Heap vs TiDB

Heap's autocapture is a single code snippet that automatically captures every click, swipe, tap, pageview, and form fill on your website and apps without requiring manual event setup. Once installed, Heap captures the entire digital experience of every user on every platform with no ongoing engineering maintenance needed.

At the protocol and dialect level it is close, and most applications connect unchanged. Stored procedures, triggers and events are not supported, and latency characteristics differ, so it needs testing rather than assumption.

Heap offers a Free plan for up to 10,000 monthly sessions. Growth, Pro, and Premier plans use custom session-based pricing that requires contacting sales for a quote. Free includes basic charts and 6 months data history. Growth adds the Sense AI assistant. Pro adds account analytics. Premier adds data warehouse integration and dedicated customer success management.

Apache 2.0, for both TiDB and the underlying TiKV storage engine. TiKV is a graduated CNCF project, which is a meaningful governance signal in a market where several competitors moved to source-available licences.

Heap includes integrated session replay showing exactly what users did on your site. However, Heap does not include built-in A/B testing or feature flags. Teams requiring these capabilities must use separate tools or integrate with third-party platforms.

Only for analytical queries. It is an optional columnar replica; without it TiDB is a distributed transactional database. With it you get analytics on live data at the cost of an additional full copy.

Heap supports over 100 integrations connecting to business tools including marketing platforms, CRMs, and data warehouses. This allows insights to reach relevant teams and ensures data flows to other business systems automatically.

TiDB Cloud runs the same engine, with the control plane, scaling and operational tooling provided as a service. The entry tier is metered differently from a dedicated cluster, so the cost model rather than the engine is what changes.

Heap is cloud-only and does not offer self-hosted options. Organizations requiring on-premises deployment should consider alternatives like PostHog which supports self-hosting alongside its cloud product.

When the database is small enough for one server, when latency on single-row lookups is the primary constraint, or when the application depends on MySQL stored procedures and triggers.

Sense Chat is Heap's AI assistant that enables users to access analytics without extensive technical knowledge. It allows teams to ask questions about user behavior and get answers directly without lengthy onboarding or technical expertise, making insights more accessible to non-technical stakeholders.