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Business Intelligence · head to head

Cabin vs Hookdeck

Cabin logo

Cabin

Business Intelligence

Cookieless web analytics that also reports the carbon footprint of your website

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Visit CabinFull review
Hookdeck logo

Hookdeck

Developer Tools

Event gateway that receives, queues, retries and replays inbound webhooks

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Visit HookdeckFull review

The short version

  • Cabin is a privacy-first analytics tool.
  • Free plans on both; paid from $14/mo and $39/mo.
  • Only Cabin lists cookieless tracking; only Hookdeck lists ingest and persist.
  • Where Hookdeck falls short: pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
  • Prices and features on this page were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Cabin and Hookdeck actually diverge.

Attributes where Cabin and Hookdeck differ
AttributeCabinHookdeck
Pricing modelPer month by pageview volumePer month by delivered event count
PlatformsWebWeb, Linux, macOS, Windows
CategoryBusiness IntelligenceDeveloper Tools

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Cabin

  • Cookieless tracking
  • Carbon reporting
  • 1.2kb script
  • Custom events
  • Ad-blocker bypass
  • MCP access
  • Branded dashboards
  • EU data storage

Only in Hookdeck

  • Ingest and persist
  • Automatic retries
  • Filters and fan-out
  • Transformations
  • Local development CLI
  • Rate limiting

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Cabin

  • Replacing Google Analytics on a site where a cookie consent banner is hurting conversion and you do not need behavioural advertising datanot Hookdeck
  • An organisation with a published sustainability commitment that needs a reportable figure for its website emissionsnot Hookdeck
  • An agency managing many client sites that wants unlimited domains and branded client dashboards for a flat $45 a monthnot Hookdeck
  • A developer who wants to query site analytics conversationally through an MCP-connected assistant rather than reading a dashboardnot Hookdeck

Hookdeck

  • A payments integration where losing a Stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfillednot Cabin
  • Fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separatelynot Cabin
  • Debugging a partner integration by replaying the exact failing payload after shipping a fixnot Cabin
  • Receiving production-shaped webhooks on a developer laptop without running a public tunnelnot Cabin

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Cabin

  • The analytics are deliberately shallow: no funnels, no cohort retention, no session replay and no user-level journeys, so anything beyond traffic and event counts requires a second tool
  • Carbon figures are modelled from bytes transferred using CO2.js assumptions about grid intensity and device energy, not measured, so they are directionally useful and should never be presented as audited emissions data
  • Cabin is a product of Normally, a design studio, rather than a company whose sole business is analytics, which puts a reasonable question mark over long-term roadmap investment and support depth
  • The 30-day retention on the free tier and 12 months on Plus mean year-on-year comparison needs the $45 Scale plan, which is a large jump for a small site that only wanted longer history
  • Because it does not use cookies or cross-site identifiers, returning-visitor and multi-session attribution are approximations, which matters if anyone in the business is trying to reconcile it with an ad platform's numbers

Hookdeck

  • Pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries
  • Free-tier retention is three days, which is shorter than the time it typically takes to notice a failing integration, so the payloads needed for a replay are often already gone
  • It becomes a single point of failure in front of every third-party integration, and an outage there means every provider webhook queues or fails at once
  • The transformation layer runs JavaScript in a constrained environment, so anything that needs a database lookup or an external call has to happen downstream instead
  • For a team already running Kafka or SQS the value is mostly the console and the replay UI, which is a hard cost to justify against infrastructure they already operate

Pricing, plan by plan

Cabin

Free
  • FreeFree
    • 1 domain
    • 10,000 pageviews per month
    • 30-day data retention
  • Plus$14/mo
    • Up to 10 domains
    • 100,000 pageviews per month
    • 12-month retention
  • Scale$45/mo
    • Unlimited domains
    • 5,000,000 pageviews per month
    • Unlimited retention

Hookdeck

Free
  • DeveloperFree
    • Up to ten thousand events per month
    • Three-day retention
    • One user
  • Team$39/mo
    • Ten thousand events included
    • Unlimited users
    • Pay as you go metering above the included events
  • Growth$499/mo
    • Ten thousand events included plus metered usage
    • Thirty-day retention
    • Uptime and latency SLAs
  • EnterpriseOn request
    • Negotiated event volume
    • Custom retention
    • Dedicated support

Which should you pick?

Choose Cabin if

  • You need cookieless tracking.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You also want carbon reporting.
Cabin review

Choose Hookdeck if

  • You need ingest and persist.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
  • You also want automatic retries.
Hookdeck review

Questions people ask

Is Cabin or Hookdeck better?
Neither clearly leads. Cabin starts at Free and Hookdeck at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Cabin or Hookdeck?
Cabin starts at Free and Hookdeck at Free.
Does Cabin or Hookdeck run on more platforms?
Cabin runs on Web. Hookdeck runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Cabin for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Cabin best used for?
Cabin is most often used for replacing google analytics on a site where a cookie consent banner is hurting conversion and you do not need behavioural advertising data, an organisation with a published sustainability commitment that needs a reportable figure for its website emissions, an agency managing many client sites that wants unlimited domains and branded client dashboards for a flat $45 a month, a developer who wants to query site analytics conversationally through an mcp-connected assistant rather than reading a dashboard. Of those, replacing google analytics on a site where a cookie consent banner is hurting conversion and you do not need behavioural advertising data and an organisation with a published sustainability commitment that needs a reportable figure for its website emissions are not what Hookdeck is typically brought in for.
What can Cabin do that Hookdeck cannot?
Cabin covers Cookieless tracking, Carbon reporting, 1.2kb script, Custom events. Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist, Automatic retries, Filters and fan-out, Transformations.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Cabin: Do I need a cookie consent banner with Cabin?

No. It sets no cookies and collects no cross-site identifiers, and data is stored in the EU, which is the specific reason most buyers switch to it.

Hookdeck: Is there a free plan?

Yes, ten thousand events a month with three-day retention and one user.

Cabin: How accurate is the carbon measurement?

It is an estimate derived from data transfer using the CO2.js model. It is reliable for tracking change over time on your own site and unsuitable as an audited emissions figure.

Hookdeck: How is usage counted?

By delivered events, so a single inbound webhook fanned out to three destinations counts as three.

Cabin: Who makes Cabin?

It was built at Normally, a research and design studio in London, out of work on data, privacy and the carbon footprint of digital products.

Hookdeck: Can I replay a failed webhook?

Yes, individually or in bulk from the console, with the original payload.

Cabin: Can it replace Google Analytics entirely?

For traffic, referrer and event reporting, yes. For advertising attribution, audience building and funnel analysis, no.

Hookdeck: Does it work for outbound webhooks too?

Yes, the same queueing, retry and observability applies to webhooks you send.

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