7 Best In-App Guide Tools for Mobile Apps in 2026

A web guide finds its target with a CSS selector the tool can read from the page. A mobile guide can't do that, and that changes how you plan, ship, and maintain guides.

• Targets are tagged in code. To anchor a tooltip, the SDK needs an identifier it can find. Amplitude reads accessibilityIdentifier in UIKit, an .amplitudeView modifier in SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose, and testID in React Native. Pendo uses pendoTag for Compose. Appcues builds anchored tooltips from a screen capture taken on a device. A new tag ships with your next release, while copy, targeting, and timing change without one.
• Some screens are out of reach. System UI and moving parts resist anchoring. Amplitude pins can't target tab bar items or animated containers. Appcues tooltips can't point at elements that need scrolling. Pendo's Compose tooltips don't work inside bottom sheets, panels, or pop-ups.
• Old app versions stay around. Users update when they feel like it, so some of your audience runs an SDK from last year. Newer trigger types can need a newer SDK, and a guide built on one won't reach older builds. A version gate that turns guides off for a bad build saves you from shipping a hotfix.
• Connectivity varies. Amplitude has no offline mode: a user who opens the app offline sees no guides that session. Whatfix content keeps working offline once the user has been online at least once.
• You preview on a phone. A guide that looks right in a browser builder can clip on a small phone. Amplitude and Gainsight PX open drafts on a device from a QR code.
• React Native has version rules. Check your architecture and version against each SDK before you commit. Amplitude needs the New Architecture and React Native 0.79.2 or later, Pendo supports 0.60 to 0.83, and Userpilot needs 0.73 or later.

1. Amplitude: best for guides aimed at real product behavior, with replay and flags in one tool

Amplitude is an AI analytics platform. Product analytics, session replay, guides and surveys, feature experimentation, feature flags, and AI agents run on one set of events and one user record. On mobile, the Guides and Surveys SDK installs as a plugin to the Analytics SDK on iOS, Android, and React Native, so it shares the API key and user identity instead of booting a second tool.

For a mobile team, the payoff is targeting. If a funnel shows who browses recipes but never taps Swap, that cohort becomes the pin's audience without exporting a list, and Microscope on the chart opens the mobile replays of people who saw the pin.

An illustrative example: a meal-planning app ships a Swap ingredient button on the recipe screen. A month later, a funnel from Recipe Viewed to Ingredient Swapped shows few weekly users have tried it. A mobile engineer tags the button with .amplitudeView("swap-ingredient") in SwiftUI and the matching Compose modifier on Android, and the tag ships in the next release. The team is on Plus. The PM saves a cohort of users who view three or more recipes a week but have never fired Ingredient Swapped, then builds a pin on the button that fires after the third Recipe Viewed in a session, previews it on a phone from a QR code, and publishes it once the release with the new tag is live. Older builds don't have the tagged view, so the pin has nothing to anchor to there. Mobile replays of users who tapped the pin show many of them hit an empty substitutes list for vegan recipes. Engineering ships the fix behind a feature flag, and the same funnel shows whether flagged users swapped more.

Best for: Mobile product and growth teams that want to pick guide audiences from product data, guide users in the app, and see what happened next without a second vendor

Pricing: Free includes 2M events a month, 10K monthly session replays for web and mobile, unlimited feature flags, 1 live guide or survey, and AI agents, with no credit card. Plus starts at $0 for the first 2M events (card required), scales to 70M events, and adds event-based and time-based guide triggers, 20 behavioral cohorts, heatmaps, and 2-year data retention. No punitive overage rates. Additional usage billed at same per-unit rate. Growth and Enterprise are priced through sales, with unlimited data access, localization, smart triggers, and whitelabeled guides. Free and Plus include 1 live guide or survey, and Growth and Enterprise include 2. Paid plans can add more. The expanded Guides and Surveys package on Growth and Enterprise adds unlimited live guides and surveys and A/B testing for nudges. Startups with under $10M in funding and fewer than 20 employees can apply for the Startup Scholarship: 1 year of Growth with 100M events or 200k MTUs. See Amplitude pricing.

Key features:

Pins and tooltips on tagged views. Pins stay on screen until the user acts and can dim the rest of the screen. If the target isn't found within 250ms, the pin can skip ahead. On mobile, tapping the target always advances the pin.

Card embeds as native elements. A card renders inside your layout, before, after, or in place of a tagged view, using AmplitudeView in Compose and AmplitudeCardEmbedView in React Native.

Carousels sized for the device. Full screen on phones and a fixed-width card on tablets, with swipe navigation. Modals, popovers, banners, and checklists are also available.

