The Aptabase alternative for product analytics
Aptabase is open-source, privacy-first usage analytics for apps on nearly any stack — and it stops deliberately short of funnels, retention, and profiles, because it collects no identifier to build them from. Pug is the other side of that trade. Both are AGPL-3.0 and self-hostable, so here is the honest difference, including where Aptabase is the better tool.
- You need funnels, retention cohorts, and user flows
- You want one profile per person across app and web
- You identify users and want traits to filter every insight
- Your app is Swift, Kotlin, Unity, Tauri, or Electron today
- Collecting no user identifier at all is a hard requirement
- You want usage numbers with nothing to configure
Pug vs Aptabase, feature by feature
The short version: choose Pug to own and self-host focused product analytics. Aptabase may be the better fit depending on what you need — the honest detail is below.
| Capability | Pug this page | Aptabase |
|---|---|---|
| Ownership & privacy | ||
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Managed cloud | Yes | Yes |
| Persistent user identifier | Anonymous id, then identify() | None by design |
| What you can ask | ||
| Usage over time | Yes | Yes |
| Top events, devices, versions, geo | Yes | Yes |
| Live view of activity | Yes | Yes |
| Funnels | Yes | No |
| Retention cohorts | Yes | No |
| User-flow Sankey | Yes | No |
| Per-person profile timeline | Yes | No |
| Instrumentation | ||
| Mobile SDKs | Flutter | Swift, Kotlin, Flutter, React Native |
| Desktop & game engines | Not in Pug | Electron, Tauri, Unity, Unreal, Godot |
| Web SDK | Yes | Yes |
| Server-side SDK | Node | Python, or the HTTP API |
| Autocapture on web | Yes | No |
| Typed well-known events | Yes | No |
| Practical | ||
| Errors view alongside analytics | Not in Pug | Yes |
| Setup effort | Low | Very low |
| Maturity | Open beta | Established |
Last updated August 2026. Aptabase capabilities reflect its publicly documented product; verify the latest on the vendor’s site.
Why look for a Aptabase alternative
Counts answer “how many”, not “where they drop”
Aptabase gives you key metrics, top events, and breakdowns by device, version, and country. Pug adds the questions that need a sequence: which onboarding step loses people, what path they took, and what they did before they left.
Retention needs someone to come back
Cohort retention only exists if you can recognise a returning user. Aptabase deliberately keeps no identifier, so it measures sessions; Pug ties events to a person and shows the return curve by install or signup week.
One person, app and web
identify() merges anonymous history into a single profile, so a funnel can start on your marketing site and finish in the app, and traits like plan or source filter every insight afterwards.
Where Aptabase is still the better choice
Pug is a focused tool, not a platform. If your team needs any of the following, Aptabase is the better fit — these don’t ship in Pug:
- SDKs for Swift, Kotlin, React Native, Electron, Tauri, Unity, Unreal, Godot, and .NET MAUI
- Desktop apps and games as first-class targets, not an afterthought
- No unique identifier collected at all — a stronger privacy position than any profile-based tool
- An errors view sitting next to the analytics
- A dashboard that needs no configuration to be useful on day one
- Longer in production, with a settled feature set
Focused product analytics, fully yours
Everything below ships today and runs the same whether you self-host or use the free cloud.
Autocapture out of the box
Page views, clicks, scrolls, form submits, plus rage and dead clicks — captured after one init(), then enriched with geo, device, and UTM on ingest.
Six insight types
Trends, Funnels, Retention cohorts, Segmentation, User-flow Sankey, and Top-K — all over raw events, filterable by any property.
Unified profiles
Anonymous events merge into one person on identify(). Traits like plan or email live on the profile and filter every insight, across devices.
Dashboards
KPI, line, area, bar, table, and Sankey tiles on one shared time window, with period-over-period comparison and threshold coloring.
Moving from Aptabase to Pug
Pug’s model is straightforward: events with properties, a person per user via identify(), and traits that filter every insight.
SDKs available today are Web (TypeScript), Flutter (Dart), and Node, with native Android, iOS, and React Native SDKs in active development — landing by launch while Pug is in open beta. Point your tracking calls at Pug, identify users where you already identify them in Aptabase, and anonymous history merges into a single profile. For setup steps and the API, see the SDKs page and the docs.
Analytics history doesn’t transfer between tools — Pug starts collecting the day you add the SDK, so most teams run it alongside Aptabase during cutover and switch once the dashboards they rely on are covered. There’s no rip-and-replace, and your raw events are exportable from day one.
Aptabase alternative — your questions
Is Pug an Aptabase alternative?
For product analytics, yes — Pug adds funnels, retention cohorts, user flows, and a profile per person. But they are aimed at different jobs: Aptabase is privacy-first usage analytics for apps on almost any stack, and if your questions are “how many people, on what versions, doing which events”, it already answers them.
Does Aptabase have funnels or retention?
No, and that follows from its design rather than being a gap it means to close. It collects no unique identifier, so there is no one to follow between steps or across weeks. Its dashboard covers key metrics, usage over time, top events, breakdowns by country, device, OS and app version, and a live view of sessions.
Both are AGPL-3.0 and self-hostable — what is the real difference?
Identity. Aptabase measures sessions with nothing tying them together; Pug gives every visitor an anonymous id and merges that history into a person when you call identify(). Everything else — funnels, retention, profiles, trait filters — follows from that one decision, as does Aptabase’s stronger privacy claim.
Which has better mobile SDK coverage?
Aptabase, clearly and by a wide margin — Swift, Kotlin, React Native, Flutter, and beyond mobile into desktop and game engines. Pug ships Flutter today, with native Android, iOS, and React Native SDKs in active development and landing by launch.
Can I run both?
Yes, and for some teams that is the sensible answer: Aptabase for a Swift or Unity app it already supports, Pug for the web product where identity and funnels matter. They are independent tools with independent pipelines.
Is Pug more private than Aptabase?
No. Aptabase collects no unique identifier, which is the stronger position by definition. Pug is built for the case where you do want to recognise a person — it supports cookieless operation and consent gating, but recognising returning users is the point of the product.
Other Pug comparisons
Own your product analytics.
Open source, easy to self-host on a single Go binary, and free during open beta. Start a project and see live events in minutes.
Questions? Email [email protected]