In-depth: PostHog vs Plausible

Plausible is a popular privacy-first alternative to Google Analytics. It's lightweight, cookie-free, and open source – making it a great fit for teams who want simple website metrics without the complexity of GA4.

PostHog also offers web analytics with cookieless tracking and a simple dashboard, but it goes much further by integrating product analytics, session replay, A/B testing, feature flags, surveys, and more.

In this comparison, we break down where these tools overlap, where they differ, and which is the better fit depending on what you need.

How is PostHog different?

1. We're free (forever)

Our "pay-as-you-go" tier includes all of the features of PostHog for free with an allowance of 1M events per month. For Plausible, this would cost a minimum of $69/m on the starter plan.

Beyond PostHog's free tier, we try to be as cheap as possible and transparent. Want to know how much we'll charge? See our pricing calculator.

2. We're more than just web analytics

Web analytics is a core feature of PostHog, but we offer many more tools to help you analyze, test, observe, and deploy your site and app.

These include product analytics, session replay, surveys, experiments, feature flags, a data warehouse, error tracking, LLM analytics, logs, workflows, a CDP, and more.

3. We're multi-platform

Plausible is entirely focused on the web, whereas PostHog supports both web tracking and other platforms, like mobile, backend, and API.

This isn't limited to event capture and features either. Our data warehouse lets you import and query data from sources like Stripe, Hubspot, and Postgres, and our data pipelines let you send data to destinations like Slack, S3, or a custom HTTP webhook.

Learn more about using PostHog

Web analytics

Both Plausible and PostHog are Google Analytics alternatives, so they're ideal for tracking and analyzing your website.

Product analytics

Teams rely on product analytics when they need more customization in both capturing and analyzing data. Although not a focus of Plausible, it does offer some basic product analytics features for those that need them.

💡 Good to know: Many of Plausible's product analytics features, like custom properties and funnels, are on its more expensive "Business" plan. It's roughly twice the price of the Starter plan and includes up to 10 sites and 10 team members.

Platform

Beyond web analytics is where PostHog really shines. We provide all of the tools developers need to build a successful product (and they all work together).

💡 Good to know:

1. Plausible's API is limited to capturing events and querying aggregate metrics. PostHog's API provides capture, full SQL querying, feature flags, and CRUD operations for all metadata.
2. You can add unlimited teammates to your project in PostHog. Plausible limits you to 1 on their Starter plan, 3 on their Growth plan, and 10 on their Business plan. For more than that, you need a custom enterprise plan.

Integrations

Although Plausible has some integrations with other tools, it mostly stands on its own. PostHog has many more features for importing data from other sources as well as sending it to other destinations.

Security, compliance, privacy

Plausible prides itself on being privacy-friendly, but PostHog stands toe-to-toe with it in terms of features. On top of that, PostHog includes many of the features enterprises need for compliance.

Pricing comparison

Plausible is a monthly subscription based on usage. There are four plan tiers, each unlocking more features; for up to 10k pageviews a month, you can expect to pay:

• Starter ($9/mo) – 1 site, 3 team members max, 3-year data retention, goals, custom events, and email/Slack reports
• Growth ($14/mo) – Up to 3 sites, 3 team members, shared links, embedded dashboards, and team management
• Business ($19/mo) – Up to 10 sites, 10 team members, 5-year data retention, custom properties, funnels, ecommerce revenue attribution, Stats API, and Looker Studio connector
• Enterprise (custom) – 10+ sites, SSO, priority support, scheduled raw data exports, and higher API limits

For 1M pageviews a month, the Starter plan lands at $69/mo, the Growth plan at $104/mo, the Business plan at $139/mo, and Enterprise is custom pricing.

PostHog is entirely usage-based. Its free tier includes:

A lot of products also use volume-based pricing that gets cheaper as you scale – the more you use, the less you pay per unit. See the calculator for exact rates at your volume.

Basically, we aim to give you the tools you want for as cheap as possible. We split out the products, and features like group analytics and pipelines within products, to do this.

When to choose PostHog vs Plausible

Choosing the right analytics tool depends on what you need it to do. Here's a quick guide:

• Building a product, not just a website? PostHog goes beyond pageviews with funnels, session replay, experiments, and feature flags – so you won't outgrow it.
• Need simple, lightweight website analytics with no cookies and minimal setup? Plausible is probably the right choice.

Recommendations by team type

For product and engineering teams

• PostHog – Track user behavior through funnels and paths, watch session replays to debug issues, run A/B tests, and roll out features with flags – all in one platform with SQL access for power users.

For content sites and blogs

• Plausible – Clean, real-time dashboard that shows pageviews, referrers, and top pages at a glance. No training needed, no cookie banners, and a script that's significantly smaller than Google Analytics.

For marketing teams

• Plausible – UTM campaign tracking, Google Search Console integration, and conversion goals without the complexity of GA4. PostHog also covers these basics via web analytics and can send conversion data to ad platforms like Google and Meta via its CDP, but adds product-level depth most marketers won't need.

For privacy-conscious and regulated organizations

• Both are open source, GDPR-ready, and hosted in the EU. PostHog is also SOC 2 certified, HIPAA-ready, and offers a built-in data warehouse for full data access. Plausible is cookieless by default with no personal data collection, which can eliminate the need for consent banners entirely.

For early-stage startups

• PostHog – Start with web analytics and grow into product analytics, session replay, feature flags, and experiments without switching tools or rebuilding your stack. The generous free tier covers 1 million events/month – 100x more than Plausible's cheapest plan. Startups can also qualify for $50k in free credits.

Frequently asked questions