Yes, hotshard events do contribute to your annual event limit. When Mixpanel detects a hot shard (when a distinct_id exceeds 200K events per day or a group identifier exceeds 1M events per day), it transforms the events but still counts them in your overall event volume.
When hot shard detection occurs, Mixpanel changes the event name to "$hotshard_events" and the distinct_id to an empty string, but these transformed events are still stored in your project and count toward your event usage Hot Shard Limits.
This is important to consider when managing your Mixpanel billing, as going over your event plan allowance will result in additional charges at your additional data rate, which will be billed at the beginning of the next month Mixpanel Pricing FAQs.
If you're concerned about hot shard events contributing significantly to your event count, you might want to investigate the root cause of the hot shards and fix your implementation to prevent them from occurring in the future.
