PocketBase vs Amplitude
Open-source backend in a single Go binary
vs. Digital analytics + experimentation + CDP
Pricing tiers
PocketBase
Self-Hosted
MIT-licensed single binary. Run on any VPS / Docker / bare metal. No usage caps — only limited by your server.
$0 base (usage-based)
Amplitude
Starter (Free)
10K Monthly Tracked Users, 10M events/mo. Session Replay + unlimited feature flags + Web Experimentation + AI Feedback included.
Free
Plus
$49/mo (annual). Up to 300K MTUs + 25M events. Unlimited product analytics, behavioral cohorts, feature tagging, custom audiences.
$49/mo
Growth
Custom. Causal insights, Feature Experimentation, real-time streaming, predictive audiences.
Custom
Enterprise
Custom. Cross-product analysis, advanced data controls, mutual exclusion groups, multi-armed bandit.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing self-hosted on PocketBase vs starter on Amplitude.
| Metric | PocketBase | Amplitude |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
PocketBase · 12 features
- Access Rules — Record-level access rules (filter expressions) referencing @request and @collect…
- Admin Dashboard — Built-in web UI for schema + data management.
- Auth — Email+password, OAuth2 (Google, GitHub, Facebook, Apple, Discord, Microsoft, etc…
- Backups — Built-in backup/restore with S3 upload option.
- Built-in Mailer — SMTP integration for verification, password reset, magic link emails.
- Collections — Schema-defined record types with fields, validations, and record/admin/auth acce…
- Embedded JS Engine — JavaScript VM (goja) lets you write hooks in JS without recompiling.
- Extend as Go Library — Embed PocketBase in a larger Go app, add custom routes and events.
- File Storage — Local filesystem or S3-compatible storage with access rules.
- Hooks — Server-side Go or JavaScript hooks that run on CRUD events (OnRecordBeforeCreate…
- Migrations — JS/Go migration scripts applied on startup.
- Realtime Subscriptions — SSE-based subscriptions to collection changes.
Amplitude · 13 features
- AI Feedback (Asking) — Natural language questions over your Amplitude data.
- Amplitude CDP — Customer Data Platform — identify, segment, sync to 150+ destinations.
- Causal Insights — AI identifies why a metric changed — root cause.
- Cross-Product Analysis — Analyze across multiple apps/products in the same org.
- Data Governance — Taxonomies, schemas, approvals, category management.
- Data Warehouse Sync — Sync data to/from Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks.
- Feature Experimentation — Server-side / SDK-level experiments. Growth+.
- Feature Flags — Targeting rules + rollouts. Unlimited in Starter.
- North Star Metric — Pre-built dashboards for key metric tracking.
- Predictive Audiences — ML-based forecasting of user behavior.
- Product Analytics — Core events + funnels + retention + segmentation.
- Session Replay — Pixel-perfect user session recording + privacy masking.
- Web Experimentation — A/B test visual changes on your site without deploy.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | PocketBase | Amplitude |
|---|---|---|
| SDK | Go API (extend as library), pocketbase (Dart), pocketbase (JS SDK) | amplitude-analytics-python, @amplitude/analytics-react-native, amplitude-android, amplitude-js / browser-sdk, amplitude-node, AmplitudeSwift (iOS) |
| REST | REST API | Amplitude HTTP API v2, Batch Event API, Export API |
| OTHER | Admin Dashboard, Realtime SSE | Data Destinations (webhooks) |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to PocketBase and Amplitude are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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