Want the best analytics and monitoring tools for AI chatbots, LLM apps, or product analytics?
This guide breaks down the top options (Humanloop, GA4, Amplitude, Trulens, and PostHog) so you can pick the right tool for your real-world needs.
Below, you’ll get concise, side-by-side comparisons focused on features that matter most: real-time visibility, actionable alerts, open-source vs. proprietary control, product analytics depth, and pricing transparency.
Every tool is rated with clear pros and cons, tips on hidden pitfalls, what makes each tool uniquely strong, and honest limitations, based on user reviews and hard adoption data.
Here’s the TL;DR 👇
Tool | Best For | Key Strength | Drawbacks | Pricing |
---|---|---|---|---|
Humanloop | LLM product teams, AI/ML engineers needing real-time LLM app monitoring |
Unified LLM ops stack: real-time tracing, prompt versioning, evaluations, A/B testing, user feedback | Closed-source; limited self-hosting; not OpenTelemetry-native; prompt repo not Git-native |
No public pricing; sales-quoted by usage, seats, support; free trial with usage limits |
Google Analytics 4 | Digital marketers, website/app owners, analysts |
Robust event-based tracking with cross-platform analytics, Google Ads/linking, and BigQuery export |
Cardinality/threshold limits; UI data retention (2–14 mo); advanced analysis often needs BigQuery/SQL |
Standard: Free; Analytics 360: custom quote; BigQuery billed separately |
Amplitude | Product managers, growth/data teams needing granular product analytics |
Deep event/funnel/cohort analytics, activation/retention metrics, audience export and behavioral targeting |
Volume-based & add-on pricing; heavy instrumentation & setup; closed query model limits joins |
Free tier; Growth/Enterprise: custom quote; add-ons priced separately |
Trulens | AI devs, data science, LLM app monitoring (esp. open-source, RAG, evaluation chains) |
Open-source LLM observability; deep tracing; groundedness/attribution; A/B evals; live dashboards |
Evaluator calibration needed; limited integrations; tracing/storage overhead at scale |
Open-source core free; hosted/enterprise custom (not listed); infra & LLM API costs extra |
- Humanloop: Best for commercial LLM teams needing unified monitoring, traceability, and fast feedback; proprietary, feature-rich but costs can scale.
- Google Analytics 4: Best for digital/web and marketing analytics; free for standard usage; strong integrations with Google ecosystem.
- Amplitude: Advanced product analytics for digital products, focused on event funnels/cohorts; powerful but can get expensive.
- Trulens: Open-source, deeply transparent, and customizable for LLM/RAG pipelines; great for engineering/data science teams valuing OSS.
Many tools claim to be "real-time," but some have hidden lag in reporting or refresh cycles. Users on r/analytics mention issues with data delays during peak hours, especially for larger datasets. It’s crucial to test latency in your actual use case or ask for benchmarks.
"Even on their 'real-time' dashboard, we only saw updates every 10-15 minutes," shared one YouTube reviewer.
Flexibility to ingest and export from a wide range of sources is often much patchier than platforms advertise. On G2, buyers report headaches integrating with niche databases or bespoke data workflows.
Check API documentation and look for no-code/low-code connector options before committing.
✔️ One comment: "Slick UI but limited connectors—took our devs days to hack around."
Many platforms have strong onboarding but limited long-term transparency in pricing, security, or product roadmap.
Look for responses to critical social media posts and look for specific examples of prompt, knowledgeable support.
A Slack or Discord community can signal a more open culture. Review: "Support was super fast at first, but after six months, responses dropped off the map."
💡 Honorable mentions: Alert management customization, privacy compliance, and total cost of ownership are also key for advanced buyers.
Public reviews: 4.4 ⭐ (G2, Capterra average)
Our rating: 8.5/10 ⭐
Similar to: Adobe Analytics, Matomo
Typical users: Digital marketers, website owners, analysts
Known for: Robust event-based tracking and deep integration with other Google products
Why choose it? Powerful free option with advanced insights, flexible reporting, and future-proof measurement for evolving web and app environments
GA4 is Google’s event-based analytics for web and app.
It unifies user journeys, tracks events, funnels and cohorts, and ties to Google Ads.
Export raw data to BigQuery, use consent mode, and prep for cookie loss with modeled attribution.
Event-based tracking across web and app, tight Google Ads link, built-in BigQuery export, consent mode, and modeled attribution deliver clear journeys and flexible reports for free.
💡 Summary: GA4 captures event-level data across web and app, unifies users, offers deep analysis in Explorations, exports raw data to BigQuery, and provides real-time and debugging views.