Mobile triggers. Show a guide immediately, when a view appears or is tapped, after time on a screen, on rage taps, after a tracked event, or after N events in a session. Roll out to a percentage of users bucketed by user, device, or account.

Release safety. Set a minimum SDK version to stop guides on a bad build without rolling back the app, or turn guides off in code with disable(). Preview drafts on a device from a QR code or URL scheme, and use the Super Debugger to see why a guide didn't show.

Pros: Guide audiences come from the same events as your charts; one SDK identity for analytics, guides, and replay; mobile session replay on every plan; unlimited feature flags on every plan; iOS, Android, and React Native from one builder

Cons / less ideal if: Free and Plus run 1 live guide or survey at a time, so a pin and a carousel live together need the add-on on Plus or a move to Growth, which includes 2. Event-based and time-based triggers start on Plus. Guides don't load for users who open the app offline. Pins and tooltips can't target tab bar items or animated containers. The React Native SDK needs the New Architecture, and the After N events trigger needs SDK 3.7.0 or later on each platform. Every pin depends on a view your engineers tagged in a shipped build, so the first guide on a new screen waits for a release.

How it fits mobile apps:

• Ask engineering to tag the views you'll guide in each release, even before a guide exists for them.
• Call screen() or use autocaptured Screen Viewed events so time-on-screen triggers and screen targeting work.
• Add collapsable={false} to React Native views you target, so view flattening doesn't remove them.
• Give each card embed a unique identifier per screen.

Closest alternative: Pendo for retroactive analytics on mobile; Appcues for a no-code flow builder

Try Amplitude for free today.

2. Appcues: best for no-code mobile flows built by product ops or marketing

Appcues is a customer engagement platform with mobile SDKs for native iOS and Android, React Native, Flutter, and Ionic. On mobile you build Flows from modals, slideouts, and tooltips, plus surveys, Embeds that sit inside your layout, and push notifications. Appcues' mobile overview says none of it needs an app release once the SDK is in.

Best for: Teams where product ops or marketing builds guides and engineering installs the SDK once

Pricing: Plans are priced on monthly active users, installations, and published experiences. Start covers up to 3,000 monthly active users and 10 published experiences, Grow starts at 3,000 users with 25 experiences, and Enterprise includes 100. All three are priced through sales, and every plan includes every experience type. Teams of 25 or fewer can buy Spark for $3,600 a year, covering up to 1,000 monthly active users and 10 published experiences, plus a $250 implementation fee.

Key features:

• Floating tooltips on every supported framework and anchored tooltips on native iOS, native Android, React Native, Flutter, and Ionic through the Capacitor plugin 5.0.0 and later
• Anchored tooltip targets picked from a screen capture of your app on a device
• Webview targeting from mobile SDK 5.0.0
• Embeds and push notifications alongside Flows

Pros: No-code builder that marketing can run; one platform for web and mobile flows; broad framework support; experiences keep running if you pass your plan's user count, with sales following up at renewal

Cons / less ideal if: Anchored tooltips can't target elements that need scrolling, and users can't scroll while a tooltip shows. Ionic apps get floating tooltips only unless they use the Capacitor plugin. Tooltips don't take video or survey blocks. Published experience caps (10 on Start) limit how many mobile guides run at once, and Appcues has no session replay by its own comparison.

How it fits mobile apps: Strong for onboarding and announcement flows that a non-engineer owns. Budget a device session to capture screens for each anchored tooltip.

Closest alternative: Userpilot

3. Pendo: best for mobile guides with retroactive analytics

Pendo pairs in-app guides with product analytics that start collecting when the SDK is installed. Its mobile guides cover carousels, tooltips, and pop-ups, including full-screen pop-ups, banners, and polls. Supported frameworks include native iOS and Android, React Native, Flutter, Xamarin Forms, .NET MAUI, and Compose Multiplatform in open beta. See Amplitude vs Pendo.

Best for: Product teams that want mobile guides and usage history without an event-planning backlog

Pricing: Pendo Free covers up to 500 monthly active users with product analytics, in-app guides, and Pendo-branded NPS and roadmaps, and includes unlimited web and mobile app keys. Paid plans (Base, Core, and Ultimate) are quoted on monthly active users and modules, and the number of apps doesn't change the price. Past 500 users on Free, you can't create new guides, NPS surveys, or segments until you upgrade.

Key features:

• Tooltips as standalone guides or steps in a walkthrough
• Jetpack Compose support through pendoTag, with low-code setup from Android SDK 3.7.0
• React Native 0.60 to 0.83, with New Architecture support from SDK 3.7.2
• Retroactive analytics and mobile session replay from the same vendor

Pros: Usage history from install day; wide framework coverage; free tier that includes mobile apps

Cons / less ideal if: Compose tooltips don't work inside ModalBottomSheets, panels, or pop-ups. Pricing above 500 users is quote-only. Pendo's pricing page doesn't list feature flags, so shipping a fix to part of your audience means another tool.

