In-depth: PostHog vs Amplitude
Contents
Choosing the right analytics platform often comes down to trade-offs.
PostHog and Amplitude both cover the essentials – analytics, experimentation, feature flags, session replay, and more – but their strengths show up in different places.
In this post, we'll cover these differences in more detail, comparing features, pricing, reporting, integrations, and the best fit for different use cases.
How is PostHog different?
1. Everything you need in one place
PostHog is the ultimate developer platform because puts all your customer data in one place and combines it with every tool you need to build a successful product. This means:
- Product analytics for analyzing user behavior, funnels, activation, and retention
- Web analytics for traffic, campaigns, and content performance
- Session replay for observing how people use your product and diagnosing problems
- Feature flags to test safely in production and ship new features with confidence
- Experiments to validate product and website improvements
- Error tracking for monitoring exceptions and problems in your code
- Surveys to capture user feedback, track NPS, and book interviews
- LLM analytics for gathering data on AI and LLM product usage and performance
In other words, it's everything you need in one app with a single login and contract. A genuine single source of truth for your product and customer data.
Companies that qualify for PostHog's startup program get $50,000 in PostHog credit and a range of additional benefits.
2. It's a platform built for developers
This means you get support from the engineers who actually build the product, extensively documented APIs, and a SQL query builder, so you can analyze data how you want. Our code, culture, and strategy are public on GitHub and in our public handbook.
And as your needs grow, PostHog grows with you – advanced capabilities such as a CDP or data warehouse, are ready to switch on whenever you need them.
Development teams at Supabase, Lovable, and ElevenLabs, and many more trust PostHog as they scale.
3. Transparent pricing, generous free tiers
Our pricing is 100% transparent. There are no hidden fees or surprise overages – what you see is exactly what you'll pay.
We also default to charging as little as possible while still making a sensible margin, and every product comes with a generous free tier. In fact, more than 90% of companies use PostHog for free!
In 2024, we cut prices for session replay and analytics events. In 2025, we've cut prices for data pipelines and surveys. If we can cut pass a saving onto our customers, we always will.
Comparing PostHog and Amplitude
PostHog and Amplitude offer a similar suite of products, but Amplitude lacks things like error tracking and LLM analytics.
| PostHog | Amplitude | |
Product analytics Track events and conversion, analyze user behavior | ✔ | ✔ |
Web analytics Easy to use analytics for marketing websites | ✔ | ✔ |
Session replay Watch real users use your product, diagnose bugs | ✔ | ✔ |
Feature flags Roll out features safely, toggle features for cohorts or individuals | ✔ | ✔ |
Experiments Run tests on new features, optimize conversion funnels | ✔ | ✔ |
Surveys Collect and analyze feedback, run NPS and PMF surveys | ✔ | ✔ |
Error tracking Track and monitor errors and exceptions in your code | ✔ | ✖ |
LLM analytics Gather usage and performance data for your AI and LLM product | ✔ | ✖ |
Marketing analytics Track conversion and campaign ROI | Beta | ✔ |
Product tours Create guides for new users | ✖ | ✔ |
What's the best product analytics tool for startups?
PostHog. Generous free tiers, $50k startup credits for eligible companies, usage-based pricing that keeps costs low, and a roadmap focused on the needs of builders make PostHog ideal for new companies searching for product-market fit.
Which is the best tool for product managers?
Tied. While Amplitude is geared more towards non-technical users, both platforms provide everything product managers to understand user behavior, gather feedback, and do deeper analysis.
Which is best for product engineers and developers?
PostHog. Error tracking, LLM analytics and power user features, like custom SQL insights, make PostHog the best developer platform for any engineering-led company.
What's the best tool for marketers?
Amplitude. While marketers can use both tools effectively, Amplitude's UI and toolset is more geared towards marketing use cases than PostHog.
Which tool is best for engineers and technical founders?
PostHog. Open source, transparent roadmap, direct support from engineers, SQL access, and extensibility.
Which should I choose for warehouse-native analytics?
Amplitude. Can run directly on top of your data warehouse, while PostHog syncs to/from warehouses but doesn't sit on top of them.
Which is the best all-in-one platform?
Tie. Both PostHog and Amplitude offer a broad suite of tools for product teams, but with with differences in emphasis. PostHog favors engineering and product teams; Amplitude favors marketing and growth team use cases.
Product analytics
Both PostHog and Amplitude offer product analytics. Advanced features like SQL queries, custom formulas, and group/account analytics are included in PostHog's free tier, while Amplitude only provides them on paid plans.
| PostHog | Amplitude | |
Free usage How much free usage do you get each month? | 1 million events | 50k tracked users (Starter plan only) |
Autocapture Capture events without manual logging | ✔ | ✔ |
Query editor Write your own queries in SQL | ✔ | Add on |
Dashboards Combine insights into shareable dashboards | ✔ | ✔ |
Graphs and trends Build custom insights and visualizations | ✔ | ✔ |
Funnels Track users through a sequence of events | ✔ | ✔ |
Retention Visualize which users stay, for how long | ✔ | ✔ |
User paths Track user flows and where they drop-off | ✔ | ✔ |
Cohorts Combine users based on properties and events for group analysis | ✔ | ✔ |
Group analytics Track metrics at a company and account level | ✔ | Paid add-on |
Lifecycle analysis Understand who is dormant, churning, and thriving | ✔ | ✔ |
Stickiness Find out what events keep users coming back. | ✔ | ✔ |
Custom formulas Use formulas to calculate unique insights | ✔ | Growth plans and up |
Web analytics Simple dashboard of aggregate traffic, sources, campaigns, and session metrics | ✔ | ✔ |
PostHog supports autocapture, which means you can implement PostHog in mere minutes and ensure you don't miss out on events you haven't manually instrumented. Don't want autocapture? Just turn it off – we offer the best of both worlds.
