# PostHog vs Heap in-depth tool comparison - [ ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/c_scale,w_50/andy_86a7232754) Andy Vandervell](/community/profiles/30208.md) - [ ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/c_scale,w_50/Natalia_s_Portrait_1_fd2c5fe102) Natalia Amorim](/community/profiles/35321.md) Feb 04, 2026 - [Comparisons](/blog/comparisons.md) [Heap](/blog/best-heap-alternatives.md) is a product analytics platform known for its comprehensive autocapture – it starts collecting clicks, pageviews, and form submissions the moment you install it, no manual instrumentation required. PostHog [also supports autocapture](/docs/product-analytics/autocapture.md), but goes much further – combining [product analytics](/product-analytics.md) with [session replay](/session-replay.md), [A/B testing](/experiments.md), [feature flags](/feature-flags.md), [surveys](/surveys.md), [error tracking](/error-tracking.md), and more in one developer platform. In this guide, we break down how PostHog and Heap compare across analytics, session replay, experimentation, pricing, and compliance – so you can decide which is the better fit for your team. ## How is PostHog different? ### 1\. We're built for engineers What does this mean? - It means [we ship fast](/changelog.md) and iterate based on user feedback. - It means engineers do support – all product teams have a [weekly support hero](/handbook/engineering/support-hero.md). - It means we have extensive [public and private API endpoints](/docs/api.md), and a powerful [SQL query builder](/docs/product-analytics/sql.md). - It means we built [SDKs](/docs/libraries.md) for all popular (and many unpopular) client-side, backend, and mobile languages and frameworks. - It means we make it easy to [test in production](/product-engineers/testing-in-production.md), conduct [phased rollouts](/tutorials/phased-rollout.md), run [beta programs](/tutorials/public-beta-program.md), and so much more. ### 2\. We're an all-in-one platform Heap is mainly focused on product analytics. This means you need to adopt additional tools for things like feature management, experiments, and surveys. They're all built into PostHog – we even have a [built-in data warehouse](/data-stack.md) that [integrates with Stripe](/tutorials/stripe-reports.md) and [Hubspot](/tutorials/hubspot-reports.md). You can replace half a dozen tools with PostHog, save money, and get more from your data. ### 3\. We're totally transparent - How much will PostHog cost? Use our [pricing calculator](/pricing.md). - What are we working on? It's on our [public roadmap](/roadmap.md)? - How does sales work? We have a [whole page on it](/sales.md). - What do we care about? We explain everything in our [public company handbook](/handbook.md). - How do we make money? That's [in the handbook](/handbook/how-we-make-money.md), too. Oh, we're open source, too. Go take a peak at our code if you like on [our GitHub repo](https://github.com/PostHog). ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/texture_tan_9608fcca70) ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/texture_tan_dark_a92b0e022d) Install PostHog with one command Paste this into your terminal and make AI do all the work. `npx @posthog/wizard` [Learn more](/wizard.md) ![PostHog Wizard hedgehog](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/wizard_3f8bb7a240.png) ## Comparing PostHog and Heap ### Platform Heap [**Product Analytics**](/product-analytics.md) Track usage, retention, and feature adoption with comprehensive analytics ✓ ✓ [**Web Analytics**](/web-analytics.md) Privacy-focused web analytics with real-time data and no sampling ✓ ✓ [**Session Replay**](/session-replay.md) Watch real user sessions to understand behavior and fix issues ✓ Pro/Premier Add-on [**Feature Flags**](/feature-flags.md) Control feature access with precision and safely roll out changes ✓ ✗ [**Experiments**](/experiments.md) Run statistically rigorous A/B/n tests and validate ideas with confidence ✓ ✗ [**Surveys**](/surveys.md) Collect product feedback with no-code surveys and customizable targeting ✓ ✗ [**CDP**](/cdp.md) Ingest, transform, and send data between 145+ tools ✓ ✗ [**Data