Amplitude: What It Is, Features, and Analytics Tools

What is Amplitude?

Amplitude is a cloud-based product analytics platform founded in 2012. The system is designed for collecting, processing, and visualizing behavioral data from users of mobile apps and web services. Unlike classic analytics systems, Amplitude stores raw events and allows rebuilding reports without pre-aggregation.

The platform processes up to 50 billion events per month on enterprise plans. Data is transmitted via REST API or mobile SDKs for iOS, Android, React Native, and Flutter. Amplitude supports automatic detection of active users, sessions, and geographic location.

Amplitude’s main advantage is Self-Serve Analytics. Product managers and marketers can build reports through a web interface without developer involvement. The system offers ready-made templates for funnels, cohorts, and retention curves that update in real time as new events arrive.

How Amplitude’s Event Model Works

Amplitude’s event model is built on three core entities: User, Event, and Property. Each user is identified by a unique device_id or user_id. Each event contains a name (event type), a timestamp, and a set of properties. Properties are divided into user properties and event properties.

Events and Properties

An event is any user action in the app: launch, button click, screen view, level completion. Each event is assigned a type (event_type) and a timestamp. Event properties contain contextual information: purchase price, level name, session duration.

User Properties are attributes tied to a specific user: country, subscription plan, registration date. Unlike event properties, they persist across sessions and are automatically applied to all new user events. Amplitude supports up to 1,000 user properties per project.

User Identification

For user identification, Amplitude uses a two-level system: device_id is assigned automatically on first install, user_id is assigned after authentication. When a user logs into an account, Amplitude links device_id and user_id via the identify API method.

Groups and Enterprise Accounts

For B2B applications, Amplitude supports groups (Group Analytics). Multiple users can be combined into one organization, and analytics is built at the group level rather than the individual user level. This feature is useful for enterprise messengers, CRMs, and project management tools.

Key Product Analytics Metrics in Amplitude

Amplitude provides a set of built-in metrics for assessing product health. Basic indicators include DAU (Daily Active Users), WAU (Weekly Active Users), and MAU (Monthly Active Users). These metrics are automatically calculated based on app launch events.

Retention Rate

Retention Rate is one of the key metrics in Amplitude. The report is built using the N-day retention model: the system records the user’s first day of activity (Day 0) and shows how many users returned on day 1, 7, 14, and 30. Amplitude supports both classic retention (return on a specific day) and unbounded retention (return on any day after the period).

DAU, WAU, MAU

The DAU/MAU ratio is an engagement metric (stickiness) calculated as the ratio of daily active users to monthly active users. Amplitude automatically computes this ratio for any time range. For mobile apps, a DAU/MAU ratio above 20% is considered good.

Integrating Amplitude SDK into a Mobile App

Amplitude provides native SDKs for iOS (Swift), Android (Kotlin), React Native, and Flutter. Basic integration consists of three steps: installing the package, initializing with an API key, and sending the first event. The library automatically tracks app launches, screen names, and OS versions.

Installation and Setup for Android

// build.gradle (app level)
implementation 'com.amplitude:analytics-android:1.2.0'

SDK Initialization in Kotlin

import com.amplitude.android.Amplitude
import com.amplitude.android.Configuration

val amplitude = Amplitude(
    Configuration(
        apiKey = "YOUR_API_KEY",
        applicationContext = this
    )
)

Sending Events on iOS (Swift)

import AmplitudeSwift

let amplitude = Amplitude(configuration: Configuration(
    apiKey: "YOUR_API_KEY"
))

// Sending events with properties
amplitude.track(
    eventType: "Purchase Complete",
    eventProperties: [
        "product_id": "premium_01",
        "price": "9.99"
    ]
)

Analytics Reports: Funnels, Cohorts, and Retention

Amplitude offers four main report types: Funnel Analysis, Cohort Analysis, Retention Analysis, and Segmentation. Funnels show at which step users drop off when completing a sequence of actions. The system automatically calculates conversion between each step and the overall completion rate.

Cohort analysis in Amplitude is divided into two types: classic cohorts (users who registered in the same period) and behavioral cohorts (users who performed the same action). Cohorts can be saved, exported, and reused for analysis. Behavioral cohorts are especially useful for A/B testing: you can compare the behavior of users who saw a new feature with those who did not.

Segmentation is a basic report that shows the number of events or users over a selected period. The report is built around a single event (e.g., “App Launch”) grouped by properties (country, OS version, device type). Amplitude supports applying multiple filters, comparing periods, and exporting data to PNG and PDF. Segmentation is the starting point for any analysis: if you see event growth, dive into cohorts; if you see a drop, check the funnel.

For each report, Amplitude generates Auto Insights. The system analyzes data and finds statistically significant anomalies: sudden growth or decline in metrics, changes in behavioral patterns. Auto Insights is powered by built-in machine learning algorithms.

Real-Time Data Processing and Streaming API

Amplitude supports streaming event processing via Streaming API. Data enters the system in real time and becomes available in reports within seconds. This is critical for products where decisions are made based on live data: A/B tests, monitoring new feature launches, incident tracking.

Streaming API allows connecting Amplitude to Kafka, Amazon Kinesis, and Google Pub/Sub. Events can be duplicated into your own data storage without additional configuration. The delay between sending an event and its appearance in a report is less than 5 seconds under standard configuration.

Data Export API is a tool for exporting raw events in JSON or Parquet format. Developers can schedule daily exports to Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Snowflake. Data Export API is essential for building custom analytics pipelines and training ML models on historical data. Amplitude supports incremental export: each day only new events are exported, not the full dump.

Governance and data management is an important aspect of working with Amplitude on the Enterprise plan. The platform supports Data Taxonomy (event dictionary management), Data Validation Rules (automatic property type validation), and Access Controls (role-based access to projects and reports). These features help maintain data quality as the team scales.

Amplitude vs Mixpanel vs Firebase Analytics

Amplitude competes with Mixpanel and Firebase Analytics on several parameters. Firebase Analytics is a free tool built into Google’s ecosystem, but it is limited to 500 events per user and does not support complex cohort reports. Mixpanel offers a similar event model but focuses on marketing analytics and push notifications.

For Product-Led Growth (PLG) companies, Amplitude remains the preferred choice thanks to behavioral cohorts and auto insights. Mixpanel excels in marketing automation, while Firebase Analytics is the best option for startups with zero analytics budget.

Platform choice depends on the project stage and available budget. Startups with limited resources can start with Firebase Analytics and switch to Amplitude or Mixpanel after reaching 50,000 MAU. Enterprise projects with budgets starting at $50,000 per year choose Amplitude for deep product analysis or Mixpanel for marketing automation and CDP features.