🛠️ Tool
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Freemium
Beginner
Why we picked it Benchmarks are useless until you can actually plot your own cohort curve, and Mixpanel's free tier lets you build a real retention chart without writing SQL. This guide covers the two knobs that trip people up first: the retention criteria (which event starts the cohort, which event counts as returning, and the time bucket) and how to read the resulting grid. It is a genuinely free starting point for an early-stage founder, though you will point to the sample board and cohort features to go deeper.
Track user retention with Mixpanel
From Mixpanel Docs by Mixpanel Docs guide, ~15 min to set up
- Set your starting event (for example Signup) and your return event, then pick a time unit (day, week, or month) that matches how often your product should be used.
- The retention grid reads down as cohorts and across as periods, so a flattening curve shows up as columns that stop shrinking to the right.
- Mixpanel's free plan is enough to build this, so you can measure your curve before spending anything on analytics tooling.