OpenPanel
Open-source product + web analytics: funnels, cohorts, session replay and revenue tracking, self-hostable for free.
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Description
Companies want to understand how people actually use their product — which features get used, where users drop off, whether a change increased revenue — without either building this from scratch or handing all their user data to a big analytics vendor. OpenPanel is a free, open tool that gives a team this kind of insight while keeping the data on infrastructure they control. OpenPanel is an open-source analytics platform that combines product analytics (in the style of Mixpanel), privacy-first web analytics (like Plausible) and traffic analysis (like Google Analytics) in one tool. Client SDKs and a server-side API send events into a real-time engine, which powers dashboards covering funnels, user cohorts, individual user profiles, session replay, retention curves (day 1/7/30), revenue and MRR tracking, and A/B testing. It supports GDPR-compliant cookieless tracking, exposes a REST API for raw data access, and — notably for 2026 — ships an MCP server so AI coding assistants like Claude, Cursor and Windsurf can query analytics data directly. The core is AGPL-3.0 and free to self-host with unlimited events; the hosted cloud starts around $20/month with a pay-per-event model beyond a free allotment.
💬 Our review
The short version: if you want Mixpanel-grade product analytics without Mixpanel-grade pricing or a giant vendor holding your user data, OpenPanel's free self-hosted option is a genuinely strong deal.
OpenPanel's pitch — one tool instead of stitching Plausible (privacy) plus Mixpanel (product analytics) plus a BI dashboard — is ambitious but the feature list backs it up: funnels, cohorts, session replay and revenue tracking are usually split across multiple paid tools. Self-hosting with unlimited events at zero license cost is the standout value proposition versus Mixpanel, whose usage-based pricing gets expensive fast at scale. The MCP integration is a smart, timely addition — letting an AI coding assistant pull real product-usage data during development is genuinely useful, not just a buzzword feature. The AGPL-3.0 license is worth knowing: it's more restrictive than MIT/Apache for anyone embedding OpenPanel inside a product they distribute (copyleft obligations kick in), though for internal analytics use that's irrelevant. As a younger project (no long public track record cited), expect some rough edges compared to Mixpanel's decade-plus of polish; but for a team willing to self-host and comfortable with AGPL, it's hard to beat on features-per-dollar.
💰 Pricing
📊 Global score
🤖 AI-enriched data
Pros
Free unlimited self-hosting, AGPL open source
Funnels, cohorts, session replay, revenue tracking in one tool
MCP server for AI assistant integration
Cons
AGPL-3.0 has copyleft implications for embedding
Younger project than Mixpanel/PostHog
❓ Frequently asked questions
- Is OpenPanel really free if I self-host?
- Yes — the core is AGPL-3.0 open source, and self-hosting has no event limits or license fee. The Cloud option exists for teams who don't want to run the infrastructure themselves.
- What does AGPL-3.0 mean for my use?
- For internal analytics use (which is how most teams use OpenPanel), AGPL has no practical effect. It matters if you modify OpenPanel and distribute it as part of a product or service you offer to others — then you'd need to open-source your modifications.
- How does it compare to PostHog?
- Both are open-source, self-hostable, and cover product analytics plus session replay. OpenPanel leans harder into combining web analytics (Plausible-style) with product analytics in one simpler tool; PostHog has a broader feature set (feature flags, experiments) but more complexity.
- Is it worth the money compared to alternatives?
- Self-hosted, it costs only your server — versus Mixpanel or Amplitude's usage-based pricing that scales into hundreds or thousands of dollars monthly at real traffic. That makes OpenPanel's free tier the strongest value if you're willing to run the infrastructure.
- Which analytics tool should you pick for your case?
- Want product analytics + web analytics combined, self-hosted, free: OpenPanel. Need feature flags and experiments too: PostHog. Just simple privacy-first pageviews: Plausible or GoatCounter. Enterprise-scale product analytics with big budget: Amplitude or Mixpanel.