Plausible vs PostHog(2026)
Plausible is better for teams that need no cookie banner needed. PostHog is the stronger choice if open source. Plausible is paid (from $9/month) and PostHog is freemium (from $0 (usage-based after 1M events)).
Full feature breakdown, pricing details, and pros & cons below.
By Bikram NathLast updated
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Plausible
Plausible is a lightweight, open-source, privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternative.
Starting at $9/month
Visit PlausiblePostHog
PostHog is an open-source product analytics suite with funnels, feature flags, A/B testing, and session recording.
Starting at $0 (usage-based after 1M events)
Visit PostHogHow Do Plausible and PostHog Compare on Features?
| Feature | Plausible | PostHog |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | paid | freemium |
| Starting price | $9/month | $0 (usage-based after 1M events) |
| Cookie-free analytics | ✓ | — |
| GDPR compliant | ✓ | — |
| Lightweight script (1KB) | ✓ | — |
| Goal tracking | ✓ | — |
| Custom events | ✓ | — |
| Product analytics | — | ✓ |
| Session recording | — | ✓ |
| Feature flags | — | ✓ |
| A/B testing | — | ✓ |
| Surveys | — | ✓ |
| Data warehouse | — | ✓ |
Plausible Pros and Cons vs PostHog
Plausible
PostHog
Deep dive: Plausible
When to choose Plausible
Plausible is the right choice when the team needs lightweight, privacy-first web analytics without the complexity of a full product analytics suite. It is the default recommendation for content sites, documentation portals, and marketing pages where the primary metrics are page views, referral sources, and geographic distribution rather than user funnels or feature adoption. The script is under 1 KB, loads asynchronously, and does not use cookies, which means no cookie consent banner is required under GDPR. Choose Plausible when the team values simplicity over depth, when the site needs to comply with privacy regulations without legal review, or when Google Analytics feels like overkill for a content-focused project. Avoid it when the product team needs event funnels, cohort analysis, or user-level tracking, or when the business requires integration with a data warehouse for advanced analysis.
Real-world use case
A developer tools blog generating 200,000 page views per month uses Plausible Cloud to track content performance. The dashboard shows which blog posts drive the most traffic, which referral sources convert to newsletter signups via goal tracking, and how geographic distribution informs content localization decisions. Total cost is per month on the Growth plan. The team previously used Google Analytics 4 but switched after finding GA4 reports required 10 minutes of configuration for data that Plausible shows on a single screen. The tradeoff is that Plausible cannot track individual user journeys across sessions, so the team cannot answer questions like what percentage of users who read the pricing page also read the docs.
Hidden gotchas
Plausible uses IP-based hashing for unique visitor counts without storing the actual IP. This means users behind corporate VPNs or shared IPs are counted as a single visitor, which understates unique visitors for B2B audiences by 10 to 30 percent depending on the visitor mix. Custom event tracking requires manual JavaScript calls rather than autocapture, so tracking button clicks or form submissions requires developer involvement for each new event. The self-hosted version requires a PostgreSQL database and ClickHouse, which adds operational overhead that undermines the simplicity value proposition for small teams. Revenue attribution and e-commerce tracking are not supported. API access for building custom dashboards requires the Business plan or higher.
Pricing breakdown
Cloud pricing is based on monthly page views: up to 10K views costs per month, up to 100K costs , up to 200K costs , and scales from there. A site with 500K monthly page views pays approximately per month. The self-hosted Community Edition is free. Compared to Mixpanel or Amplitude free tiers that cap at event counts, Plausible pricing is simpler to predict but can exceed those alternatives for high-traffic sites that only need basic analytics.
Deep dive: PostHog
When to choose PostHog
PostHog is the right pick when the team wants product analytics, session replay, feature flags, and A/B testing in a single platform rather than stitching together Mixpanel plus LaunchDarkly plus FullStory. The self-hosted option makes it the default for teams with data residency requirements or those who want to avoid sending user behavior data to a third-party cloud. The generous free tier of 1 million events per month and 5,000 session recordings covers most early-stage products without any cost. Choose PostHog when the team values open-source transparency, when the project needs to correlate feature flag exposure with conversion metrics in the same dashboard, or when the engineering team wants to extend analytics with custom plugins. Avoid it when the team needs enterprise-grade support with SLAs, when the marketing team expects a polished non-technical UI comparable to Amplitude, or when the project only needs basic page-view analytics that Plausible handles more simply.
Real-world use case
A B2B SaaS startup with 3,000 monthly active users uses PostHog Cloud to track product adoption. The team set up feature flags for a new pricing page redesign and uses the built-in experimentation framework to A/B test conversion rates. Session replay helps the product team watch users struggle with the onboarding flow without installing a separate tool. The total cost is /bin/zsh per month on the free tier. The tradeoff is that PostHog query performance degrades on complex funnels with more than 5 steps over 90-day windows, and the self-serve documentation for HogQL custom queries assumes SQL proficiency that the product manager lacks.
Hidden gotchas
The autocapture feature records every click, input change, and page view by default, which generates high event volumes that can push past the free tier within days on high-traffic sites. Teams that enable autocapture without configuring event filtering often discover a surprise bill at the end of the month. Session replay does not capture iframe content or canvas elements, which means product tours built with third-party onboarding tools are invisible in replays. The self-hosted deployment on Kubernetes requires significant infrastructure knowledge and at minimum 8 GB RAM for the ClickHouse instance. Feature flag evaluation adds a network request per page load unless the team configures local evaluation with bootstrapped flags, which requires server-side rendering changes. Group analytics for B2B use cases (tracking organizations rather than individual users) requires a separate billing add-on that is not included in the free tier.
Pricing breakdown
The free tier includes 1M events, 5K session recordings, and 1M feature flag requests per month. Beyond that, events cost /bin/zsh.00031 each (roughly per 1M events), session recordings cost /bin/zsh.005 each, and feature flag requests cost /bin/zsh.0001 each. A typical B2B SaaS with 10,000 MAU generating 5M events, 10K recordings, and 2M flag requests per month runs approximately ,600 to ,000 per month. The self-hosted option eliminates per-event pricing but shifts infrastructure costs to the team.
Should You Use Plausible or PostHog?
For most teams, Plausible is the better default: it offers no cookie banner needed and is paid (from $9/month). Choose PostHog instead if open source matters more than no session recording. There is no universal winner — the right pick depends on your budget, team size, and whether you value no cookie banner needed or open source more.
Choose Plausible if…
- •No cookie banner needed
- •Simple and clean UI
- •Open source
Choose PostHog if…
- •Open source
- •All-in-one product suite
- •Generous free tier