Countly vs Snowplow (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 12, 2026, Countly and Snowplow share a 2.2 GPA, and only Countly has a free plan.
Checked Nov 12, 2026 · graded Nov 12, 2026 by ToolGPA
Countly grades higher on the free plan and ease of use. Snowplow grades higher on features and platforms. They get the same grade on value for money.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Countly
Self-hosted product analytics for web, mobile and desktop apps
Free plan · from $175/mo
Snowplow
Event data collection pipeline for your warehouse and AI agents
Free trial
Which one is for you
Pick Countly if
- Fits if you track mobile apps and want your data on your own server
- Works for teams that want the choice of self-hosted or hosted
Look elsewhere if
- Pricey if you want the full platform: Flex starts at $175 a month
- Skip it if you don't want to run a server, as Lite is self-hosted
- Watch out: Adaptivity, Intelligence and the uptime SLA are paid add-ons on Flex
- Watch out: Enterprise has no published price and bills yearly
Pick Snowplow if
- Fits if you have data engineers and want to own your event data in your own warehouse
- Works for a company that needs a tracking plan with validation
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you want a dashboard to open and read, as it's infrastructure
- Not for you if no one on your team writes data code
- Skip it if you want a price on the page, as none is published
- Watch out: the self-hosted pipeline is for former open-source users and drops the non-commercial limit in the SLULA 1.1 license
How we grade them
| 2.2GPACountlyFair | 2.2GPASnowplowFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CFlex from $175 a month, above the category's dearer-quarter start of $159. Lite is free if you host it, which is a C by our rule. | CNo prices are published; rates depend on event volume, hosting or consumption, and you request a quote. |
| Free plan and trial | BLite is free with 20+ plugins and community support, and Flex has a 14-day trial. Lite needs your own server. | C14-day trial of the full product with no card. No free plan. |
| Features | CAnalytics, engagement, funnels and retention. Lite lacks Cee, Drill and Journeys, which are in the full platform. | BEvent tracking, validation, enrichment, delivery to warehouses and streams, modelling and event forwarding. It covers the pipeline but gives you no ready dashboard. |
| Ease of use | CNo rating on record. Flex is hosted for you, but Lite means running a server. | DNo store rating on record, and the listing says it suits teams with data engineering skills. |
| Platforms and integrations | CA web dashboard. The listing names no integrations. | BWeb only, but it delivers to Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, S3 and Kafka, and links to AI tools such as AWS Bedrock. |
| Best for | product analytics for web and mobile apps | event data infrastructure for data teams |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Countly and Snowplow. How we grade
Where they differ
- Countly is open source, according to its own site.
- Countly also covers surveys and a/B testing.
- Snowplow also covers dashboards.
In commonWebSelf-hostableWeb analytics
At a glance
| Countly | Snowplow | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free trial |
| Starts at | $175 per month and up | Not published |
| Free plan | Countly Lite: the open-source core, self-hosted on your own server, with community support only and no SLA. | None |
| Free trial | 14-day free trial of Flex | 14-day free trial with full product, no credit card required |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Countly Ltd. | Snowplow Analytics Ltd |
| Price read from | countly.com | Not confirmed |
| Checked | Nov 12, 2026 | Nov 12, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Countly
- Flex is billed by monthly active users rather than seats; the page gives only a $175 starting price and an estimator.
- On Flex, Adaptivity and Intelligence are paid add-ons, and the uptime SLA is an add-on.
- Enterprise has no published price and is billed annually per deployment.
- Lite is self-hosted with community support only and does not include the full platform, such as Cee, Drill and Journeys.
Snowplow
- No prices are published; the page says rates depend on event volume, hosting, consumption or destinations, and asks you to request a quote.
- The self-hosted pipeline is aimed at previous open-source users and removes the non-commercial restriction in the SLULA 1.1 license.
- It is data infrastructure rather than a ready-made dashboard tool, so it suits teams with data engineering skills.
Key features
Countly
- Mobile, web and desktop analytics
- SDKs for iOS, Android, JavaScript, macOS, Windows and Linux apps feed one data layer with real-time events, sessions and user profiles.
- Engagement tools
- The Adaptivity capability covers push notifications, in-app messages, journeys, A/B tests, surveys and hooks, acting on the same data.
- Funnels, retention and flows
- The Intelligence capability adds funnels, retention, flows, formulas, crash reporting and the Drill query tool.
- Data control
- Data can be masked, transformed and validated as it is collected, and the vendor says it has no default access to Flex or Enterprise data.
- Cee AI agent and MCP
- Cee is Countly's AI agent, part of the Intelligence add-on on Flex. Your own AI can also connect to Countly through MCP.
- Choice of hosting
- Run it on your own infrastructure, including air-gapped networks, or on Flex in the Google Cloud region you choose.
Snowplow
- Event tracking
- More than 20 first-party trackers and webhooks collect events from web, mobile and server sources.
- Validation and enrichment
- Events are validated and enriched in stream as they arrive, with data quality monitoring.
- Warehouse and stream delivery
- Data goes to destinations such as Snowflake, Databricks, Google BigQuery, Amazon S3 and Kafka.
- Modeling and analytics
- Digital analytics and ecommerce analytics models run on data in your warehouse.
- Signals and event forwarding
- Signals serves live customer context to apps and agents; event forwarding sends events to other tools.
Plans
Countly
Countly Lite$0
Open-source core you host yourself, with 20+ plugins including dashboards, profiles, crashes, funnels and retention.
Countly Flex$175
per month and up
Dedicated private-cloud instance billed monthly by usage (MAU). Includes Advanced Analytics; Adaptivity and Intelligence are add-ons.
Countly EnterpriseCustom
Self-hosted or in your own cloud, priced per deployment and billed annually, with every capability and dedicated support.
Snowplow
Pricing could not be confirmed. See snowplow.io.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Countly or Snowplow?
As of Nov 12, 2026, Countly starts at $175 per month and up, and Snowplow has no price we could confirm.
Which has a free plan, Countly or Snowplow?
As of Nov 12, 2026, only Countly has a free plan. Snowplow does not, though it has a free trial.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.