Stack**](/data-stack.md) Import, query, model & visualize product and third party data together ✓ ✗ [**Heatmaps**](/session-replay/heatmaps.md) Visualize where users click and scroll on your website ✓ ✓ [**Error tracking**](/error-tracking.md) Track and monitor errors and exceptions in your code ✓ ✗ **Open source** Audit code, contribute to roadmap, and build integrations ✓ ✗ > 💡 **Good to know:** PostHog can replace multiple tools, such as [Hotjar](/blog/posthog-vs-hotjar.md), [Google Analytics](/blog/posthog-vs-ga4.md), and [LaunchDarkly](/blog/posthog-vs-launchdarkly.md). This makes it a lot easier to extract usable insights, since you don't have to constantly switch between tools. Running PostHog on both your product and website makes it easier to understand how marketing activity influences signups and usage, too. ### Product analytics Heap **Monthly free tier** 1 million events 10k monthly sessions **Autocapture** Capture events without manual tracking ✓ ✓ **SQL query editor** Write SQL queries directly against your data without a separate data warehouse ✓ ✗ **AI insight builder** "Talk to your data" using AI ✓ ✓ [**Group analytics**](/profiles.md) Track metrics at a company and account level ✓ ✓ [**Dashboards**](/dashboards.md) Combine insights into shareable dashboards ✓ ✓ [**Graphs & trends**](/trends.md) Build custom insights and visualizations ✓ ✓ [**Funnels**](/funnels.md) Track users through a sequence of events to find drop-off and improve conversion ✓ ✓ [**Retention**](/retention.md) Track user retention over time to understand how long users stay with your product ✓ ✓ [**User paths**](/user-paths.md) Understand how users navigate through your product and where they get stuck ✓ ✓ **Cohorts** Create cohorts of users to analyze and compare ✓ ✓ [**Lifecycle**](/lifecycle.md) Track user lifecycle to understand how users interact with your product ✓ ✓ [**Stickiness**](/stickiness.md) Track user stickiness over time to understand how long users stay with your product ✓ ✓ > 💡 **Good to know:** Every PostHog user gets [1 million events for free](/pricing.md) each month. You can also save money by sending us anonymous events for non-identified users, which are up to 80% cheaper than identified product analytics events. Anonymous events are ideal for tracking behavior on marketing websites, or mobile apps with large consumer audiences. See our docs on [anonymous vs identified events](/docs/data/anonymous-vs-identified-events.md) for more. ### Session recordings Heap **Monthly free tier** 5,000 web recordings, 2,500 mobile recordings ✗ **Web app recordings** Capture recordings from single-page apps and websites ✓ ✓ **Mobile app recordings** Capture recordings in iOS and Android apps ✓ ✓ **Identity detection** Identify users in recordings for debugging and support ✓ ✓ **Console logs** Capture console output from the browser for debugging ✓ ✗ **Playlists** Sort recordings into static and dynamic playlists ✓ ✗ **Performance monitoring** Track network events and performance metrics within a session ✓ ✗ **Privacy masking for sensitive content** Automatic and manual masking of sensitive user data ✓ ✓ **conditional\_recording** ✓ ✓ **Network monitoring** Monitor network activity during sessions ✓ ✗ **DOM explorer** Explore an interactive snapshot of replays ✓ ✗ **Export recordings to JSON** Export important recording data for offline storage ✓ ✗ **Export recordings to video** Export session recordings as video files Beta ✗ **Minimum duration** Only record sessions longer than a specified duration ✓ ✗ **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 ✓ ✗ > 💡 **Good to know:** Session replays are an essential tool for understanding how people use your product, especially for [early-stage companies](/blog/early-stage-analytics.md) searching for [product-market fit](/founders/product-market-fit-game.md). Both Heap and PostHog offer session replay, though Heap lacks many developer-facing features like a DOM explorer, performance monitoring, and network events, which are useful for fixing bugs and performance issues. ### Feature flags Heap **Monthly free tier** 1 million API requests n/a **Boolean flags** Simple on/off flags to enable or disable features ✓ ✗ **Multivariate