✅ BigQuery export of raw events
Unsampled event tables enable SQL analysis, joins, and ML without enterprise spend.
✅ Native Google Ads activation
Direct Ads/CM360 linking powers remarketing, modeled conversions, and media optimization.
✅ Privacy-resilient measurement
Consent Mode + modeled attribution sustain reporting accuracy as third-party cookies fade.
❌ Cardinality and thresholding limits
High-cardinality breakdowns become (other), and privacy thresholds hide granular rows.
❌ Limited retention and history
Free GA4 retains only 2–14 months of user-level data in the UI unless you export to BigQuery.
❌ Heavy BigQuery/SQL dependency
Advanced analysis often needs BigQuery/SQL, adding data-engineering overhead vs in-tool reporting.
of all websites run Google Analytics (W3Techs, 2024)
median conversion lift from Enhanced Conversions with GA4–Google Ads linking (Google Ads, 2023)
avg public rating across G2 + Capterra (2024)
Google prices GA4 with a free standard edition and a quote-based Analytics 360 enterprise tier priced by monthly event volume.
Most companies leverage GA4's free tier as it is included in most Google Business Suite subscriptions.
Choose between these 2 plans:
(Enteprise) BigQuery export is included but Google Cloud storage and query usage are billed separately, and some enterprise-only features require upgrading to 360.
💡 In short: GA4 is free for most needs, while enterprise scale and governance require a custom-priced 360 contract plus any BigQuery usage fees.
Public reviews: 4.5 ⭐ (G2, Capterra)
Our rating: 8.5/10 ⭐
Similar to: Mixpanel, Heap
Typical users: Product managers, growth and data teams
Known for: Deep product analytics and user behavior insights
Why choose it? Granular tracking, flexible dashboards, and powerful cohort analysis for data-driven product decisions
Amplitude is a product analytics platform for event-level tracking. Build funnels, cohorts, retention, pathing, and dashboards; tie revenue to features; run experiments; and sync with your warehouse to drive activation and growth.
Track key events, build funnels and cohorts, map paths, and measure retention. Tie revenue to features, run A/B tests, and sync with your warehouse to pinpoint what drives activation and growth.
💡 Summary: Amplitude provides event tracking, segmentation, funnels, cohorts, and retention analysis to map and quantify user behavior in digital products.
✅ Event governance and identity resolution
Tracking plans, schema controls, and ID stitching ensure clean, consistent event data at scale.
✅ Behavioral cohorts you can activate
Define complex cohorts and auto-sync them to ads, messaging, and warehouse tools for real-time targeting.
✅ Deep product analytics primitives
Funnels, retention, and pathing surface activation and drop-off drivers faster than generic analytics.
❌ Volume-based pricing and add-on creep
Costs spike with event volume and paid modules (Experiment, CDP), straining larger rollouts.
❌ Heavy instrumentation and upkeep
Implementing a clean tracking plan and taxonomy requires significant upfront work and ongoing maintenance.
❌ Closed query model limits joins
Closed query model limits joins and custom metrics, so complex analysis often moves to the warehouse.
dollar-based net retention (DBNRR) — strong customer expansion. Source: Amplitude S-1 (2021)
3-year ROI with <6-month payback from Amplitude Analytics. Source: Forrester TEI (commissioned, 2022)
average rating across 1,500+ G2 reviews; consistent Leader in Product Analytics (2023–2024). Source: G2 category reports
Amplitude uses a freemium, usage-based model with discounted annual billing on paid tiers.
Pricing scales primarily by Monthly Tracked Users (MTUs) and product usage.
Choose between these 4 plans:
Price limitations & potential surprises
Public reviews: 4.6 ⭐ (G2, producthunt)
Our rating: 8.3/10 ⭐
Similar to: Arize, Wandb
Typical users: AI developers and data science teams
Known for: Open-source evaluation, monitoring, and debugging for LLM-powered apps
Why choose it? Powerful observability for identifying and resolving hallucinations, bias, and drift in AI chatbot performance.
Trulens is an open-source observability toolkit for LLM apps. It logs traces, scores outputs with feedback functions, and flags hallucinations, bias, and drift. Run A/B prompt tests, eval chains, and monitor production with live dashboards.
Open-source for LLM apps: logs runs, scores answers, and catches hallucinations, bias, and drift. A/B prompt tests and live dashboards help diagnose and fix issues in production.
💡 Summary: Trulens logs and traces LLM app runs, scores outputs with built-in evaluators, compares experiments, evaluates RAG pipelines with source attribution, and visualizes metrics in dashboards for ongoing monitoring.