Feature flags
Both PostHog and Amplitude provide robust feature management tools, including boolean and multivariate flags, local evaluation, payloads, targeting, and percentage rollouts.
| PostHog | Amplitude | |
Free usage How much free usage do you get each month? | 1 million API requests | 50k tracked users |
Boolean flags Simple flags returning true or flag | ✔ | ✔ |
Multivariate flags Flags with multiple customizable values | ✔ | ✔ |
Payloads Flags with string, number, or JSON payloads | ✔ | ✔ |
Local evaluation Store flag definitions locally | ✔ | ✔ |
Percentage rollouts Target percentages of a group | ✔ | ✔ |
Custom targeting Target users based on user properties, custom contexts | ✔ | ✔ |
Scheduling Schedule flags to turn on or off | ✔ | ✔ |
Environments Manage flags for dev, staging, prod | Partial | ✖ |
Bootstrapping Flags available on frontend application load | ✔ | ✔ |
Early access Manage betas, test features | ✔ | ✖ |
PostHog's feature flags are tightly integrated with other features, so you can target session replays, surveys, and more using existing feature flags. See our guide on the benefits of feature flags for more.
Experiments
Both PostHog and Amplitude support core experimentation features like A/B/n testing, multivariate tests, custom and secondary metrics, and statistical significance calculations. PostHog includes experiments in its free tier (1M requests per month, including mobile support). Most Amplitude Experiments features are locked behind paid plans.
| PostHog | Amplitude | |
Free usage How much free usage do you get each month? | 1 million API requests | None |
Web experiments Run A/B tests on web apps and websites | ✔ | ✔ |
Mobile experiments Run A/B tests on Android and iOS apps | ✔ | ✔ |
Custom goals Customize metrics that a test tracks | ✔ | ✔ |
Secondary metrics Monitor impact on unrelated metrics | ✔ | ✔ |
Split testing Split participants into groups | ✔ | ✔ |
Multivariate (A/B/n) testing Test multiple variants of a change | ✔ | ✔ |
Statistical significance Automatically checks for statistical significance | ✔ | ✔ |
Holdout testing Withhold multiple features to measure cumulative impact | ✔ | ✔ |
Statistics engine How the results of an experiment are calculated | Bayesian or Sequential | Sequential |
Amplitude's Web Experiments feature isn't available on any self-serve plan and the price isn't disclosed. You must contact its sales team to use it.
Session replay
Both PostHog and Amplitude offer session replay, but PostHog offers more features that are useful for developers, like console logs, DOM explorer, and performance monitoring.
| PostHog | Amplitude | |
Free usage How much free usage do you get each month? | 5,000 recordings | 1,000 recordings |
Web app recordings Capture recordings from single-page apps | ✔ | ✔ |
Mobile app recordings Capture recordings in iOS and Android apps | ✔ | ✔ |
Heatmaps Visualize where users click in your app or website | ✔ | ✔ |
Identity detection Link recordings to user IDs | ✔ | ✔ |
Console logs Capture extra content from a user's browser | ✔ | ✖ |
Playlists Sort recordings into static and dynamic playlists | ✔ | ✖ |
Performance monitoring Track network events within a session | ✔ | ✖ |
Privacy masking Censor personal information from playback | ✔ | ✔ |
Conditional recording Only capture the sessions you want | ✔ | ✖ |
DOM explorer Explore an interactive snapshot of replays | ✔ | ✖ |
Export recordings Save important recordings offline | ✔ | ✖ |
Sample recorded sessions Restrict the percentage of sessions that will be recorded | ✔ | ✖ |
Record via feature flag Only record sessions for users that have the flag enabled | ✔ | ✖ |
Replays let you watch how users experience your app, diagnose issues, improve support, and understand real user behavior in a way raw data can't. They are reconstructions of the session, not video recordings of user's screen. Private info, such as passwords, are masked.