flags** Test multiple variants of a feature in a single flag ✓ ✗ **Payloads** Pass structured data (strings, numbers, or JSON objects) to variants for dynamic configuration without code changes ✓ ✗ **Local evaluation** Cache flag values for faster evaluation and reduced API calls ✓ ✗ **Percentage-based rollouts** Roll out features gradually to a percentage of users ✓ ✗ **Custom targeting** Target features based on user properties and attributes ✓ ✗ **Multi-environment support** Use the same flag key across PostHog projects for local development or staging Partial ✗ **Flag scheduling** Schedule flags to turn on or off automatically at specified times ✓ ✗ **Bootstrapping** Make flags available immediately on page load without waiting for API response ✓ ✗ **Early access feature opt-in widget** Allow users to opt in or out of specified features with a built-in widget or custom UI ✓ ✗ > 💡 **Good to know:** Feature flags make it easy to roll out features to specific users or groups, and [safely test in production](/product-engineers/testing-in-production.md). Our feature flags are also 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](/product-engineers/feature-flag-benefits-use-cases.md) for more. ### Experiments Heap **Monthly free tier** 1 million API requests n/a **Custom goals** Define your own goals and metrics to track ✓ ✗ **Secondary metrics** Monitor impact on unrelated metrics ✓ ✗ **Split testing** Split participants into groups ✓ ✗ **Multivariate (A/B/n) testing** Test multiple variables simultaneously to find optimal combinations ✓ ✗ **Statistical significance** Automatic calculation of statistical significance with configurable confidence levels ✓ ✗ **Recommended run time** Automatically calculate the recommended run time and sample size ✓ ✗ **Holdout testing** Reserve a group of users who do not see any changes, so you can measure long-term impact against a true baseline ✓ n/a **Statistics engine** How the results of an experiment are calculated Bayesian or Frequentist n/a > 💡 **Good to know:** Our [experiments](/docs/experiments.md) integrate seamlessly with our [feature flag product](/docs/feature-flags.md). This means you can easily deploy the winning variant of an experiment with a single click from the experiment UI. ### Security and compliance Heap **User privacy options** Anonymize users, drop personal data ✓ ✓ **History and audit logs** Manage and view edits and related users Scale ✓ **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 Scale ✓ > 💡**Good to know:** Additional compliance features, such as HIPAA Business Associate Agreements, advanced permissions, and audit logs are available on some of our [platform packages](/platform-packages.md), which also includes white labelling for surveys and shared dashboards. ## When to choose PostHog vs Heap Choosing the right product analytics tool depends on what your team needs beyond basic analytics. Here's a quick guide: - Want to understand user behavior, debug issues, and ship experiments – all without switching tools? Go with **PostHog**. - Need comprehensive autocapture with minimal engineering effort and a simple, low-density UI? **Heap** is a solid choice. ### Recommendations by team type **For engineering-led product teams** - **PostHog** – SQL access, public [APIs](/docs/api.md), [SDKs](/docs/libraries.md) for every major platform, and tight integration between analytics, feature flags, and experiments, error tracking, logs, AI Observability, and more. Built by engineers, for engineers. **For non-technical product managers** - **Heap** – Autocapture and a visual event editor mean you can define and track events without writing code. The low-density interface is designed for PMs who want insights without complexity. **For growth and experimentation teams** - **PostHog** – Run A/B tests, roll out features incrementally with feature flags, and measure impact on conversion and retention – all in one workflow. **For marketing and CRO teams** - **Heap** – Multi-touch attribution and analysis suggestions help surface friction points and optimize conversion funnels. Its Contentsquare integration adds deeper ecommerce and marketing analytics. **For teams building AI