Analytics · checked 2026-10-14

Can I vibecode Mixpanel?

KINDA· weekend project

For one person tracking their own apps, the core of Mixpanel is a collector, an events table and a few queries: counts, funnels and retention. DuckDB and an agent can produce that over a weekend, with the SQL on screen so you can check it. What you give up is what teams pay for: SDKs for every platform, session replay, experiments and flags, identity handling proven on millions of users, and a report builder non-engineers can use. If you want that breadth for free, PostHog or OpenPanel are already built.

$140/moprice

$1,680you'd save a year

weekendbuild time

—people replaced it

Before you start

What you need on hand.

DifficultyIntermediate · Some system setup or keys.

TimeA weekend; the funnel and retention SQL is the careful part

Claude Code, Codex or CursorAny of them can run the prompt.
Node.js 22The DuckDB package ships prebuilt binaries for the common platforms.
A list of your events and propertiesA spreadsheet of event names and the properties you filter by is enough to guide the first reports.
A public address for the collectorA tunnel or a small VPS with HTTPS if the tracked sites aren't local.

Before you buildMixpanel Free covers 1M events a month with unlimited seats. If your app stays under that, you may not need to pay or build.

1. Install one agent: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor.
2. Make an empty folder and open it in the agent.
3. Paste the prompt below, press enter, and answer its questions as it builds.

The prompt

Build me a small self-hosted event analytics tool to replace Mixpanel for my own apps. Requirements:

- Node.js 22 + TypeScript: a Fastify server and a React dashboard built with Vite, charts with `uPlot`.
  `npm start` serves http://localhost:4400.
- Collector: POST /v1/track takes {event, distinct_id, timestamp?, properties{}} singly or in batches
  of up to 100. Write keys per project live in .env as PROJECT_KEYS=name:key,...; reject unknown keys
  with 401 and allow CORS only for origins listed in ALLOWED_ORIGINS.
- Storage: DuckDB through `@duckdb/node-api` in ./data/events.duckdb. An events table (project, event,
  distinct_id, ts, properties JSON, insert_id) drops repeats by insert_id; POST /v1/identify writes an
  anonymous-id to user-id table that all reports use to join a visitor's history.
- Browser snippet: serve /t.js (under 3 KB) exposing mp.track(event, props) and mp.identify(userId),
  with a random anonymous id in localStorage, no cookies, and a flush with sendBeacon on page hide.
- Reports, each with a date range and up to two property filters: Events (count or unique users per
  day, split by one property), Funnel (2-6 steps, a conversion window in hours, drop-off per step),
  Retention (days 0-30, with a first-event and a return-event picker) and Users (the last 100 events
  of one distinct_id). Save reports by name.
- Write the funnel and retention SQL by hand, show it on each report, and test it against a fixture of
  50,000 generated events with known answers.
- A nightly job deletes events older than RETENTION_DAYS (default 365).
- Single user: the dashboard sits behind one password from .env (signed cookie). No accounts, no
  telemetry, local-first.
- Out of scope: session replay, heatmaps, experiments, feature flags, alerts, mobile SDKs.
- README: adding the snippet, exposing the collector through a tunnel, the events per second you
  measured with `autocannon`, and a note that one machine is not Mixpanel's pipeline.

Opens your agent with the prompt filled in, you press enter. Or copy it and paste it into an empty folder.

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Then keep going

Next prompts, same folder.

The first prompt builds the core. Run these one at a time in the same folder to grow it into your own Mixpanel.

Add a data catalogue to the analytics tool in this folder. Requirements:

- A Catalogue page listing every event name seen, its first and last time, its count over
  30 days and the property keys with their inferred types.
- Let me mark an event as hidden or add a description, stored in DuckDB.
- Add a merge action that rewrites one event name to another in old data after a confirmation
  that shows the number of rows touched.
- Report builders only offer non-hidden events.
- Update the README.

Add a weekly digest to the analytics tool in this folder. Requirements:

- Pick up to five saved reports; every Monday at 08:00 in TZ from .env render each as a small
  HTML table with the change versus the previous week.
- Send through nodemailer using SMTP settings from .env; add a "send test now" button.
- Log each send, and skip silently if the report returns no rows.
- Update the README.

Add an importer to the analytics tool in this folder. Requirements:

- Read JSONL files produced by Mixpanel's raw event export from ./import/, one event per line
  with an event name and a properties object holding distinct_id, time and $insert_id.
- Map time (Unix seconds) to ts, keep every other property, and use $insert_id to skip repeats.
- Insert in batches of 10,000 and print a progress count; a rerun must not duplicate rows.
- Report the lines it could not parse.
- Update the README.

What you lose

Session replay, heatmaps, experiments and feature flags, which Mixpanel now bundles
SDKs for mobile and server languages, autocapture and a data dictionary to keep event names tidy
Warehouse connectors and cohort syncs to other tools
Roles, permissions and an audit trail for a team
Volume headroom: one machine is not a pipeline built for billions of events

Why people still pay

Teams buy Mixpanel so product managers and marketers can ask funnel and retention questions without writing SQL, on events that engineers instrument once and then trust. For small apps the free million events is enough, so money goes to volume beyond that and to replay, experiments and group analytics in the same tool.

