Jitsu vs Segment: Pricing per Event or per Tracked User
A site with 200,000 monthly readers and 2,000 paying customers pays Segment for 200,000 people. Segment's bill counts monthly tracked users, and a visitor who reads one page and leaves is one of them.
Jitsu charges for events instead, and only for events that reach a destination such as Mixpanel, Braze, Google Ads or your warehouse. Bot hits and health checks that a function drops on every connection never reach the bill, and the Segment calls in your site, apps and backend stay as they are.
Per person against per event
Segment's Team plan is $120 a month for the first 10,000 tracked users, then $12 per 1,000 up to 25,000, $11 per 1,000 up to 100,000 and $10 per 1,000 beyond that. Business is priced by quote.
Jitsu's pricing counts active events: an event that reached at least one destination. Captured events are unlimited on every plan, and one event sent to five tools is still one active event.
10,000, 50,000 and 100,000 tracked users
The table holds the ratio at 100 events per tracked user a month, so each row is the same product at a bigger audience.
| Monthly workload | Jitsu Business | Segment Team |
|---|---|---|
| 10,000 tracked users, 1M events | $99, with 2M events included | $120 |
| 50,000 tracked users, 5M events | $219 ($99 + 3 × $40) | $575 |
| 100,000 tracked users, 10M events | $419 ($99 + 8 × $40) | $1,125 |
Cutting the bill with your own code
A Jitsu function is JavaScript that runs on each event in flight, on each connection. Return "drop" on every connection and the event never becomes an active event, so bot hits, health checks and integration-test traffic stay off the bill. Drop the event before the function calls fetch, because an event whose function makes a fetch call counts even if it is dropped afterwards.
On Segment's Free and Team plans the bill counts people, so dropping events leaves it where it was. On Segment, blocking events before they count takes Protocols, a Business-tier add-on (MTU guide).
Billing, loading and hosting
| Jitsu | Segment | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 200,000 active events a month | 1,000 tracked users, 2 sources |
| Warehouse loading | Streams as events arrive, with optional batching | Free once a day, Team twice a day, Business up to 24 times a day |
| Self-hosting | MIT license, no usage limits | No self-hosted plan |
Sources: Segment's warehouse sync schedule, Jitsu's event streaming.
Moving without a cutover
The Segment compatibility page covers three ways in.
- Add Jitsu's plugin to analytics.js. Segment keeps sending as before, and Jitsu gets a copy of every event.
- Point a webhook destination in Segment at Jitsu. Your warehouse then fills as events arrive instead of on Segment's sync schedule.
- Swap Segment's snippet for Jitsu's library. Tracking calls keep the method names your code already uses, and mobile apps keep Segment's open-source libraries with the host pointed at Jitsu.
Before step 3, list the destinations your Segment workspace sends to and find each one in Jitsu's integrations; for a tool with no connector, Jitsu can post events to its HTTP endpoint through a webhook.
Investing.com routes its events through Jitsu to BigQuery, Mixpanel and Google Ads.
Questions people ask
What does Segment cost at 50,000 tracked users? $575 a month at their published rates: $120 for the base 10,000, $12 per 1,000 for the next 15,000, and $11 per 1,000 for the last 25,000. The same traffic is $219 on Jitsu at 5 million events.
Do I have to rewrite my tracking code? No. With the plugin, your analytics.js setup stays as it is. If you later load Jitsu's library instead, the existing calls keep their names.
Can I test Jitsu while Segment is still running? Yes. Jitsu's analytics.js plugin, or a webhook destination in Segment, sends Jitsu a copy of your traffic, so you compare a month of data and cost before you switch anything off.
Is Jitsu free to self-host? Yes. Self-hosting costs only your own infrastructure, and Segment has no self-hosted plan at any tier.
What happens to my historical data? It stays wherever you already send it. Running Jitsu next to Segment does not move or delete anything.
Get started with Jitsu
Install the plugin against a Business free trial workspace and your Segment traffic starts arriving in Jitsu next to Segment's own.