Surveys
PostHog includes surveys out of the box, with 1,500 free responses per month and support for multiple formats like NPS, PMF, open text, and ratings, plus customization and targeting options. Amplitude provides surveys through its Guides & Surveys paid add-on.
| PostHog | Amplitude | |
Free usage How much free usage do you get each month? | 1500 | n/a |
Open text Free text answers and feedback | ✔ | ✔ |
Product rating Rank using emojis or number | ✔ | ✔ |
Single choice Select one answer from multiple | ✔ | ✔ |
Multiple choice Select more than one answer from multiple | ✔ | ✔ |
NPS surveys Net Promoter Score survey template | ✔ | ✔ |
PMF surveys Product-market fit survey template | ✔ | ✖ |
User property targeting Target users based on any of their user properties | ✔ | ✔ |
Custom colors & positioning Customize the colors of your surveys to match your brand | ✔ | ✔ |
Custom HTML Add custom HTML to your survey text | ✔ | ✔ |
API mode Create surveys via the API | ✔ | ✖ |
Survey templates make it easy to run NPS, product-market-fit (PMF), and customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys in just a few clicks. Read our guide comparing NPS, CSAT and CES to for more on how to use surveys.
Price comparison
PostHog pricing philosophy
PostHog charges based on usage. Each product (analytics, session replay, feature flags, etc.) comes with a generous free tier, and once you exceed those limits you pay only for what you use.
Pricing is fully transparent and published publicly, with per-unit rates you can calculate in advance. You can also set billing caps per product to avoid unexpected costs.
This usage-based approach means costs scale with your actual activity, whether that's events, surveys, or recordings, rather than the number of users in your product. It also means you can easily reduce your bill by changing how you track users to send fewer events, or record fewer sessions.
Amplitude pricing philosophy
Amplitude charges based on Monthly Tracked Users (MTUs). Each tracked user is counted once per month, regardless of how many events they generate. Plans scale as your MTUs grow, with higher tiers unlocking more advanced analytics, experimentation, and enterprise features.
This model can be easier to predict if you run a large product with millions of users, but it's less flexible because there's no way to reduce how much you spend. Every user is counted equally regardless of how valuable they are to you.
If you have 50,000 users who generate just a handful of events each month, usage-based pricing may be much lower than an MTU-based system, since your bill only scales with events sent. On the other hand, if those same users generate millions of events each, your costs will rise faster with an event-based model, while an MTU plan stays more predictable regardless of event volume.
Integrations
| PostHog | Amplitude | |
Imports Import data from data warehouses and other sources | ✔ | ✔ |
Exports Export data to data warehouses other destinations | ✔ | ✔ |
Segment Send events via Segment | ✔ | ✔ |
Zapier Trigger Zapier automations | ✔ | ✖ |
Sentry Connect to Sentry data | ✔ | ✖ |
Zendesk Two-way integration for customer support | ✔ | ✖ |
Slack Alerts for Slack | ✔ | ✔ |
Microsoft Teams Alerts for Microsoft Teams | ✔ | ✔ |
Community integrations Build your own integration | ✔ | ✖ |
Google Ads Import ROI data from Google Ads | ✔ | ✔ |
This is just a small sample of available integrations. See our data pipeline docs for a full list of destinations, and our data warehouse docs for a complete list of sources.
Security and compliance
| PostHog | Amplitude | |
User privacy options Anonymize users, drop personal data | ✔ | ✔ |
History, audit logs Manage and view flag edits and related users | ✔ | ✔ |
GDPR-ready Can be compliant with GDPR | ✔ | ✔ |
HIPAA-ready Can be compliant with HIPAA | ✔ | ✔ |
SOC 2 Type II SOC 2 security certification | ✔ | ✔ |
2FA Enforce login with two-factor authentication | ✔ | ✔ |
SAML/SSO Use SAML or single sign-on authentication | Enterprise | Enterprise |
We offer a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) for any customer on our platform packages, which also includes priority support, SSO enforcement, and additional collaboration features.
FAQ
Does PostHog offer a free trial?
We don't need to. Every customer gets a generous free usage allowance each month, so you can sign up and start using PostHog for nothing.
Can PostHog replace Google Analytics?
Yes. PostHog can replace Google Analytics for many use cases – our marketing team uses PostHog, for example. You can integrate PostHog into your website using Google Tag Manager and find an easy-to-use web analytics dashboard in-app. See our comparison of PostHog and Google Analytics 4 and an intro to PostHog for Google Analytics users for more.
Is PostHog easy to deploy?
Yes. Just paste our web snippet within the <head> tags your product or website and you're good to go in just a few minutes. This works for apps, blogs, scripts, no-code site builders, and more. See our installation documentation for more options. We support dozens of client-side and server-side SDKs.
How can I estimate my usage?
The easiest way is to sign up to PostHog, integrate our snippet, then check the projection on your billing page after a few days. Alternatively, you can guesstimate by multiplying your current monthly active users by an estimate of events generated per user – 50 to 100 per user is a good starting point. See Estimating usage & costs in our docs for more.
Does PostHog block bots by default?
Yes. See the full blocklist in our docs. You need to manually enable bot blocking in Amplitude. This means event and DAU counts can look higher in Amplitude than PostHog.
Can I use PostHog with a CDP? (Segment, Rudderstack, etc.)
Yes. See Using PostHog with a CDP in our docs.
How does PostHog compare to other Amplitude alternatives?
Still need some convincing? See our guide to the most popular Amplitude alternatives.
Questions? Ask Max AI.
It's easier than reading through 843 pages of documentation