Moderok vs Amplitude for Chrome Extension Analytics: Skip the Enterprise Tax
4 min readModerok team
Amplitude is enterprise analytics with enterprise overhead. See how its MV3 setup compares with Moderok, round by round.
Amplitude is what analytics looks like when a Fortune 500 buys it: data governance, warehouse syncs, quarterly business reviews. Moderok is what analytics looks like when it is built for the person actually shipping a Chrome extension.
If you searched for Chrome extension analytics and Amplitude is on your shortlist, here is the round-by-round so you can stop comparing and start shipping.
TL;DR: Amplitude's browser SDK will not run in an MV3 extension, so you integrate through their HTTP API and build the plumbing yourself, then learn a platform designed for data teams. Moderok has a small MV3 setup, an extension-shaped dashboard, and a random profile identity by default. Unless you already run Amplitude company-wide, Moderok wins this one walking away.
The 30-second comparison
| Moderok | Amplitude | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for browser extensions | Yes: Exclusively | No: Built for product orgs |
| Runs in an MV3 service worker | Yes: Natively | No: HTTP API plus your own code |
| Setup | Install SDK, add storage, initialize | HTTP client plus your own plumbing |
| Automatic lifecycle events | Yes: Install, update, actives, errors | No: You define and send everything |
| Identity default | Random profile id; properties are yours | Depends on your setup |
| Pricing you can predict | Yes: Three public numbers | Partial: Usage-based below the custom tiers |
| Free tier | Yes: 1M events a month | Yes |
Round 1Getting data out of your extension
Amplitude's browser SDK assumes a web page. A Manifest V3 service worker has no window, no document, and their SDK's remote script loading runs into Chrome's remote code ban on top of that, a conflict filed on Amplitude's own repo. Dead on arrival.
The workaround is their HTTP API, which hands you the classic MV3 homework: mint and persist a device id, batch events, retry failures, and keep the queue in chrome.storage so Chrome's habit of killing idle service workers does not eat your data. Get it wrong and events vanish quietly, the exact failure we dissected in why your service worker keeps stopping.
Moderok did that homework once, for everyone. The SDK lives in the service worker, weighs 5.7 kB gzipped, and persists retryable failures in a capped storage-backed queue. Install the package, add the storage permission, and initialize it; installs, updates, first opens, daily actives, and errors are then instrumented automatically.
Moderok, before Amplitude gets its boots on.
Round 2The tool you face every morning
Amplitude after setup is an empty workspace with enormous potential. Behavioral cohorts, journey analysis, experiment readouts. Powerful, if someone on your team has the hours, and the training, to build it all out. That someone is you, at 11pm, after fixing a store review issue.
Moderok after setup opens on install trends, active users, update counts, event history, and logs you can drill into when something breaks in the wild. Trends and events fetch on load and when their controls change; Logs also has an explicit Refresh action. It is not a live stream.
Moderok. Potential doesn't ship; defaults do.
Round 3Users, identity, and the store
Enterprise analytics platforms are happiest tracking known users across devices and merging them into tidy profiles. The Chrome Web Store is the wrong neighborhood for that instinct. Users see your permission prompts, reviewers read your data disclosure, and "we build profiles of you" is a hard sentence to write nicely.
Moderok assigns a random profile id and has no identify() call. You control custom event properties, so you still need to keep sensitive values out and disclose whatever you choose to send.
Moderok. In this store, collecting less is a superpower.
Round 4Pricing
Moderok's entire pricing model fits in one sentence: free to 1 million events a month, $29 for 10 million, $149 for 100 million, all features on all plans.
Amplitude has a free plan too, and a self-serve tier above it that meters you by event volume, and above that the price is a conversation. Fine for a company with a procurement team. Overhead for a developer with an extension.
Moderok. You will never need a meeting to understand our bill.
Where Amplitude actually wins
If your extension is one surface of a product whose analytics already live in Amplitude, with a data team that uses the machinery, then feeding extension events into that machine makes sense. That is the one scenario where we would not fight you.
The final score
Amplitude is a platform you adopt, staff, and grow into. Moderok opens on the questions an extension developer is already asking. Your extension does not need an analytics department. It needs numbers.
Get your numbers. The free tier covers 1 million events a month and works with local builds before you publish. Start at moderok.dev.