Pendo vs. Amplitude: How do they compare?

With Pendo you get time to value in minutes — not months. As soon as Pendo is installed on your application, it starts collecting data. You can tag a page or feature anytime, and Pendo automatically surfaces all relevant data back to the time of installation.

Amplitude has recently added Guides and Surveys, but their qualitative capabilities remain fairly limited.

Pendo offers a much more mature and integrated approach to qualitative insights, combining tools like Listen, NPS/Surveys, and AI-driven sentiment analysis to help teams understand not just what users are doing, but why.

By seamlessly connecting feedback with behavioral data, Pendo makes it easier to diagnose friction points, prioritize improvements, and drive better adoption—at both the user and account level.

Amplitude gives you the “what.” Pendo gives you the full story.

Yes. As a result of their 2024 acquisition of CommandAI, Amplitude released in-app guide messaging in early 2025, which are still in their infancy.

Pendo has always believed that product analytics that help companies understand what their customers are doing within their product and in-app guides to help them act on that data go hand-in-hand. But in addition to pop-up overlay guides like Amplitude offers, Pendo allows users to embed guides directly into their product experience, so they can drive higher adoption, engagement, and self-sufficiency—without disrupting the user journey.

Yes, Pendo and Amplitude both allow for historical data to be captured with low-code tools. While Amplitude has historically pushed for code tracking only, they’ve recently added their own form of autocapture, reflecting a market shift toward what Pendo has always believed–low-code, retroactive analytics helps teams move faster.

Pendo can store data for up to seven years allowing for a powerful low-code approach for retroactive analytics and support for custom event tracking, so you can get the insights you need, when you need them. We’ve always believed that teams shouldn’t have to choose between fast insights and flexibility—that’s why retroactive analytics has been core to Pendo from the start. Read more about retroactive analytics here.

Pendo turns insights into action, immediately. With built-in in-app guides, messaging, surveys, and email, teams can engage users from the same platform where they analyze behavior—no developer support or third-party tools required.

Amplitude requires integration with external systems or engineering support to close the loop on insights, slowing down execution and adoption.

Pendo replaces multiple point solutions,combining product analytics, session replay, in-app guidance, feedback collection, sentiment analysis, and roadmap communications in one platform.

Amplitude only offers product analytics, forcing you to undergo costly, time-consuming integrations with additional tools to support user engagement and feedback management.

Yes. Pendo is a no-code platform with a snippet or browser extension install. . That means teams—from product to IT and Revenue—can build and launch guides on their own, and push them live in days.

Amplitude typically requires complex event planning, technical resources, and ongoing developer involvement—leading to longer ramp time and slower ROI.

Pendo delivers comprehensive qualitative insights via integrated NPS, in-app surveys, email, and AI-driven sentiment analysis. Connected with Product Analytics and Session Replay, this allows teams to understand not just what users do—but why.

Amplitude has only recently begun exploring qualitative features, and is limited in its ability to capture and act on user feedback without moving to another platform.

Pendo In-app Guides are more advanced, integrated with qual and quant insights, and scalable.

Pendo In-app Guides are even more powerful thanks to real-time segmentation based on behavioral data. Teams can launch targeted onboarding flows, announcements, walkthroughs, and tooltips with no code—directly from the same platform they use to analyze product usage. Features like embedded guides, performance analytics and deep customization help drive user adoption and self-service at scale.

Amplitude’s guides, added on in 2024 after acquiring a guides provider, are still in their infancy. Users experience a clunky creation experience that forces them to bounce back and forth between building steps in the Amplitude UI, and the product URL, to design content at each step. Amplitude guides also don’t support embedded content, a no-code UI modification tool unique to Pendo, and users have to install a separate SDK to preview and launch guides. This fragmented process slows teams down, makes iteration challenging, and prevents non-technical users from taking advantage of Amplitude.

Pendo is built to support cross-functional collaboration across product, marketing, customer success, and support teams. Its no-code, all-in-one platform helps every role act on insights and drive user engagement independently—without relying on engineering or juggling multiple tools.

Amplitude, on the other hand, is primarily built for data and engineering teams. Its steep learning curve, manual instrumentation, and lack of integrated engagement tools limit user adoption and impact for non-technical stakeholders.

Pendo delivers closed-loop reporting that ties in-app user behavior directly to business outcomes like adoption, retention, and expansion. Our platform doesn't just show what happened—it helps you understand why, and gives you the tools to act on those insights instantly.

Amplitude, while strong in analytics, doesn’t have cross-channel communications and feedback management capabilities. That means that when teams make changes based on Amplitude data, they often struggle to connect those actions to outcomes. Without native in-app guides or qualitative feedback tied to behavioral cohorts, Amplitude leaves visibility gaps that make it harder—and more costly—to drive and measure real product impact.