---
title: Pathways
description: Trace the sequences of views users move through before or after a chosen page. Pathways renders those journeys as a Sankey, ranks the most common paths, and shows where users drop off.
url: https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/product-analytics/pathways/
product: product-analytics
feature: Product Analytics Overview
feature_id: product-analytics-general
feature_identifier: product-analytics/product-analytics-general
last_updated: '2026-10-28'
---

# Pathways

A pathway shows the routes users take through your product, the sequence of views they move through before or after a page you choose. Product Analytics renders these journeys as a Sankey diagram, so you can see the most common paths into and out of a view, follow how users flow from one page to the next, and spot where they leave along the way.

Pathways are built on the sessions and views your RUM SDK collects. See [the data model](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/product-analytics/getting-started.md#the-data-model) for how these events work.

Funnels or Pathways?

Use a [funnel](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/product-analytics/funnels.md) when you already know the flow you want to measure. You define its steps and track conversion and drop-off across them. Reach for a pathway when you don't. You anchor on one view and let Product Analytics surface the routes users actually take around it.

## What you need

* The [`PRODUCT-ANALYTICS:READ`](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/aaa/access-control/permissions/permissions-list.md) permission.
* A Coralogix application instrumented with the [Real User Monitoring](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/rum/getting-started/real-user-monitoring.md) SDK, generating view events for the pages you want to trace.

## Trace a pathway

1. In **Product Analytics**, open **Pathways**, and select the application to analyze from the selector at the top. A pathway traces one application at a time.
2. Set the **Path direction**. **After** to follow the paths users take *from* a view, or **Before** to trace the paths that led *to* it. The view picker is labeled **Starting point** when tracing after and **End point** when tracing before.
3. Select the **Starting point** (or **End point**) to open the view picker, then choose the single view to anchor the pathway on. The picker lists the application's views with their session counts and is searchable, type to find a view. A pathway is always anchored on one view.
4. Set **Steps to trace** (1–7) to control how many steps out from the anchor the Sankey extends.
5. Set **Paths per step** (**Top 1**–**Top 8**) to control how many of the most common paths appear at each step.
6. Set the period to analyze with the time range picker.

The Sankey renders as you adjust the controls.

[![Opening Pathways from the Product Analytics menu to trace a pathway](/docs/assets/images/pathways-overview-b333cf0ea6d045f284c2d76449ecf7e8.webp)](https://coralogix.com/docs/assets/images/pathways-overview-b333cf0ea6d045f284c2d76449ecf7e8.webp)

## Read the Sankey

Each column is a step out from the anchor view. Tracing **after**, the columns read **Starting point**, then **Step +1**, **Step +2**, and so on; tracing **before**, they read **End point**, then **Step -1**, **Step -2**. Each node is a view, and the width of the flow between two nodes is the number of sessions that moved from one to the next, so the thickest ribbons are the most-traveled paths. Hover a node or flow to see its view and session count.

## See where users drop off

Where sessions leave the path rather than continue to the next step, a **Drop-off** node absorbs them, so you can see how many users abandon the journey at each step. When tracing before, its mirror (a **Session start** node) marks the sessions that began at that point with no earlier page.

## See the users behind a path

Select a view's bar, its name, or the flow leaving it to open a drawer listing the users who followed the path to that view. The **Session start** and **Drop-off** nodes don't open one.

The drawer's header shows the path in chronological order, one step per column, ending at the view you selected. Where several views in a column lead on to the view, the step lists them joined by **or**. Below it:

* The **Users** list names the users who went through the path in order, up to 100, where each row shows the **User**, **Account**, **Session date**, **Platform**, and **Country**. Select the play icon at the start of a row to open that user's [Session Replay](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/rum/product-features/session-replay.md).
* **Download CSV** exports every matching user, up to 50,000, with the user's name, email, and ID, the account name and ID, and the session ID as separate columns.
* **Open as funnel** opens [Funnels](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/product-analytics/funnels.md) in a new tab with the path as its steps, keeping the application, time range, and filters, so you can measure conversion along it.

The open drawer is part of the page URL. Copy the link to share it, and the recipient lands on the same path's users, along with any session replay open over them.

## Narrow the data

Narrow the sessions a pathway includes with the global filter, the same one used by heatmaps and funnels. Select an attribute and the values to keep, and the Sankey recomputes over the matching sessions. The available attributes are **Browser**, **OS**, **Device type**, **Platform**, **Country**, **City**, **URL path**, **URL domain**, **URL host**, **Referrer URL**, **User email**, **Account ID**, **Account name**, **App version**, and **Environment**.

## Additional resources

[![Blog](https://coralogix.com/wp-content/webp-express/webp-images/doc-root/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/blog_introducing-coralogix-product-analytics.png.webp)](https://coralogix.com/blog/introducing-coralogix-product-analytics/)

[Blog](https://coralogix.com/blog/introducing-coralogix-product-analytics/)

## Next steps

* Measure conversion across a defined flow: [Funnels](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/product-analytics/funnels.md).
* See where users click and scroll on a page: [Heatmaps](https://coralogix.com/docs/user-guides/product-analytics/heatmaps.md).