✅ Open-source, deep tracing
Capture prompts, tool calls, retrieved chunks, tokens, and latency without vendor lock-in.
✅ RAG attribution and groundedness
Link answers to source chunks and score groundedness to pinpoint RAG hallucinations.
✅ Built-in evaluators and A/B testing
Run batch evals with relevance/toxicity metrics and compare prompt/model variants over time.
❌ Evaluator noise and calibration
LLM-as-judge scores can drift, needing baselines and spot labels to be reliable in prod.
❌ Limited ecosystem integrations
Fewer native hooks for OpenTelemetry/Datadog and CI, so teams write glue to fit existing stacks.
❌ Tracing overhead at scale
Deep tracing increases latency and storage; sampling/tuning is required for high-traffic workloads.
Avg public rating (G2 + Product Hunt, Sep 2025). Source: g2.com, producthunt.com
Correlation of LLM-as-judge metrics with human labels in peer‑reviewed studies—method used by TruLens evaluators. Sources: arXiv:2303.16634 (G‑Eval), lmsys.org/mtbench
GitHub stars for TruLens, signaling OSS adoption and community validation. Source: github.com/truera/trulens
Trulens' core toolkit is open source and free to use:
There is no managed cloud price on the site, so you will cover your own infrastructure and LLM API costs as usage grows.
Deep tracing can add latency and storage overhead, and if you later need hosted service or enterprise support it will likely be custom and not publicly listed.
Public reviews: 4.6 ⭐ (G2, Capterra average)
Our rating: 8/10 ⭐
Similar to: Mixpanel, Amplitude
Typical users: Product teams, engineers, growth analysts
Known for: Open-source, all-in-one product analytics
Why choose it: Full data ownership, session replay, feature flagging, robust event tracking, and easy self-hosting or cloud options
PostHog is an open-source product analytics suite with event tracking, funnels, cohorts, session replay, feature flags, and A/B tests. Ship it self-hosted for full data ownership or use the cloud. Capture web, mobile, and backend events with one SDK set.
Self-host or cloud, PostHog unifies event tracking, session replay, and feature flags in one SDK for full data ownership, faster debugging, and clean A/B tests across web, mobile, and backend.
💡 Summary: PostHog provides event collection, product analysis (funnels and cohorts), session replays, and controlled rollouts with experiments, all tied together through a single analytics workflow.
✅ Full data ownership
Self-host on your infra with PII masking and EU residency to meet strict compliance.
✅ Unified analytics, replays, and flags
One stack ties events, session replay, and feature flags for faster debugging and cleaner experiments.
❌ Unpredictable usage costs
High event volumes and session replays can cause sharp, hard‑to‑forecast cloud bills.
❌ Operational overhead self‑hosting
ClickHouse, Kafka, and replay storage require ongoing infra tuning and DevOps ownership.
❌ Performance at scale
Complex queries and large funnels can lag vs Amplitude/Mixpanel on very large datasets.
avg customer rating on G2 & Capterra (2025), on par with or higher than Mixpanel/Amplitude
GitHub stars (open‑source traction), among the most‑starred product analytics platforms
faster analytical queries via ClickHouse (PostHog’s engine) vs Postgres in published benchmarks
PostHog uses a freemium, usage-based model with per-product pricing and tiered volume discounts; you pay only for what you use, and get generous free quotas every month.
Choose between these 2 billing models (with product-based add-ons):
Big Sur AI uniquely combines advanced analytics with natively built, conversion-focused AI tools for web, sales, and content, letting you optimize user journeys and measure business impact in real time.
Consider Big Sur AI if you want to avoid bundling together typical chatbots or LLM monitoring stacks.
1. Deploy web-agents:
Deploy AI web agents, sales agents, and content marketers that not only engage users but also track, analyze, and optimize actual conversions and sales funnel outcomes.
Example: The AI Sales Agent and Content Marketer connect user interactions directly to measurable business KPIs, tying analytics to revenue actions.
2. Merchant-focused, actionable insights unavailable elsewhere:
The Merchant Insights product aggregates AI-driven engagement, sales, and content performance into a single view for merchants and marketers.
It reports on what resonates, which prompts or products convert, and where users drop off, enabling fast, data-backed decisions, all built into the same platform as the AI agents themselves.
To experience analytics and optimization fully integrated with AI engagement, give Big Sur AI a try for free.
Ready to get hands-on? Give Big Sur AI a try now and supercharge your LLM analytics and monitoring workflow.