Events And Properties

Overview

Events are the core of Mixpanel's Data Model. All events have a name, a timestamp, and a user ID. Events can optionally have a set of properties, which describe the event in more detail.

If you're familiar with databases, events are like tables and properties are like columns.
If you're familiar with Google Analytics, events are like hits and properties are like dimensions.

Examples

A Page Viewed event might have a property called Page URL, which is set to the URL of the page that was viewed.
A Signed Up event might have a property called Signup Type, which indicates whether the signup was organic vs referral.
A Song Played event might have a property called Song Name, which is set to the name of the song that was played.
A Order Completed event might have a property called Items, which is a list of objects, each of which contains details about an item, like its name, category, and price.

Use cases

You can filter, breakdown, and aggregate your events by their properties to answer more questions:

Which pages do users look at before they visit the pricing page?
How many Signups did I get that were organic vs referral?
Which Song Name is most popular among my users?
How many Orders contain shoes? What is the sum total price that users paid for shoes in the last month?

Reserved Event Properties

Mixpanel reserves certain event property names; these properties receive special treatment in our UI or are used for special processing.

Name	Display	Description
distinct_id / $distinct_id	Distinct ID	Mixpanel's internal unique identifier for a user. See Identifying Users (opens in a new tab)
time	Time or Date	A unix time epoch that is used to determine the time of an event. If no time property is provided, we will use the time the event arrives at our servers.
$city	City	The city of the event sender, parsed from IP.
$region	Region	The region (state or province) of the event sender, parsed from IP.
mp_country_code	Country	The country of the event sender, parsed from IP.
mp_original_event_name	Hotshard Original Event Name	The original event name for a hotsharded event. See Distinct ID Limits (opens in a new tab)
mp_original_distinct_id	Hotshard Original Distinct ID	The original distinct id for a hotsharded event. See Distinct ID Limits (opens in a new tab)

Best Practices

Keep Events Generic

We recommend keeping event names generic and using properties for all context. For example:

Instead of tracking events called Home Page Viewed and Pricing Page Viewed, track a Page Viewed event with a Page Name property set to /home or /pricing.
Instead of tracking Blue Button Clicked or Checkout Button Clicked, track Button Clicked with a Color property set to Blue and Button Name set to Checkout.

Name Events and Properties Consistently

We recommend having a consistent naming convention for your events and properties. For example:

Use camel case for your event names.
Use the (Object) (Verb) format for event names. Like "Song Played" or "Page Viewed".

Avoid Creating Event or Property Names Dynamically

For example, don't create an event name like Purchase (11-01-2019). Instead, create an event called Purchase and have some property (eg: Return Date) set to the dynamic value 11-01-2019).

FAQ

What types of data can I send as properties?

Mixpanel accepts arbitrary JSON as properties, including strings, numbers, booleans, lists, and objects. See our API docs (opens in a new tab) for more details.

What are the limits of events and properties?

We don't have a limit on the total number of events you can send to Mixpanel, but it will factor into your pricing (opens in a new tab).

We have a soft limit of 2000 distinct event names in a 30 day window. If you send more event names, we'll still ingest them, but those event names will not be indexed and will not appear in our autocomplete menus.

Each event can have up to 2000 properties. Properties can be at most 255 characters in length (longer strings are truncated).

Effective Server Side Tracking Identifying Users