In-depth: PostHog vs Google Analytics 4
Jan 10, 2024
On this page
- How is PostHog different to Google Analytics?
- 1. PostHog does more than analytics
- 2. PostHog is built for engineers
- 3. PostHog is open source and transparent
- Comparing PostHog and Google Analytics
- Analytics
- Integrations
- Security and compliance
- Frequently asked questions
- Does PostHog have reports, dimensions, and other GA4 features?
- How much do PostHog and Google Analytics cost?
- Does PostHog offer a free trial?
- Does PostHog block bots by default?
- What about ad blockers?
- Are there discounts for nonprofits and startups?
Want to know how PostHog and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) compare? If you remember nothing else, remember these two things:
Google Analytics is designed for marketers who want to analyze landing pages, compare marketing channels, and return on ad spend.
PostHog is an all-in-one platform built to help engineers understand users and create better products. It includes analytics and a whole bunch more.
How is PostHog different to Google Analytics?
1. PostHog does more than analytics
Analytics is a core part of our platform, but it's just one component in a set of important tools for product teams. PostHog enables you to collect feedback with surveys, understand user behavior with session replays, test changes with A/B tests, and deploy changes with feature flags.
2. PostHog is built for engineers
We support all popular (and some unpopular) SDKs, have extensively documented APIs, and a powerful SQL query builder, so you can analyze data how you want. We make it easy to test in production, conduct phased rollouts, run beta programs, and so much more.
3. PostHog is open source and transparent
PostHog is built with transparency at its core. We work in the open and give full access to our source code, and enable you to build integrations and other services on top of the product. You can even give feedback on our public roadmap.
Comparing PostHog and Google Analytics
PostHog offers a wider selection of features than GA4, which focuses solely on analytics. This makes PostHog better suited for teams who are building products.
| PostHog | Google Analytics | |
Analytics Track events and conversion, analyze user behavior | ✔ | ✔ |
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 | ✔ | ✖ |
Customer data platform Sync data with third-party tools | Beta | ✖ |
Data warehouse A single source for all your important data | Beta | ✖ |
Heatmaps Visualize where users click in your app or website | ✔ | ✖ |
Notebooks Ad-hoc analysis and collaboration | ✔ | ✖ |
Open source Build your own apps and contribute code | ✔ | ✖ |
Dark mode Choose between light and dark UI | ✔ | ✖ |
Analytics
Both GA4 and PostHog offer analytics, but what they offer is drastically different:
Google Analytics makes it easier to calculate monetization and ROI on Google Ads and other marketing campaigns.
PostHog focuses makes it easier to understand how people use web and mobile apps. The biggest difference is group analytics, which enable you to track metrics at an account or company level – a feature which GA4 lacks. This makes PostHog especially useful for building B2B SaaS products.
| PostHog | Google Analytics | |
Group analytics Track metrics at account or company level | ✔ | ✖ |
Traffic breakdown Gain insights into where your visitors and conversions are coming from | ✔ | ✔ |
User profiles View user demographic data such as country, language, and device type | ✔ | ✔ |
UTM tracking Track marketing campaigns with UTM tags | ✔ | ✔ |
Funnels Visualize conversion rates and drop-offs | ✔ | ✔ |
User paths Track user flows and where they drop-off | ✔ | ✔ |
Retention Analyze user and revenue retention | ✔ | ✔ |
Monetization analytics Track purchase value, LTV, and other revenue metrics | ✖ | ✔ |
Advertising analytics Track ROI on Google Ads and other marketing campaigns | ✖ | ✔ |
Real-time reporting Monitor activity on your site or app as it happens. | ✖ | ✔ |
Predictive insights AI-powered alerts when metrics change | ✖ | ✔ |
PostHog also offers the following features to help you understand how people are using your product:
| PostHog | Google Analytics | |
Correlation analysis Automatically highlight factors affecting funnel conversion rates | ✔ | ✖ |
Lifecycle insights Break down events from new, returning, resurrecting, and dormant users | ✔ | ✖ |
Stickiness insights See how many times users perform an event in a period of time | ✔ | ✖ |
Formulas Use custom formulas to create unique insights | ✔ | ✖ |
SQL access Write your own queries in SQL | ✔ | ✖ |
Toolbar View insights on your live website or app with an overlay | ✔ | ✖ |
Integrations
Because PostHog is built to be your single source of truth for viewing data, it's very simple to import data from other sources.
In contrast, it's hard to import data into GA4 because:
- The data type and format you're allowed to import into GA4 is restrictive.
