Heap vs Snowplow
Heap
An autocapture product analytics platform, now part of Contentsquare, that records every interaction so events can be defined retroactively.
Full directory entry →Snowplow
A behavioral data pipeline that collects schema-validated events and delivers them raw to your own warehouse or lake.
Full directory entry →Facts, side by side
| Heap | Snowplow | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | freemium | freemium |
| Pricing notes | Free plan up to 10k monthly sessions with 6 months history; Growth, Pro, and Premier are quote-based, priced by session volume. Warehouse sync ships on the Premier tier; session replay is a Pro add-on. Exceeding the session cap blocks data viewing until you upgrade. | Community Edition is free to run in your own cloud (you pay infrastructure) but is licensed for testing/evaluation only under SLULA 1.1 — production self-hosting requires a paid Self-Hosted Pipeline license. The managed Snowplow platform is quote-based, priced on event volume, hosting, and consumption; a 14-day full-product trial is available. |
| Open source | No | No |
| Self-hostable | No | Yes — Community Edition deploys into your own AWS, GCP, or Azure account; recent core releases ship under the source-available Snowplow Limited Use License (trackers/SDKs and pre-2024 Apache 2.0 releases remain genuinely open source). |
| Categories | Analytics, Product analytics | Analytics |
| Who it's for | measurement managers, marketing managers | data engineers, implementation engineers |
| Integrations listed | 3 | 6 |
Directory entries last updated: Heap 2026-07-18 · Snowplow 2026-07-18.
In brief
Heap — An autocapture product analytics platform, now part of Contentsquare, that records every interaction so events can be defined retroactively. Pricing: freemium. Free plan up to 10k monthly sessions with 6 months history; Growth, Pro, and Premier are quote-based, priced by session volume. Warehouse sync ships on the Premier tier; session replay is a Pro add-on. Exceeding the session cap blocks data viewing until you upgrade. Self-hosting: No. Listed integrations: segment, snowflake, bigquery.
Snowplow — A behavioral data pipeline that collects schema-validated events and delivers them raw to your own warehouse or lake. Pricing: freemium. Community Edition is free to run in your own cloud (you pay infrastructure) but is licensed for testing/evaluation only under SLULA 1.1 — production self-hosting requires a paid Self-Hosted Pipeline license. The managed Snowplow platform is quote-based, priced on event volume, hosting, and consumption; a 14-day full-product trial is available. Self-hosting: Yes — Community Edition deploys into your own AWS, GCP, or Azure account; recent core releases ship under the source-available Snowplow Limited Use License (trackers/SDKs and pre-2024 Apache 2.0 releases remain genuinely open source).. Listed integrations: bigquery, snowflake, databricks, redshift, dbt, gtm-server-side.
Which one, when
Derived mechanically from the structured facts above — deltas only, not an editorial verdict. Where the facts tie, read both entries.
- you also need Product analytics — not a listed category for Snowplow
- its entry lists measurement managers and marketing managers in "who it's for"; Snowplow's does not
- you need to self-host — Snowplow supports it and Heap does not
- its entry lists data engineers and implementation engineers in "who it's for"; Heap's does not
Also compare
HEAP VS: Amplitude · Fullstory · Google Analytics 4 · Mixpanel · PostHog
SNOWPLOW VS: Adobe Analytics · Google Analytics 4 · Google Tag Manager (Server-Side) · mParticle · Piwik PRO · PostHog · RudderStack · Segment