Comparison
Tidings vs Mixpanel
Mixpanel and Tidings both answer "who did what, and how often" from custom events. Mixpanel is the mature, deep option: per-platform SDKs, a rich report builder, cohorts, and segmentation built for dedicated analytics teams. Tidings covers the common core of that — event explorer, user profiles, funnels, retention, paths, dashboards — with a far smaller surface area and an integration that is a single HTTP POST. Pick Mixpanel if you have complex reporting needs or an analyst who will live in the tool. Pick Tidings if you want to be instrumented this afternoon and read your numbers without a training session.
What Mixpanel does well
Mixpanel has spent well over a decade on this problem, and it shows in the analysis layer: custom reports, flexible segmentation, saved cohorts, alerting, and a query surface that will outlast most teams' questions. Its SDKs handle batching, retries, offline queues, and identity resolution for you across a long list of platforms. Tidings has none of that depth — it deliberately trades it for a smaller tool.
Side by side
| Spec | Tidings | Mixpanel |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Lightweight event analytics | Full-depth product analytics |
| Integration | One HTTP POST. No SDK, no client library — any language that speaks HTTP | Per-platform SDKs (web, iOS, Android, server languages) plus an HTTP ingestion API |
| Client-side conveniences (offline queue, retries, autocapture) | No — you send the request, you own the retry | Handled by the SDKs |
| Event explorer & live feed | Yes — live tail, filter by name, property, or user | Yes |
| User profiles | Yes — assembled automatically from the distinct_id on each event | Yes, with user profiles and identity merging |
| Funnels, retention, paths | Yes | Yes, with deeper breakdowns and segmentation |
| Cohorts & custom report builder | No — filters and pinned tiles only | Yes |
| Session replay | No — out of scope | Yes |
| Dashboards | Pinned-tile dashboards per project and per organization | Boards with rich, configurable reports |
| Read / query API | Yes — events, users, property keys and values, over a token-authenticated REST API | Yes, with export and query APIs |
| Backfilling history | Send a past ISO 8601 timestamp; events file where they belong | Supported via the import API |
| Self-hosting | No — hosted service only | No — hosted service only |
| Open source | No — source is not public | No |
| Event retention | Configurable per project, 1–730 days (30 by default); a daily purge deletes anything older | Retention varies by plan |
| Pricing shape | Free during beta. A flat $29/month Pro tier is planned. No enterprise tier | Free tier plus usage-based paid plans |
| Maturity | Beta | Established, widely deployed |
Mixpanel details summarise its public documentation and change often — check mixpanel.com for current features, limits, and pricing. Tidings rows describe the product as it ships today; anything marked planned is not available yet.
Which one should you use?
Choose Mixpanel if…
- You have an analyst or growth team who will build custom reports and cohorts daily.
- You need SDK conveniences: autocapture, offline queueing, identity merging across devices.
- You want a decade of accumulated analysis features and integrations.
- Your reporting requirements are already more specific than "what happened, and who did it".
Choose Tidings if…
- You want events flowing today, from a backend that only needs to make an HTTP request.
- Your questions are the common ones — active users, funnels, retention, what a given user did.
- You would rather read a dashboard than learn a report builder.
- You are a small team instrumenting a SaaS app, side project, or MVP.
Try it in the time this page took to read
Create a project, grab an API key, POST one event. Free while in beta.