PostHog
1M analytics events free / month
PostHog also lists separate monthly free allowances of 5,000 recordings and 1 million feature-flag requests. Paid usage is metered by product.[8]
PostHog vs Google Analytics.
Product behavior, marketing performance, or both? Compare the features and limits that matter for your team.
Start with PostHog when your main job is improving activation and investigating what happens inside your product. Start with GA4 when acquisition, campaign reporting, and Google Ads are central to your work. Both support event analysis and funnels; some teams have a reason to keep both.
Compare the essentials.
This compares the hosted PostHog service with Google Analytics 4, including its free Standard edition.
| What matters | PostHog | Google Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Reporting | Trends, funnels, retention, user paths, and SQL insights.[1] | Website and app reporting, attribution, and Explorations for deeper analysis.[2][3] |
| Automatic events | Autocapture for interactions such as clicks, pageviews, and form submissions.[4] | Enhanced measurement for pageviews, scrolls, outbound clicks, and other supported interactions.[5] |
| Funnels & journeys | Conversion funnels with breakdowns and the ability to inspect users who complete or drop out.[6] | Funnel and path explorations, plus cohort and user exploration techniques.[3] |
| Advertising | Useful for following acquisition into product behavior. Evaluate your advertising workflow separately.[4] | Linked Google Ads accounts can share audiences and import conversions based on Analytics key events.[7] |
| Experiments | Feature flags and experimentation are part of the platform, with usage billed separately from analytics.[8] | Testing uses other tools and integrations. Google Optimize was discontinued in September 2023.[9] |
| SQL access | Run SQL insights within the analytics workspace.[1] | Export raw events to BigQuery for SQL. Standard daily batch exports have a 1 million events/day limit.[10] |
| History limits | One year of event retention on Free; seven years on pay-as-you-go.[8] | Standard offers 2 or 14 months for event-level exploration data. This is not the retention limit for standard aggregated reports.[11] |
Automatic collection still needs configuration. Define important business events explicitly, then validate identity, consent behavior, and event properties before trusting a conversion report.
What will it cost?
Start with the allowance, then estimate your full monthly usage.
Google Analytics
Free Standard edition
Google Analytics Standard has no subscription fee. Budget separately for implementation and any BigQuery storage or processing beyond its free allowances.[2][10]
PostHog’s monthly event allowance concerns billing. GA4’s daily BigQuery batch-export limit concerns an export method. They are different limits.[8][10]
Where the choice gets practical.
What happens after someone signs up?
For a journey such as signup → first project → invite → return, PostHog brings funnels, retention, and session replay into the same product analytics workflow. You can investigate a drop-off, then use recordings to look for an explanation. That makes it a useful starting point for teams shipping changes to an app.[4][6]
GA4 can answer product questions too. Its Explorations include funnels, paths, and cohorts. Test the report you actually need before deciding that a separate platform is necessary; the distinction is the investigation workflow, not whether funnels exist.[3]
Which campaigns bring valuable users?
GA4’s connection to Google Ads matters when your analytics data also feeds campaign measurement or remarketing audiences. Check conversion imports and audience dependencies before removing a property or its tracking. A product analytics migration should not accidentally interrupt an advertising workflow.[7]
Using both can be sensible: keep marketing reporting in GA4 and investigate activation in PostHog. Give both tools the same definitions for key business events, but allow for differences in identity, consent, attribution, and session logic when reconciling the numbers.
Where will you query older event data?
PostHog includes SQL as an insight type. GA4’s raw-event SQL route is BigQuery Export, which adds a separate data workflow and potentially a separate bill. Choose based on who will write and maintain the queries, and where your other business data already lives.[1][10]
Set GA4’s event retention deliberately before building a long-running analysis. The 2- or 14-month Standard setting affects event-level exploration data; it does not mean all of your aggregated historical reports disappear after 14 months. Larger properties have additional retention restrictions.[11]
Try it with your own data.
Use the same journey and the same business question to evaluate both. A small working report is more useful than a feature checklist alone.
- 1
Start with the decision
Pick one question: which campaign attracts customers, or where do new users abandon setup? Include the person who will act on the answer.
- 2
Track one complete journey
Agree on event names, timestamps, user identity, and conversion windows. Check anonymous visitors and signed-in users rather than testing only your own account.
- 3
Choose a reporting owner
Decide which tool owns campaign reporting and which owns product reporting. Document any expected differences before sharing dashboards with the team.
Connect Google Analytics, Plausible, Fathom, or PostHog. Available metrics and required API access depend on your source and plan. Explore connections ↗
A few common questions.
Can PostHog replace Google Analytics?
Can I use PostHog and Google Analytics together?
Yes. A practical split is campaign reporting in GA4 and product investigation in PostHog. Configure each intentionally, respect your consent setup, and document event definitions. Do not expect every user or session count to match exactly.
Does GA4 have funnel analysis?
Yes. Funnel exploration is one of GA4’s Exploration techniques, alongside path and cohort exploration. The useful comparison is how each tool supports your team’s analysis, not whether GA4 has funnels at all.[3]
Sources & review notes
Reviewed October 1, 2026 against the official documentation below. Plan details describe the hosted services at the time of review and can change. Recommendations are editorial assessments of documented capabilities; we have not run a performance benchmark.
This guide is published by TinyKPI. Our app is a companion for checking selected business metrics on your Mac; the comparison above covers the platforms that collect and analyze the data.