products** - **PostHog** – Native [LLM observability](/llm-analytics.md) for tracking model performance, token costs, and user interactions. Heap doesn't offer AI observability. **For privacy-conscious and regulated organizations** - Both are SOC 2 certified and GDPR-ready. PostHog is also HIPAA-ready, offers EU hosting, and provides raw data access via its built-in [data warehouse](/data-warehouse.md). Heap does not currently offer EU data residency. **For early-stage startups** - **PostHog** – One platform that scales from first users to product-market fit without swapping tools as you grow. The [generous free tier](/pricing.md) includes 1 million events, 5,000 replays, and 1 million feature flag requests per month. [Startups can also qualify for $50k in free credits](/startups.md). ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/texture_tan_9608fcca70) ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/texture_tan_dark_a92b0e022d) Install PostHog with one command Paste this into your terminal and make AI do all the work. `npx @posthog/wizard` [Learn more](/wizard.md) ![PostHog Wizard hedgehog](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/wizard_3f8bb7a240.png) ## Frequently asked questions What's the main difference between PostHog and Heap? **PostHog** is an all-in-one platform that combines [product analytics](/product-analytics.md), [session replay](/session-replay.md), [feature flags](/feature-flags.md), [A/B testing](/experiments.md), [surveys](/surveys.md), [error tracking](/error-tracking.md), [LLM observability](/llm-analytics.md), and more in one environment. **Heap** focuses on product analytics and session replay, with autocapture as its core differentiator. If you need more than analytics and replay, PostHog means fewer tools and less context-switching. Both have autocapture – what's the difference? Both **PostHog** and **Heap** automatically capture clicks, pageviews, and form submissions. The key difference is that Heap's visual event editor lets non-technical users tag and define events retroactively without code. PostHog's autocapture works similarly but is designed more for engineering teams, with tighter integration into feature flags, experiments, and session replays. Can I migrate from Heap to PostHog? Yes. See the [Heap to PostHog migration guide](/docs/migrate/heap.md) for step-by-step instructions on exporting your Heap data and importing it into PostHog, including historical events and user properties. How long does it take to deploy PostHog? Minutes. Use the [onboarding wizard](/wizard.md) to connect your app, or just [add the tracking snippet](/docs/getting-started/install.md) directly and autocapture starts collecting events immediately. Enable session replays, feature flags, and other features from your project settings. Does Heap have feature flags or A/B testing? No. **Heap** doesn't offer native feature flags or experimentation. You'd need a separate tool like LaunchDarkly or Optimizely. PostHog includes both [feature flags](/feature-flags.md) and [A/B testing](/experiments.md) natively, tightly integrated with analytics so you can measure experiment impact on funnels, retention, and revenue. Does Heap have error tracking? No. **Heap** doesn't offer error tracking or crash monitoring. PostHog includes native [error tracking](/error-tracking.md) that connects exceptions and stack traces directly to session replays, user behavior, and feature flag changes. Which has better session replay? Both offer session replay, but **PostHog**'s is more developer-focused. It includes console logs, network request monitoring, a DOM explorer, and performance metrics. **Heap**'s replay is simpler and more suited to PMs who want to watch user sessions without the technical detail. What are the best product analytics tools in 2026? The top product analytics tools in 2026 include: - **[PostHog](/product-analytics.md)** – Best all-in-one platform combining product analytics with [web analytics](/web-analytics.md), [session replay](/session-replay.md), [A/B testing](/experiments.md), [feature flags](/feature-flags.md), and more - **[Heap](/blog/posthog-vs-heap.md)** – Best for teams wanting comprehensive autocapture with minimal