Should I self-host Amplitude?

YESworth it

For product analytics at Amplitude's $49+/mo entry point, Matomo (or Countly) covers events, funnels and retention for a VPS share. You lose the fancy cohort AI; you keep the raw events forever without a sampling asterisk.

The math (nothing hidden, including your time)

Amplitude (Plus)	$49.00/mo
VPS share + storage	−$1.00/mo
Your maintenance: 30 min/mo at $20/h	−$10.00/mo
Net saving	$38.00/mo
Setup: 31 min measured (one-time)	$10.33
Break-even	0.3 months
Markup Index (price ÷ real self-host cost)	4.5×

What's your hour worth? $20/h$0/h = "my homelab time is free and I love it" — a legitimate position

Price: source, checked 2026-08-07. Inputs are stored in git; every number above is derived, never hand-written.

What you lose

Amplitude's behavioral cohorts and predictive features
SOC2 paperwork someone else signed

What you're paying Amplitude for

product event analytics
funnels & retention
user cohorts
dashboards

Countly Lite running from the boot-verified compose file — Countly Lite, running from the compose file on this page — screenshot from our verified instance, not marketing material.

Ranked alternatives

1. Countly Lite

Sessions, custom events and crashes from your own apps, collected on a hostname you own, with no monthly event meter.

Countly/countly-server · ★ 5,887 · last commit 0d ago · AGPL-3.0

2. Matomo

The full Google-Analytics-shaped suite on your own hostname, with visitor profiles, funnels and no monthly hit meter.

matomo-org/matomo · ★ 21,756 · last commit 0d ago · GPL-3.0

Hardware

Runs comfortably on a real VPS (2 GB+).

The tested compose file (our evidence, CI-booted)

# Matomo — the analytics standard; apache image + mariadb
services:
  matomo:
    image: matomo:apache
    container_name: matomo
    restart: unless-stopped
    depends_on:
      matomo-db:
        condition: service_healthy
    environment:
      MATOMO_DATABASE_HOST: matomo-db
      MATOMO_DATABASE_DBNAME: matomo
      MATOMO_DATABASE_USERNAME: matomo
      MATOMO_DATABASE_PASSWORD: matomo
    ports:
      - "8100:80"
    volumes:
      - matomo-data:/var/www/html
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "php -r 'exit(@file_get_contents(\"http://localhost:80/\")!==false?0:1);'"]
      interval: 10s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 30
      start_period: 30s
  matomo-db:
    image: mariadb:11
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      MARIADB_DATABASE: matomo
      MARIADB_USER: matomo
      MARIADB_PASSWORD: matomo
      MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD: matomo-root
    volumes:
      - matomo-db:/var/lib/mysql
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "healthcheck.sh", "--connect", "--innodb_initialized"]
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 12
volumes:
  matomo-data:
  matomo-db:

Want a guided install instead? caniselfhostit.com/amplitude has AI-agent prompts that assume a bare machine — that's their half of the stool, and it's good.

Verification

Protocol v1 · verified by zernonia on 2026-08-10 · setup measured at 31 min · AI assistant: claude-code (allowed & stated)

Full timed log

# Amplitude — verdict log

- **Date:** 2026-08-10
- **Verdict:** YES — worth it
- **Protocol:** v1 (2GB reference env, Docker preinstalled, AI assistant: claude-code)

## Setup evidence (shared)

- This verdict rides on the same replacement verified for `matomo-cloud-matomo` — see `compose/matomo-cloud-matomo.yml` and its log.

## The call

For product analytics at Amplitude's $49+/mo entry point, Matomo (or Countly) covers events, funnels and retention for a VPS share. You lose the fancy cohort AI; you keep the raw events forever without a sampling asterisk.

Verdict history

2026-08-10: unscored → YES — Initial verdict: For product analytics at Amplitude's $49+/mo entry point, Matomo (or Countly) covers events, funnels and reten.