Zenith vs Heap
Deliberate measurement, instead of capturing everything
Heap's pitch is autocapture: record every click and form interaction now, decide what mattered later. It is a real advantage for product teams who do not yet know the question. For website analytics it collects a great deal you will never look at, in someone else's cloud.
Zenith vs Heap, feature by feature
Including the rows Zenith loses. Where Heap has something behind a paid tier or a plugin, the table says so rather than pretending it is missing.
| Feature | Zenith | Heap |
|---|---|---|
| Privacy & compliance | ||
| Cookie-free tracking | Yes | No |
| No cookie banner required | Yes | No |
| GDPR compliant by default | Yes | Requires configuration |
| No personal data collected | Yes | No |
| You own the raw data | Yes | No |
| Open source | MIT | No |
| Self-hosting | Yes | No |
| Analytics features | ||
| Real-time dashboard | Yes | Delayed |
| Visitors, pageviews, sessions | Yes | Yes |
| Bounce rate & visit duration | Yes | Yes |
| Custom events | Yes | Autocaptured |
| UTM & campaign tracking | Yes | Yes |
| Funnel analysis | No | Yes |
| Cohort analysis | No | Yes |
| Session replay | No | Yes |
| Heatmaps | No | Yes |
| A/B testing | No | No |
| Feature flags | No | No |
| Agency & client work | ||
| Unlimited sites per deploy | Yes | Per project |
| Cost per extra client site | Nothing | Counts toward your sessions |
| Dashboard on the client's own domain | Yes | No |
| Client never sees a third-party tool | Yes | No |
| Automatic monthly client emails | Yes | Scheduled reports |
| Per-client logins | Yes | Team seats |
| SEO | ||
| Built-in SEO audits | Yes | No |
| Core Web Vitals from a real render | Yes | No |
| SEO report emails | Yes | No |
| Setup & usability | ||
| Install | Script tag or npm | Snippet + curation |
| Learning curve | Minutes | Days to weeks |
| Tracking script size | ~1 KB | ~50 KB |
| API access | Yes | Yes |
| Unsampled data | Yes | Plan dependent |
| Hosting & pricing | ||
| Hosting | Self-hosted | Cloud only |
| Pricing model | Free, open source | Subscription |
| Price scales with | Nothing | Sessions |
| Every feature included | Yes | Higher tiers for more |
Autocapture, and what it costs
Capturing every interaction retroactively is genuinely useful when you cannot predict the question. The price is a dataset that needs curating before it means anything, and a bill that rises with how much you captured rather than how much you used. Zenith records pageviews plus the handful of custom events you chose. Less data, but every row is one you asked for.
Privacy, and what gets swept up
Autocapture on a form-heavy site sweeps up more than most people expect, which is why it comes with consent requirements and careful configuration. Zenith cannot have that problem: it records a page path, a referrer, a coarse country, a device class and a daily-rotating hash. There is no personal data in the store to leak, to consent to or to redact.
Who it is for
Heap is priced and shaped for product teams measuring an application, with pricing that turns on sessions and a sales conversation past the free tier. Zenith is shaped for a developer running many client sites, where per-site cost decides whether the tool is usable at all. Zenith's answer to the eleventh site is that it costs nothing.
Choose Heap if
You are measuring an application, you do not yet know which interactions matter, and being able to answer a question retroactively is worth more to you than owning the data. Zenith has no autocapture, no funnels and no cohorts, and would be the wrong tool for that job.
Own your clients’ analytics.
One deploy, every site you build, no consent banner and no per-site cost. It is MIT licensed and it runs on one server.