Moatinfrastructure scale integrations execution polish

Do the math

Mixpanel or your own copy?

Over

Your usage

Count my time12h ×$/h

Mixpanel, 1 yr$1,680

Your own copy, 1 yr$46running + build session

You keep$1,634pays for itself in the first month

Estimate · Free on your own machine; a $5 VPS covers a small collector. Mixpanel's calculator shows $140 a month at 1.5M events, so volume is where a build can save money. The build is token usage on your agent plan.

Leaving Mixpanel

Take your data, then cancel.

1 · Take your data out of Mixpanel

1Raw events: call the Raw Event Export API at data.mixpanel.com/api/2.0/export with from_date and to_date (inclusive, UTC for projects created after 1 Jan 2023); the output is JSONL, one event per line.
2The API takes up to 100,000 events per request via limit and is rate limited to 60 queries an hour, 3 a second and 100 concurrent; authenticate with the project secret.
3Events and user profiles can also be downloaded as CSV from their tables in the UI (only what the table shows; choose all event properties for the full set), and the Engage API returns profiles as JSON.
4Report exports as CSV, PNG or PDF are capped at 10,000 rows; Data Pipelines, the warehouse sync, is a paid add-on.

2 · Cancel Mixpanel

1Owners and Billing Admins open Plan Details & Billing and choose Modify Plan, then Downgrade to Free Plan.
2The downgrade does not take effect at once: the paid plan stays active until the end of the billing cycle, then Free begins and the owner gets a confirmation email.
3The docs describe no separate cancellation; for any other change, contact Support.

Free stops report access at 1M events in a month, so a busy project can lock itself out of its own charts; mind the volume before downgrading.
Free drops lookup tables, custom properties and permissions, so check which saved reports rely on them.
Raw export output isn't deduplicated; the docs advise de-duplicating on event name, distinct_id, time and $insert_id.
The docs we read don't say how long data is kept after a downgrade, so export what you need first.

Checked 2026-10-14 against Mixpanel's docs: 1, 2, 3, 4

The escape hatch

Don't feel like building it? These are already free.

PostHogOpen sourceProduct analytics with funnels and retention, plus replay, flags and experiments; MIT core with an ee/ folder under a separate licence.★ 40k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗OpenPanelOpen sourceAGPL-3.0 web and product analytics that describes itself as a Mixpanel alternative; funnels, cohorts, user profiles and session replay.★ 7.1k · active Sep 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗UmamiOpen sourceMIT-licensed, cookie-free analytics for traffic, campaigns and events; needs Node.js and PostgreSQL.★ 39k · active Sep 2026 · docker to self-host
WebVisit ↗

All 5 free alternatives to Mixpanel ›

The numbers

Mixpanel pricing

Plan	Monthly	Annual, per month	What you get
Free	$0	$0	Up to 1M events a month, unlimited seats, 5 saved reports per seat, 10 active feature flags, 1K monthly experiment users.
Growth	$140	$120	The first 1M events each month are free, then usage-based up to 20M a month; unlimited saved reports, up to 50 feature flags, up to 5 alerts, custom and borrowed properties.
Enterprise	custom	—	Up to 1T events a month, custom replay and experiment volumes, unlimited alerts with anomaly detection, a custom retention policy, a dedicated success team and priority support.

Free tier: 1M events a month and 5 saved reports per seat; lookup tables, custom properties and permissions are excluded.
Billing: Billed monthly or yearly. Annual plans need more than 1M pre-committed monthly events. Overage on Growth is billed at the start of the next month, and there is no billing limit you can set. Events are counted when they arrive, not by their own timestamp.
Hidden costs: Group Analytics adds 40% and Data Pipelines 20% of the calculated overage. Metric Trees and shared Slack support are separate add-ons. The first year is free for startups under 5 years old with up to $8M in funding.
Source: mixpanel.com

Also on the list

Matomo Cloud$24.61/mo · AnalyticsYES

Plausible$9/mo · AnalyticsYES

Umami Cloud$20/mo · AnalyticsYES

Questions

Mixpanel, briefly

Not answered here? Tell us and we'll add it.

Ask a question ›

Free covers up to 1M events a month with unlimited seats; past the cap, reports stay locked until the month resets, and nothing is billed.

Kinda. The core is a weekend build with the prompt on this page, but real gaps remain: Session replay, heatmaps, experiments and feature flags, which Mixpanel now bundles, SDKs for mobile and server languages, autocapture and a data dictionary to keep event names tidy.

About $140 a month on the Growth, 1.5M events a month plan, $1,680 a year (checked 2026-10-14).

Session replay, heatmaps, experiments and feature flags, which Mixpanel now bundles; SDKs for mobile and server languages, autocapture and a data dictionary to keep event names tidy; Warehouse connectors and cohort syncs to other tools; Roles, permissions and an audit trail for a team; Volume headroom: one machine is not a pipeline built for billions of events. If any of those matter to you, keep paying.