What is Snowplow used for?

Snowplow is a behavioral data collection pipeline that gathers event-level data and delivers it to warehouses, lakes and streams; newer versions use a limited-use licence. It is a good fit for collecting first-party event data for analytics, feeding a data warehouse with behavioral events and building real-time personalization on event streams.

Is Snowplow open source?

Yes. Snowplow is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at snowplow/snowplow and is written mainly in Scala.

Yes. Snowplow is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Snowplow?

Yes. Snowplow can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Snowplow an alternative to?

Snowplow is an open-source alternative to mParticle, Tealium, Amplitude and Segment. Other open-source alternatives to mParticle include Trench, RudderStack and Jitsu.

Is Snowplow actively maintained?

The most recent commit to Snowplow was on 26 June 2026, and the latest release is 22.01, published on 31 January 2022. The project has 7k stars on GitHub.

Snowplow: open-source alternative to mParticle, Tealium

About Snowplow

Snowplow is customer data infrastructure for collecting and processing behavioral event data in real time. It gathers event-level data from websites, apps and other sources and delivers it to a data warehouse, lake or stream, where it can feed analytics, personalization, fraud detection and AI agents with customer context.

The repository describes a Customer Context Layer with key benefits around data depth and quality, centralized governance and real-time operationalization. The topics point to data pipelines, product analytics and marketing analytics. The pipeline is written mainly in Scala and has been developed since 2012.

The README carries an important notice: since January 8, 2024, new versions of the core pipeline are released under the Snowplow Limited Use License Agreement, and versions from before January 2024 receive no security patches. Users running the pipeline in production or competing with Snowplow are told they are affected and should contact the company. The older code was Apache-2.0, which the repository still lists. Teams should read the current terms before adopting it.

Key features

Event-level behavioral data collection
Delivery to warehouses, lakes, and streams
Real-time data processing
Governance and data quality focus
Support for product and marketing analytics
Scala-based pipeline components

Good fit for

→Collecting first-party event data for analytics
→Feeding a data warehouse with behavioral events
→Building real-time personalization on event streams

Built with: Scala
Tags: event-tracking; data-pipeline; analytics; customer-data; scala; data-collection; behavioral-data; limited-use-license; warehouse

Snowplow: questions and answers

What is Snowplow used for?: Snowplow is a behavioral data collection pipeline that gathers event-level data and delivers it to warehouses, lakes and streams; newer versions use a limited-use licence. It is a good fit for collecting first-party event data for analytics, feeding a data warehouse with behavioral events and building real-time personalization on event streams.
Is Snowplow open source?: Yes. Snowplow is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at snowplow/snowplow and is written mainly in Scala.
Is Snowplow free?: Yes. Snowplow is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Snowplow?: Yes. Snowplow can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Snowplow an alternative to?: Snowplow is an open-source alternative to mParticle, Tealium, Amplitude and Segment. Other open-source alternatives to mParticle include Trench, RudderStack and Jitsu.
Is Snowplow actively maintained?: The most recent commit to Snowplow was on 26 June 2026, and the latest release is 22.01, published on 31 January 2022. The project has 7k stars on GitHub.