on an annual commitment. Session replay, additional projects, and extra years of data retention are separately priced add-ons.
- Free$0
- GrowthQuoted after snippet install (commonly around $3,600 per year)
- ProCustom session pricing
- PremierCustom session pricing
The free plan is one of the better deals in product analytics: 10,000 monthly sessions with full autocapture, SSO, and six months of history is enough to run a real early-stage product. The step above it is where the value question gets harder. Growth at roughly $3,600 a year is competitive with Mixpanel and Amplitude for a small team, but Heap's opacity means you cannot compare on a spreadsheet without contacting sales, and the features a growing B2B team most wants (account analytics, the engagement matrix, warehouse sync) sit on quote-only tiers with add-ons stacked on top. Judged purely on capability per dollar the product is strong; judged on procurement friction for a five-person company, it is the least small-business-friendly part of an otherwise small-business-friendly tool.
Kissmetrics
Usage-based on monthly tracked events, with the per-event rate falling as volume rises. A permanently free workspace covers 100,000 events a month with three seats. Paid plans start at Growth and step through Silver and Gold rate bands automatically as volume grows, with a negotiated Custom band above 5 million events. Annual billing takes a flat 20 percent off.
- Free$0
- Growth$99
- Silver$0.15
- Gold$0.10
- CustomNegotiated
Per-event pricing that halves between the entry band and the volume band is one of the more honest models in product analytics, and a free 100,000-event workspace with real reports beats most competitors' trial offers. At $99 a month a small SaaS team gets identity resolution, funnels, cohorts, and revenue attribution that would cost several times more from Amplitude or Mixpanel at comparable functionality. The risk you are pricing in is vendor scale rather than sticker: this is a small company that has changed hands twice, so weigh portability, export, and the size of the support organization as part of the cost.
Editorial verdict on each
Heap
Heap made a genuinely good bet: that the expensive part of product analytics is not the charts but the instrumentation decisions you have to make before you know what you need. Autocapture plus retroactive event definition solves that better than anything else in the category, and Illuminate turns the resulting data mass into findings rather than just storage. For a small product team without analytics engineering, the free plan at 10,000 monthly sessions is one of the strongest starting offers available. The reservations are commercial and structural. Paid pricing is quote-only above a Growth tier that will not even show you a number until the snippet is installed, session replay and retention are add-ons that inflate the real cost, and the twelve-month history ceiling undercuts the very promise of retroactive analysis. Add the Contentsquare acquisition folding Heap into a larger platform and the long-term shape of the standalone product is uncertain. Start free and stay there as long as the volume allows; before upgrading, get a written quote that includes replay and retention, and compare it honestly against PostHog and Mixpanel, both of which will tell you their price without a phone call.
Read the full Heap profileKissmetrics
Kissmetrics has an unusual profile: a well-known name attached to a small independent company running a substantially rebuilt product. The core idea, that analytics should follow a person from first anonymous visit through to revenue, is still the right one, and the 2025 relaunch fixed the historical objection by making autocapture and autoconfiguration do the instrumentation work a small team never had time for. Pricing is genuinely small-business friendly: a free 100,000-event workspace with real reports, $99 a month to unlock Populations and the full query surface, and a unit rate that halves at volume without a sales call. What you give up is scale of vendor. There is no replay, the integration catalogue is about thirty connections, recent independent reviews are scarce, and the company has changed hands twice in three years. Buy it if revenue attribution and person-level funnels are the questions you need answered this quarter and you would rather spend $99 than $900; do your diligence on continuity and export before it becomes the system of record for your growth numbers.
Read the full Kissmetrics profileHeap profile last reviewed 2026-08-23; Kissmetrics last reviewed 2026-08-23. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.