How it fits mobile apps: Good when you run apps on several frameworks and want analytics and guides from one SDK per app. Check that your Compose screens avoid bottom sheets before you plan tooltips there.

Closest alternative: Gainsight PX

4. Plotline: best for high-volume consumer apps that run many nudges

Plotline is built mobile first, for consumer apps. Its SDKs cover native iOS and Android, React Native, Flutter, Unity, and web, and its formats lean toward engagement: tooltips, coachmarks, spotlights, bottom sheets, floating buttons, stories, video, and native widgets.

Best for: Consumer apps in fintech, edtech, gaming, or commerce that ship many nudges a month and have a growth team to run them

Pricing: Starter starts at $999 a month with tooltips, coachmarks, spotlights, bottom sheets, floating buttons, and up to 10 segments. Growth starts at $2,499 a month and adds stories, videos, carousels, native widgets, and A/B/n testing. Enterprise is custom. Plans combine a monthly active user slab with impressions, and the first three months include unlimited impressions. New customers start with a paid pilot on a staging environment.

Key features:

• Coachmarks and spotlights for feature discovery
• Native widgets and stories that render inside your screens on Growth
• Cohort sync from Amplitude and Mixpanel
• SOC 2 Type II

Pros: Mobile-first formats that web-first tools don't offer; Unity support for games; published starting prices

Cons / less ideal if: If you hit your impression cap, campaigns stop for the rest of the month. Carousels and A/B tests start on Growth at $2,499 a month. Starter caps you at 10 segments. Plotline imports cohorts from your analytics tool, so funnels and retention still live in a second product.

How it fits mobile apps: A fit for apps with millions of users and a dedicated growth team. For a few guides a quarter, the entry price is high.

Closest alternative: Appcues

5. Gainsight PX: best for B2B apps where customer success owns adoption

Gainsight PX is the product experience piece of Gainsight's customer success suite. Its mobile SDKs cover iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, NativeScript, Xamarin, and hybrid apps, and mobile guide engagements combine hotspots, tooltips, and dialogs into single or multi-step guides across screens.

Best for: B2B companies with a mobile companion app, where customer success tracks adoption by account

Pricing: Through sales. Gainsight doesn't publish a price or a free plan for PX.

Key features:

• Audience rules by screen name or class and by platform (iOS or Android)
• Activation on custom events, screen events, or app events such as opened, installed, or updated
• Steps linked to elements on the device through a QR code or deep link, by attribute, item index, full path, or parent
• Product Mapper features usable in mobile audience rules

Pros: Account-level targeting that fits renewal work; flexible element linking; app-update events as triggers for what's-new guides

Cons / less ideal if: The mobile SDK batches events, so Gainsight says to schedule the activation event at least 20 seconds after a user qualifies for the audience, or the engagement won't fire. No public pricing, and the case is strongest if you already buy Gainsight's CS platform.

How it fits mobile apps: Pick it when the mobile app is part of a B2B account and customer success needs guides tied to account health.

Closest alternative: Pendo

6. Userpilot: best for teams already on Userpilot for web

Userpilot is a product growth platform for web apps that sells native mobile engagement as an add-on. Its mobile page lists carousels, slideouts, push notifications, and NPS, CSAT, and CES surveys, with SDKs for iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, .NET MAUI, Capacitor, and Cordova.

Best for: SaaS teams that run web onboarding in Userpilot and want the same tool in their companion app

Pricing: Starter is $299 a month for up to 2,000 monthly active users and doesn't include mobile. Growth starts at $849 a month, and native iOS and Android support is an add-on priced on your mobile monthly active users. Enterprise is custom and includes mobile. There's a 14-day free trial with no credit card.

Key features:

• Mobile carousels and slideouts built in the same dashboard as web flows
• Push notifications and in-app surveys
• Event and screen autocapture on mobile
• React Native 0.73 and later, Expo 50 and later, iOS 13 and later

Pros: One vendor for web and mobile flows; published web prices; 14-day trial

Cons / less ideal if: The mobile page doesn't list anchored tooltips or spotlights, so you can't point at a specific button. Mobile costs extra below Enterprise, and mobile session replay is listed as coming soon. Userpilot doesn't list feature flags.

How it fits mobile apps: Works for announcement carousels and slideouts in a companion app. If you need a tooltip on a button, look elsewhere on this list.

