Countly vs Amplitude (2026): the self-hosted alternative, compared
Countly and Amplitude both provide sophisticated product analytics. The difference is deployment: Countly Enterprise can be self-hosted on your infrastructure.
The self-hosted alternative to Amplitude.
Countly and Amplitude both provide sophisticated product analytics. The fundamental difference is deployment: Amplitude is SaaS, while Countly Enterprise can run on your infrastructure, where you choose.
What do Countly and Amplitude have in common?
Countly and Amplitude both provide sophisticated product analytics, so the choice between them is not about which one can analyze product behavior.
- Advanced product analytics. Countly offers funnels, flows, cohorts, retention, Drill, formulas, dashboards, user-level analysis and more. Amplitude offers deep behavioral analytics including funnels, retention, cohorts and journeys/path analysis.
- Experimentation. Countly has A/B testing integrated with Countly audiences, analytics and product configuration. Amplitude's Feature and Web Experiment support A/B, multivariate and other experimentation workflows.
- AI. Countly has the Cee AI assistant for exploring analytics and configuring reports, MCP, and AI Analytics for monitoring AI-powered features and model performance. Amplitude has AI Agents, Agent Analytics, MCP, AI Feedback and other AI functionality.
- Extensibility. Countly offers APIs, Hooks, plugins and customization. Amplitude offers APIs, webhooks, event streaming and custom integration tooling.
What is the main difference between Countly and Amplitude?
The fundamental difference is deployment: Countly Enterprise can be self-hosted on your infrastructure, while Amplitude is delivered as vendor-hosted SaaS.
Countly is an Amplitude alternative for teams that need advanced product analytics, experimentation and engagement while keeping the option to run the platform and product data on their own infrastructure.
That difference shows up in three questions buyers ask:
- Where does my product data live? With self-hosting, product data stays within the infrastructure you operate. Amplitude processes product data in its hosted US or EU environment.
- Can I control data residency? With self-hosting, Countly's deployment location is customer-defined. Amplitude offers US and EU hosted regions.
- Who operates the analytics infrastructure? You do, when self-hosting Countly. Amplitude operates the SaaS infrastructure.
In this comparison, self-hosting Countly means running the whole platform on infrastructure you operate, not only serving tracking scripts from your own domain.
How do Countly and Amplitude compare?
Countly and Amplitude compare closely on analytics, experimentation, AI and extensibility, and differ most on deployment, data location and who operates the infrastructure. Here are the 12 questions buyers ask most.
| What buyers want to know | Countly 27 | Amplitude |
|---|---|---|
| Can I self-host it? | Yes. Self-host Countly Enterprise on your own infrastructure. | No self-hosted deployment. Vendor-managed SaaS. |
| Where does my product data live? | With self-hosting, product data stays within the infrastructure you operate. | Amplitude processes product data in its hosted US or EU environment. |
| Does it offer advanced product analytics? | Yes. Funnels, flows, cohorts, retention, Drill, formulas, dashboards, user-level analysis and more. | Yes. Deep behavioral analytics including funnels, retention, cohorts and journeys/path analysis. |
| Can I go from insight to action? | Yes. Analytics, cohorts, Journeys, in-app, push, surveys/ratings and experiments work inside Countly. | Analytics connects with behavioral cohorts, Guides & Surveys and Activation/destinations. |
| Does it have push notifications? | Yes, Countly has native push notifications with behavioral/property targeting. | Yes, Amplitude supports push workflows through integrations. |
| Does it support experimentation? | Yes. A/B testing integrated with Countly audiences, analytics and product configuration. | Yes. Feature and Web Experiment support A/B, multivariate and other experimentation workflows. |
| Does it have session replay? | Coming soon. | Yes. Native Session Replay. |
| What AI capabilities does it have? | Cee AI assistant for exploring analytics and configuring reports, MCP and AI Analytics for monitoring AI-powered features and model performance. | AI Agents, Agent Analytics, MCP, AI Feedback and other AI functionality. |
| Can I extend/integrate it? | APIs, Hooks, plugins and customization, with the added flexibility of controlling the deployment. | APIs, webhooks, event streaming and custom integration tooling. |
| What governance does it support? | Application-level governance plus infrastructure-level control through self-hosting. | Enterprise RBAC, schema/data governance and audit logs within Amplitude's SaaS environment. |
| Can I control data residency? | With self-hosting, deployment location is customer-defined. | Amplitude offers US and EU hosted regions. |
| Who operates the analytics infrastructure? | You do, when self-hosting Countly. | Amplitude operates the SaaS infrastructure. |
Last reviewed: October 2026
When is Countly the better fit?
Countly is the better fit when you need advanced product analytics and want to keep the platform and your product data on infrastructure you operate. Four reasons teams choose Countly instead of Amplitude:
- Self-host your product analytics. Run Countly on your own infrastructure instead of sending behavioral data to a vendor-managed analytics environment.
- Replace six tools with one connected platform. Analytics · Funnels & Cohorts · Journeys · Push & In-app · Surveys & Ratings · Experiments.
- Keep insight and action together. Discover an audience in your analytics and use that same behavioral context to trigger journeys, messages, surveys and experiments.
- Keep infrastructure control as your analytics stack grows. With Countly Enterprise, infrastructure ownership, deployment location and product data can remain under your organization's control.
If you need session replay today, Amplitude has it natively and Countly Session Replay is coming soon. Weigh that against where your data needs to live.
What does self-hosting Countly look like in practice?
Self-hosting Countly means your team operates the platform and decides where it runs, and Countly's application-level governance extends down to the infrastructure layer.
- Consent recorded per feature, with each user's consent history
- Export or purge a single user's data, logged with who ran it
- Access set per project and per feature, with an audit trail of dashboard changes
- Built for up to 100M MAU and billions of events
What does insight to action look like in Countly?
In Countly, the audience you find in analytics is the audience you act on, without leaving the platform.
What should you ask when you evaluate Countly and Amplitude?
Start with deployment, then check the features that matter to your team:
- Where must our product data live, and who must operate the infrastructure?
- Which hosting regions or deployment locations do we need?
- Do we need session replay now, or can it wait?
- Where does our data go when AI features run?
- Do we want to act on insights (Journeys, push, in-app, surveys and experiments) in the same platform as our analytics?
See everything new in Countly 27 at countly.com/countly27, or join Onur Alp Soner, Countly CEO, live at Inside Countly 27 on Thu, Dec 3, at 4 PM CET. Save your seat
Amplitude is a trademark of Amplitude, Inc. Comparison based on publicly available information as of October 2026; features may change.
Frequently asked questions
Is Countly an alternative to Amplitude?
Yes. Countly is the self-hosted alternative to Amplitude.
Can I self-host Countly?
Yes. Countly Enterprise can run on your infrastructure, where you choose.
Does Countly support A/B testing?
Yes. A/B testing is integrated with Countly audiences, analytics and product configuration.
