CleverTapvs
Braze
Braze: Deeper journey orchestration and a larger North American partner ecosystem, at profile-based pricing
CleverTap
Mobile-first engagement and retention analytics billed on monthly active users
As of 31 August 2026, CleverTap's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. CleverTap sells product analytics and cross-channel messaging as one product, so the cohort you build in a retention report is the same object you message. Softwr lists it under Marketing. CleverTap is available on Web, iOS, Android, REST API.
Overview
What CleverTap does
CleverTap was founded in Mumbai in 2013 as WizRocket and combines event analytics, segmentation and messaging across push, in-app, email, SMS, WhatsApp and web. Event data sits in TesseractDB, a store the company built specifically to keep long per-user histories queryable, which is what allows segments to be defined on behaviour going back months rather than on a rolling recent window. The commercial distinction is the billing unit. Most lifecycle platforms charge on stored profiles or contacts, so a database that grows faster than it is pruned raises the bill whether or not those people are reachable. CleverTap charges on monthly active users, so an account that stops opening the app stops costing money without anyone running a suppression project. For a consumer app with tens of millions of installs and single-digit monthly activity, that difference decides the shortlist before any feature comparison starts. Buyers are app-led consumer businesses: fintech, food delivery, gaming, streaming and commerce, concentrated in India, South East Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, with a growing North American base after the Leanplum acquisition in 2022 brought that customer list across. The trade-off is that the platform assumes the app is the primary surface. Teams whose main channel is the browser or whose lifecycle is long B2B email get less from it, and the analytics depth means somebody has to own the event taxonomy or segmentation quality decays.
What people use it for
- A consumer app with millions of installs but low monthly activity that does not want to pay for dormant profiles
- Reactivating lapsed users with push and WhatsApp sequences triggered by behaviour rather than by list membership
- Running holdout tests to prove that lifecycle messaging causes retention rather than correlating with it
- Consolidating a separate analytics tool and a separate messaging tool into a single event pipeline
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about CleverTap.
- The platform assumes the mobile app is the main surface, so teams whose lifecycle runs mostly through the browser or through long B2B email sequences pay for capability they will not use.
- Billing on monthly active users is cheaper for dormant-heavy bases but more expensive for products with high activity rates, and the definition of an active user is set in the contract rather than by you.
- Event volume caps sit alongside the user caps, so a chatty instrumentation plan can trigger overage charges that are negotiated rather than published.
- Deliverability support for email is thinner than at dedicated email providers, and teams sending high email volumes often keep a separate ESP for the largest campaigns.
- Segmentation quality depends entirely on the event taxonomy, so without an owner who governs event naming the reports and segments diverge from reality within a couple of releases.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of CleverTap
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- CleverTapvsMoEngage
MoEngage: Similar mobile-first positioning and regional focus, often quoted lower for the same user counts
- CleverTapvsCustomer.io
Customer.io: Better fit when the lifecycle is email-led and you want data-warehouse-driven segmentation
Pricing
What CleverTap costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Essentials
On request
- Billed on monthly active users rather than stored profiles
- Push, in-app and web messaging
- Standard segmentation and analytics
Advanced
On request
- Adds email, SMS and WhatsApp channels
- Journey orchestration and experiments
- Higher event and MAU allowances
Cutting Edge
On request
- Full AI and personalisation modules
- Extended data retention
- Dedicated technical account management
Capabilities
Features
Cross-channel journeys
Push, in-app, email, SMS, WhatsApp and web messaging orchestrated in one flow
Product analytics
Funnels, cohorts and retention reports built on the same events used for targeting
TesseractDB
Event store designed to keep long user histories available for live segmentation
Clever.AI
Send-time optimisation, channel selection and RFM-based intent segments
Experiments
A/B tests and holdout groups on campaigns and in-app messages
Web and app personalisation
Content and layout variants delivered from the same segments as messaging
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Does CleverTap charge for users who stopped opening the app?
No. Billing is on monthly active users, so a dormant account stops counting without you deleting anything, which is the opposite of contact-based email pricing.
Can it replace a product analytics tool?
For funnels, cohorts and retention it usually can. For exploratory analysis across many custom properties, teams tend to keep a warehouse copy and query it directly.
What happened to Leanplum customers?
CleverTap acquired Leanplum in 2022 and migrated customers onto its own platform, so Leanplum contracts are not a live option.
Keep looking
Where to go from CleverTap
- CleverTap alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- CleverTap pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- CleverTap badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Marketing softwareThe full category
- Best Marketing softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Marketing software for
Compare CleverTap with
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- Customer.io
- WebEngage
- Netcore Cloud
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- Postscript
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- Iterable
- Bloomreach
- Octoboard
- Optimove
- Countly
- Marketing Evolution
- Mautic
- Microsoft Clarity
- Onclusive
- Netcore Cloud
- Octoboard
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for CleverTap, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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