We want to understand and explain to leadership how does the user based pricing works in mixpanel. Use right sources to help and using right language to make it easier to understand on email
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Here’s text you can adapt directly into an email to leadership:
Subject: How Mixpanel’s user‑based (MTU/MEU) pricing works
Hi [Name/Team],
Sharing a quick overview of how Mixpanel’s user-based pricing works, since it’s different from their default “events-based” model.
1. Two main user-based concepts
Mixpanel mainly talks about two user-based units:
1. MTU – Monthly Tracked User (used for a legacy Enterprise billing option) 2. MEU – Monthly Experiment User (used only for the Experimentation add‑on)
By default, Mixpanel bills on events, not users, but Enterprise customers can opt into MTU pricing, and Experimentation is always priced on MEUs.[MTU billing; Is pricing based on MTUs?]
2. MTU pricing (user-based core analytics)
What is an MTU? An MTU is any visitor who performs at least one qualifying event in a calendar month in a given project.[MTU billing]
Key points:
- Users are identified by distinct_id.
- A user is only counted once per month per project, even if they perform many actions across devices.[MTU billing]
- Certain events (e.g. $identify, $create_alias, $merge, profile updates, and some system/integration events) are explicitly excluded from MTU counting.[MTU billing]
There is also an MTU guardrail: if on average a user sends more than 1,000 events per month, MTUs are computed as:
MTUs = total events / 1,000[MTU billing]
This prevents unusually heavy users from blowing up the MTU count.
How MTU-based pricing is sold
- MTU-based Enterprise plans start at $20,000/year and are not purchasable online; you have to go through Sales.[Is pricing based on MTUs?; MTU billing] - MTU pricing is generally considered when you’re tracking > 100k users or > 5M monthly events.[MTU billing]
How to estimate MTUs
- If we don’t have Mixpanel yet, Mixpanel suggests using our Monthly Active Users (MAU) as a rough proxy; MTU and MAU should be similar if both include anonymous users in the same way.[MTU billing]
3. MEU pricing (user-based Experimentation add‑on)
For the Experimentation add‑on (A/B test reporting), Mixpanel uses MEUs – Monthly Experiment Users.[Experimentation FAQ]
What is an MEU?
- MEUs are only users who were exposed to an experiment in a month, i.e. they sent an $experiment_started event.[Experimentation FAQ]
- MEU is therefore a subset of MTU (only those who saw an experiment).[Experimentation FAQ]
How MEUs are calculated
- By default, 1 MEU = 1 user exposed to experiments (up to 30 experiment exposures per month). - If on average a user is exposed to more than 30 experiments per month, MEUs are calculated as:
MEUs = (total exposure events) / 30[Experimentation FAQ]
Estimating MEUs from MTUs
If you know your MTUs, Mixpanel provides rough ranges for what percentage of MTUs will be MEUs:[Experimentation FAQ]
- <100k MTUs → MEUs ≈ 50–100% of MTUs - 100k–1M MTUs → 40–75% - 1M–10M MTUs → 25–60% - 10M–100M MTUs → 20–50% - 100M+ MTUs → 10–25%
Overages and double-charging
- If we exceed our purchased MEU bucket, we can continue using Experimentation but pay a higher rate for the overage.<https://docs.mixpanel.com/docs/experiments#experimentation-pricing-faq|[Experimentation FAQ>] - Exposure events used for MEU billing are not additionally charged as regular events in the core Mixpanel plan (i.e., no double charge on those exposure events).[Experimentation FAQ]
4. Relationship to the default (events-based) pricing
For context, Mixpanel’s default pricing for most customers is based on monthly events, not users.[How pricing works]
- Free & Growth are primarily event-based (1M monthly events free; more details on the pricing page).[Pricing page; 1M free events blog] - An MTU-based Enterprise plan exists as an alternative for larger organizations and starts at $20k/year.[Is pricing based on MTUs?] - Experimentation is always billed on MEUs on top of an Enterprise plan.[Experimentation FAQ]
If helpful, our next step could be:
- Estimate events/month and MAUs from our current product data. - Use MAUs to approximate MTUs and then apply the MEU percentage ranges above to estimate potential Experimentation costs. - Share those ranges with Mixpanel Sales for a more precise quote.
Happy to refine these estimates or prepare a simple slide version if needed.
Best, [Your Name]
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