PostHog
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.
Do not rebuild this. Take the parts you actually use. WHAT TO KEEP PAYING FOR - Session replay and anything reading billions of events; both are infrastructure problems, not application problems WHAT IS WORTH BUILDING - Plain event capture into your own database, if all you read is counts and funnels over thousands of events a day STACK FOR THAT SMALLER THING - One endpoint appending to Postgres or SQLite: name, properties as JSON, a hashed visitor, a timestamp - No aggregate tables; compute at query time FUNNELS - A funnel is an ordered list of event names and a window - One SQL query per step, self-joining on the visitor within the window FEATURE FLAGS - A JSON file in your repository, read at boot and refreshed on a signal - Percentage rollouts by hashing the visitor id against the flag name so a visitor stays on one side of a flag WHERE THIS BREAKS - Past a few million events a month, or the moment you want replay, go back to the product Include the schema, one funnel query and the flag evaluator.
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
$0The product itself, self-hostable — the paid plan is the operating.
PostHog/posthogfree · open source
Metabase
$0Charts 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
Nothing recorded yet. This chart fills in once the page has visitors, votes or prompt copies — it will not draw a flat line to look busy.
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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