Closest alternative: Appcues

7. Whatfix: best for enterprise apps used by employees or customers

Whatfix Mobile is a digital adoption platform for native mobile apps, sold for both employee-facing and customer-facing apps. Its formats include walkthroughs, tooltips, highlights, beacons, gestures, carousels, pop-ups, bottom sheets, drawers, a walkthrough checklist, and a walkthrough menu.

Best for: Enterprises rolling out field, sales, or customer apps where users need step-by-step help and may lose signal

Pricing: Through sales, with a free trial. Mobile apps are sold on the Standard plan, priced as a flat fee plus user licenses, counted as monthly active users for customer-facing apps.

Key features:

• Content keeps working offline once the user has been online at least once
• Option to self-host guidance content
• SDKs for native iOS and Android, Flutter, React Native, Ionic, Cordova, and Xamarin
• Integrations with Amplitude, Mixpanel, and Segment

Pros: Offline support that the other tools here don't document; wide format list; works for internal and external apps

Cons / less ideal if: Mobile segmentation is basic, built on static user properties. Several features are turned on by contacting support. The Flutter plugin lacks auto-scroll, pop-up element detection, and self-hosting, and the creator SDK has to be removed before you ship to the app store.

How it fits mobile apps: Strong for workforce apps and regulated rollouts. For consumer feature discovery, targeting on static properties is thin.

Closest alternative: Pendo

Dedicated guide tools ship fast on mobile. Appcues lets marketing build flows without engineering, Plotline offers stories and widgets that feel native to consumer apps, Whatfix keeps working offline, and Pendo covers frameworks most teams never touch. For one onboarding flow and a few announcements, any of them can be enough.

The gaps show up once a team wants more than a welcome carousel:

• The audience lives in analytics. The users who should see a guide, such as people who browse but never use a feature, are defined in your analytics tool. Plotline syncs cohorts from Amplitude and Mixpanel, and Whatfix Mobile targets on static user properties only.
• Two SDKs on a phone. A guide tool next to an analytics SDK means two libraries to update, two user IDs, and two counts of who's active, in an app where every release is a review cycle.
• Pricing on impressions or add-ons. Plotline campaigns stop for the month when you hit the impression cap, and Userpilot sells mobile as an add-on below Enterprise.
• No view of what happened next. Guide reports show views and completions. Seeing why a user tapped the tooltip and still gave up takes session replay, which Appcues doesn't offer and Userpilot lists as coming soon for mobile.
• The fix needs a flag. Sometimes the guide shows the feature itself is the problem. Shipping a fix to part of your users takes feature flags. Teams use Statsig, LaunchDarkly, or Optimizely for that, or use a tool where the flag can target the same cohort the guide did.

These tools price on different units: events, monthly active users, impressions, installations, or a quote. One scenario makes them comparable.

Scenario: a consumer subscription app on iOS and Android with 20,000 monthly active users, about 1.5M events a month, and two guides: a pin on a new feature and a three-step carousel after a major release, run one at a time.

At this size, plan gates matter more than the price gap: which formats your tier includes, whether a trigger can fire on a product event, and how many guides run at once. On Amplitude Plus, running the pin and the carousel at the same time takes the add-on. Growth includes 2 live guides or surveys.

• Marketing or product ops builds the guides, with no engineering time: Appcues. You give up scrolling targets and session replay, and you count published experiences.
• You run apps on many frameworks and want usage history: Pendo. You give up feature flags and published prices above 500 users.
• You're a consumer app sending many nudges a month: Plotline. You pay from $999 a month and campaigns pause when impressions run out.
• Customer success owns a B2B companion app: Gainsight PX. You plan around batched events and a quote.
• You already run web onboarding in Userpilot: Userpilot with the mobile add-on. You get carousels and slideouts, not tooltips on a button.
• Field or workforce users lose signal: Whatfix. You accept basic segmentation and support-enabled features.
• You want to target guides from product data, see replays of what users did next, and ship fixes behind flags: Amplitude. The pin's audience, the replays of who tapped it, and the flag for the fix all come from one SDK identity. Free includes 1 live guide or survey.
• The feature itself needs fixing: Ship the change behind a feature flag. Teams on Statsig, LaunchDarkly, or Optimizely can keep them. In Amplitude, feature flags are unlimited on every plan, and the same funnel shows whether flagged users used the feature.

We're biased, so here's the short version. Amplitude fits if you want guide audiences built from real product usage, pins and card embeds on the views you tag, replays of what users did after the guide, and flags to ship the fix. The Guides and Surveys SDK runs as a plugin to the Analytics SDK, so your app carries one API key and one user ID. For the analytics side, see our guide to mobile app analytics tools.

It's less ideal if you plan to run many guides at once on Free or Plus, since those plans include 1 live guide or survey (Growth and Enterprise include 2) and more takes an add-on, or if your users often open the app offline.