PostHog

posthog.comcontributed by Samuele Ongaro

KEEP IT

The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying.

Product analytics, session recording, feature flags, experiments and surveys in one place, aimed at engineering teams. Open source, with a hosted plan priced on volume.

Promptfree, for everyone, and the only version there is
Do not rebuild the suite — but notice the idea, because it is the best one in this category and it is free to copy.

**One event stream feeding every tool.** Product analytics, session replay, feature flags and experiments all reading the same events, so a funnel, a flag and a replay agree with each other by construction rather than by reconciliation. That is an architecture, and you can adopt it whatever you use.

FIRST, CHECK THE TIER
- The free allowance is large and the software is open source, so self-hosting is a real answer. Many people paying here would be fine on either
- Self-hosting it is genuinely heavier than the other open products in this catalogue — it wants a columnar store and real memory. Price that honestly against the hosted bill

WHEN TO KEEP PAYING
- You use three or four of the tools and value that they agree
- Volume where recomputing a funnel in seconds is doing real work

WHAT TO COPY, WHATEVER YOU DECIDE
- **Everything is one events table** with a name and properties. A new signal is a new name, never a migration
- Both the anonymous and the identified identifier on every row, so stitching applies retroactively rather than requiring a rewrite
- Feature flags evaluated locally from a cached rule set, with the exposure written as an event into the same stream. Then 'did the people who saw the new thing convert better' is one query rather than a reconciliation between two products
- Record more than you publish. A signal not captured today starts from zero the day somebody wants it

AND THE PART TO BE CAREFUL WITH
Session replay in the same product makes it very easy to turn on. Mask by default, never capture a password field under any configuration, set a retention in days, and log who watched whose session. Those controls matter more when replay is one switch away.

THE ONE-LINE VERSION
Check whether the free tier covers you. Then take the architecture — one event stream, both identifiers, flags writing exposures into it — regardless of what you pay for.

What you lose

  • Funnels, retention and path analysis over the same event stream that drives the feature flags and the recordings
  • Session replay that reconstructs a page from DOM mutations, which is a serious engineering effort on its own
  • A query engine that stays fast at billions of events, which is the actual product
  • Experiment analysis with the statistics already done for you

If you would rather not build

  • Plausible or Umami, if page views are all you actually read

The escape hatch

open source · no votes, no paid placement

PostHog

$0

The product itself, self-hostable — the paid plan is the operating.

PostHog/posthogfree · open source

Metabase

$0

Charts and dashboards over a database you already have.

metabase/metabasefree · open source

Why this verdict

our own opinion · changed only by a person

24/100

Verdict no at 24. The analytics half is replaceable at small scale; session replay and query performance at volume are not, and those are what the bill is for. Self-hosting is free but the operating cost is real.

History

tracked since 10 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten

Interest · last 30 dayspeak 2/day
views01230 Aug4 Sept9 Sept14 Sept19 Sept24 Sept28 Sept
— views— prompt copies none yet— votes none yet

Questions about PostHog

answered from the record above

Is PostHog free?

Priced per event, session recording and feature flag rather than as a flat monthly fee, with a free allowance each month, so there is no single headline number to quote.

Can you replace PostHog by building your own?

KEEP IT. The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying. Replacement score 24 out of 100, build time longer than it saves. Read what you lose before you decide.

How much does PostHog cost?

PostHog has no public headline price. The tier we track is the entry plan.

What do you lose by replacing PostHog?

Funnels, retention and path analysis over the same event stream that drives the feature flags and the recordings; Session replay that reconstructs a page from DOM mutations, which is a serious engineering effort on its own; A query engine that stays fast at billions of events, which is the actual product; Experiment analysis with the statistics already done for you. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.

Is there an open-source alternative to PostHog?

Yes: PostHog, Metabase. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.

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