Google Analytics vs PostHog
Pricing
Google Analytics: Free
PostHog: Free up to 1M events, then usage-based
Description
Google Analytics: Google's free web and app analytics for traffic sources, user journeys and conversions, linked to Google Ads and Search Console
PostHog: Product analytics, session replay, feature flags, and A/B testing, all in one open-source tool
Pros
- Free of charge, with one property able to cover both your website and your app
- Integrates with Google Ads and Google Search Console
- Machine-learning features estimate which customers are likely to take an action next
- 1 million free events/month covers most startups for a long time
- Replaces 4+ separate tools (analytics, session replay, feature flags, A/B testing)
- Self-hosting option if you need to keep data on your own servers
Cons
- Ties data to cookies and user identifiers, unlike cookie-free tools such as Plausible and Fathom
- The free version keeps user-level and event-level data for explorations for 14 months at most
- Longer retention (26 to 50 months) needs Analytics 360, the paid enterprise version
- Steep learning curve: the sheer number of features can be overwhelming at first
- Setting up meaningful dashboards takes time and thought
- Self-hosted version requires real infrastructure to run
Details
Google Analytics is Google’s own analytics service for websites and apps. You add a tag to your site or app and get reports on where visitors come from, what they do and which of them convert. It costs nothing.
It suits founders who run Google Ads or want the most detail without paying. The reports cover cross-platform journeys, attribution across channels and machine-learning forecasts.
Two limits are worth knowing. Data in explorations and funnel reports is kept for 2 or 14 months on the free version (standard reports are not affected), and the data is linked to cookies and identifiers. If you would rather not use cookies at all, look at Plausible or Fathom.
PostHog is what you get when developers build analytics for developers. Instead of paying for Mixpanel (analytics) + FullStory (session replay) + LaunchDarkly (feature flags) + Optimizely (A/B tests), PostHog bundles all four into one platform. And the free tier is 1 million events per month, enough for most startups to run for months without paying.
The honest downside is complexity. PostHog can do a lot, and figuring out what to track and how to set up useful dashboards takes real effort. If you just want page views and referrer data, Plausible or Fathom is simpler. If you want to understand how users actually move through your product, PostHog is worth the setup time.
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