- You either need to constantly upload CSV files manually, or set up an SFTP server to automatically do this for you.
However, Google Analytics is well integrated into the Google ecosystem, making it easy to transfer data between it and other Google products.
Below is a comparison of some of the most popular apps. For a full list of PostHog’s available integrations, check our app directory.
| PostHog | Google Analytics | |
Zapier Trigger Zaps with events | ✔ | ✔ |
Hubspot Sync event and person data | ✔ | ✖ |
Salesforce Sync event and person data | ✔ | ✖ |
Intercom Extract and load data to external platforms | ✔ | ✖ |
Customer.io Sync data between platforms | ✔ | ✖ |
Sentry Ingest Sentry errors for analysis | ✔ | ✖ |
Google Ads Track Google ad ROI | ✖ | ✔ |
Google Search Console Seamlessly import data from your search console | ✖ | ✔ |
Google BigQuery Automatically export data to BigQuery | ✔ | ✔ |
Google Looker Studio Visualize events in Looker dashboards | ✖ | ✔ |
One unique advantage of PostHog is that, because it is open source, it’s easy to create your own apps and integrations. This is useful if you’re, for example, using niche software in your stack that hasn’t been widely adopted, or if you require a direct integration between PostHog and your product.
Security and compliance
PostHog makes GDPR compliance easy by letting you choose where your data is hosted: EU or US. PostHog also offers cookie-less tracking, and a variety of security options to keep your data secure. Google also offers various privacy controls, but you can't choose where your data is stored.
| PostHog | Google Analytics | |
EU hosting available | ✔ | ✖ |
HIPAA | ✔ | ✖ |
Data anonymization | ✔ | ✔ |
Cookie-less tracking option | ✔ | ✔ |
Security certification | SOC 2 | ISO 27001 |
Role-based access control | Feature flags only | ✔ |
SAML/SSO available | ✔ | ✔ |
2FA available | ✔ | ✔ |
Frequently asked questions
Does PostHog have reports, dimensions, and other GA4 features?
Yes, PostHog has much of the same functionality as Google Analytics, but much of it is named differently. Here’s a quick comparison of the two:
| GA name | PostHog equivalent | |
| Report | Insight | Query and filter analytics data and visualize results. Types include trends, funnels, retention, and more. |
| Dimensions | Properties | Additional details added to events, persons, and groups such as location, browser, and status. |
| View | Dashboard | A collection of insights displayed together. |
| Audience | Persons | Represents a user or set of users who create events, potentially filtered by properties or behaviors. |
| Segment | Filter | A way to create a subset of your data. |
| Goals and conversions | Actions | An event or collection of events representing a target behavior. |
| Client ID | Distinct ID | A unique identifier for a user. |
| Measurement ID | Project API key | The unique identifier for your project, used to send data to your PostHog instance. |
Familiar with Google Analytics and want more information on how to use PostHog? We've written a guide to PostHog for Google Analytics users.
How much do PostHog and Google Analytics cost?
GA4 has a free tier which should be sufficient for most startups and scale-ups. Larger enterprises with higher data collection and export requirements will need to upgrade to GA360, which starts at $50,000 per year.
A good rule of thumb is that if you're exporting more than 1 million events per day, or querying data with more than 10 million events, you'll need to upgrade to GA360 (see a full breakdown on their website).
PostHog has transparent pricing based on the usage. It’s free to get started and completely free for the first 1 million analytics events. After this free monthly allowance, you'll pay $0.00031/event, and PostHog charges progressively less the more you use. We recommend trying our pricing calculator and reading our guide for estimating your usage.
Does PostHog offer a free trial?
With PostHog, you don’t need a free trial — it’s free to get started, with a generous monthly allowance of events, replays, and feature flag requests. If you’re within this allowance, PostHog is free to use forever.
Does PostHog block bots by default?
Yes. See the full blocklist in our docs.
What about ad blockers?
We recommend all users deploy a reverse proxy, which enables you send events to PostHog Cloud using your own domain. Events sent from your own domain and are less likely to be intercepted by tracking blockers, ensuring you capture the best data possible. We have reverse proxy setup guides for AWS Cloudfront, Caddy, Cloudflare, Netlify, Vercel, and more, in our docs.
Are there discounts for nonprofits and startups?
Yes, PostHog offers both. Nonprofit organizations can contact our team and are usually eligible for a 50% discount, while startups can sign up for $50,000 of free credit (and a host of other perks) in the PostHog for Startups program.
Ready to find out more?