engineering effort - **[Amplitude](/blog/posthog-vs-amplitude.md)** – Best for enterprises wanting warehouse-native analytics and a built-in CDP - **[Mixpanel](/blog/posthog-vs-mixpanel.md)** – Best for self-serve product teams wanting fast, flexible analytics - **[Pendo](/blog/posthog-vs-pendo.md)** – Best for product managers who also need in-app guides and user onboarding - **[Google Analytics](/blog/posthog-vs-ga4.md)** – Best for marketing teams already invested in the Google ecosystem Can PostHog replace Google Analytics? Yes. PostHog includes [web analytics](/web-analytics.md) for tracking pageviews, bounce rate, traffic sources, and UTM campaigns. You can integrate it using [Google Tag Manager](/docs/libraries/google-tag-manager.md). See the [PostHog vs GA4 comparison](/blog/posthog-vs-ga4.md) and [intro for Google Analytics users](/blog/google-analytics-to-posthog.md) for more. How can I estimate my PostHog usage? The easiest way is to [sign up](https://us.posthog.com/signup), integrate the snippet, then check the projection on your billing page after a few days. Alternatively, multiply your monthly active users by 50–100 events per user as a starting point. See [Estimating usage & costs](/docs/billing/estimating-usage-costs.md) for more detail. What about ad blockers? We recommend deploying a reverse proxy, which sends events to PostHog Cloud using your own domain. This makes them less likely to be intercepted by tracking blockers. We have [setup guides](/docs/advanced/proxy.md) for AWS CloudFront, Cloudflare, Netlify, Vercel, and more. Alternatively, you can use our free [managed reverse proxy](/docs/advanced/proxy/managed-reverse-proxy.md), Does PostHog offer EU hosting? Yes. **PostHog** offers EU-hosted cloud with data stored exclusively in the EU. PostHog is also SOC 2 certified, GDPR-ready, and HIPAA-ready. Can I use PostHog with a CDP like Segment or Rudderstack? Yes. PostHog integrates with both Segment and Rudderstack. See [Using PostHog with a CDP](/docs/advanced/cdp.md) for setup instructions. It also includes a [built-in CDP](/cdp.md) that lets you import, transform, and export data without needing a separate tool. See our docs on using [PostHog with a CDP](/docs/advanced/cdp.md) for setup instructions, or browse our comparison of the [best customer data platforms for developers](/blog/best-customer-data-platforms-for-developers.md) if you're evaluating options. Can you use PostHog on e-commerce websites? Absolutely. PostHog is easy to integrate with [Shopify](/docs/libraries/shopify.md) and [WooCommerce](/docs/libraries/woocommerce.md). You can easily install PostHog on other e-commerce platforms [using our Javascript snippet](/docs/integrate.md) – see our guides to [setting up Webflow analytics](/tutorials/webflow.md) and [Wordpress](/docs/libraries/wordpress.md). How does PostHog compare to Amplitude and Mixpanel? Amplitude and Mixpanel offer similar product analytics features to Heap. Read the [PostHog vs Mixpanel](/blog/posthog-vs-mixpanel.md) and [PostHog vs Amplitude](/blog/posthog-vs-amplitude.md) comparisons for details. You can also see the [most popular Heap alternatives](/blog/best-heap-alternatives.md) for a broader view. ![](https://res.cloudinary.com/dmukukwp6/image/upload/engineer_47d6638eae) Subscribe to our newsletter #### build mode Read by 75,000+ founders and builders Subscribe We'll share your email with Substack > PostHog is the leading platform for building self-driving products. With a full suite of developer tools – [AI observability](/ai-observability.md), [product analytics](/product-analytics.md), [session replay](/session-replay.md), [feature flags](/feature-flags.md), [experiments](/experiments.md), [error tracking](/error-tracking.md), [logs](/logs.md), and more – PostHog captures all the context agents need to diagnose problems, uncover opportunities, and ship fixes. A [data warehouse](/data-stack.md) and [CDP](/cdp.md) tie it all together, unifying that context into one source agents can read across. You can steer it all from [Slack](/slack.md), [the web app](/ai.md), the desktop ([PostHog Desktop](/desktop.md)), or your own editor via [the MCP](/mcp.md). ### Community questions Ask a question