In this article, a compliance-based displacement amplifier has been analyzed. The utility of a couple of variations within a pre-existing compliant mechanism has been systematically investigated. The presented modifications within the pre-existing design can help to get a large output displacement. The suggested modification within the design doesn’t improve the amplification ratio, but it can cause a large increase in the output displacement of the amplifier for the given input force. Such characteristics of an amplifier are very helpful in a device like an accelerometer in which proof mass provides a certain inertial force. Here, the modified displacement amplifier has been considered to be included in a capacitive sensing-based MEMS accelerometer. The influence of beam configurations on the performance of MEMS accelerometer is analyzed, and the dimensions are chosen to get the optimum performance. It is found that the proposed variations in the design are helpful to get larger sensitivity. They are extremely useful to be included within the design when the allowed minimum size of the beams is larger due to fabrication limitations. Natural frequencies of the MEMS accelerometer have been calculated numerically and analytically where a good agreement has been found. The presented study assures improvement in the device performance through suggested modifications within the compliant mechanism. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.