# Live - Docs

The **Live** tab in [Web Analytics](/docs/web-analytics/dashboard.md) is a real-time view of what's happening on your site right now: how many users are active, what pages they're on, where they came from, and what they're doing. Live shows events as they arrive, while PostHog is still processing, enriching, and storing them.

> **Note:** Live is currently in alpha. Behavior and column layout may change before general availability.

## What it shows

Live is a continuously updating feed of recent events. Each row includes:

-   **Timestamp** – when the event was ingested
-   **Path** – the URL or pathname requested
-   **Referrer** and **UTM parameters** – where the visitor came from
-   **Country** and **device** – derived from the request

Use the filter controls at the top of the tab to narrow the feed by host, path, referrer, or any other property. Filters apply to the live stream so you can isolate exactly what you want to watch.

## When to use Live

Use Live when you're:

-   **Shipping a launch** – watch traffic land on a new page or product as you announce it on Hacker News, Product Hunt, or a launch email.
-   **Running a paid campaign** – see whether ad spend converts to real visits within minutes, not the next morning.
-   **Deploying frequently** – if you ship multiple times a day, Live helps you catch regressions before your users do.
-   **Watching active users** – see which pages signed-in users are on right now.
-   **Verifying an install** – drop the PostHog snippet onto a site, hit a few pages yourself, and confirm events arrive within seconds.

## Live vs. the rest of Web Analytics

Most analytics work splits into "right now" and "what happened". Live covers the first; the rest of [Web Analytics](/docs/web-analytics/dashboard.md) covers the second.

| Live | Web Analytics dashboard |
| --- | --- |
| Latency | Seconds | Query-time, cached |
| Time range | Last few minutes | Hours, days, months |
| Best for | Launches, campaigns, monitoring, debugging | Trend analysis, reports, retrospectives |
| Aggregations | Stream of individual events | Visitors, sessions, paths, sources |

For deeper analysis like funnels, retention, or breakdowns, use [Product Analytics](/docs/product-analytics.md) or the [SQL editor](/docs/sql.md).

## Limitations

-   **Recent traffic only** – Live shows events from roughly the last few minutes. For longer windows, use the main Web Analytics dashboard.
-   **Sampling** – high-volume sites may see the feed sampled to keep the stream readable. Aggregate dashboards are unaffected.
-   **No historical scroll** – Live is a stream, not a paginated table. Use the events explorer or SQL editor to look further back.

## Related

-   [Web Analytics dashboard](/docs/web-analytics/dashboard.md) – aggregated views over longer time ranges
-   [Troubleshooting](/docs/web-analytics/troubleshooting.md) – when events aren't showing up

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