In-depth: PostHog vs Amplitude

Jan 08, 2024

Want to know how PostHog and Amplitude compare? If you remember nothing else, remember these two things:

  1. Amplitude is a product analytics tool built for non-technical users and data analysts.

  2. PostHog is an all-in-one platform built for engineers that replaces Amplitude and numerous other tools.

How is PostHog different?

1. We're everything you need in one

PostHog replaces multiple tools in your data stack. You could run Amplitude for analytics, LaunchDarkly for feature flags and testing, Hotjar for session replays and surveys, or you could just use PostHog for everything. One platform, one bill, and seamless integration.

2. We're 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. We're open source and transparent

Our MIT License isn't just for show. You can read our source code, raise issues and PRs, and build your own integrations. Our company handbook is open to everyone, as is how we pay people, our strategy, and our product roadmap. Got a question about anything? Ask in our online community.

Comparing PostHog and Amplitude

Platform

Entering a credit card unlocks almost all PostHog features and you only pay for what you use. You get a generous free allowance every month and you can set billing limits to prevent surprise bills.

PostHogAmplitude

Product analytics

Track events and conversion, analyze user behavior

Web analytics

Easy to use analytics for marketing websites

Beta

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

User 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

Heatmaps

Visualize where users click in your app or website

Notebooks

Ad-hoc analysis and collaboration

Dark mode

Choose between light and dark UI

Open source

Build your own apps and contribute code

Product analytics

There are two key differences here:

  1. PostHog supports autocapture, which makes it much faster to implement if you don't want to manually instrument every event. Don't want autocapture? Just turn it off and use one of our SDKs – we offer the best of both worlds.

  2. PostHog has a SQL-based query builder for power users, which enables you to generate custom data analyses using PostHog event data. In future, our query builder will let you analyze data as you would in a business intelligence tool, like Metabase, inside PostHog.

PostHogAmplitude

Free usage

How much free usage do you get each month?

1 million events, unlimited insights100k monthly tracked users, 10 saved insights

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

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

Feature flags

Feature flags make it easy to roll out features to specific users or groups, and safely test in production. 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 for more.

PostHogAmplitude

Free usage

How much free usage do you get each month?

1 million API requests100k 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

Experimentation

PostHog's offers a generous free 1 million A/B testing events. Amplitude's A/B testing isn't available on any self-serve plan and the price isn't disclosed. You must contact its sales team to use it.

PostHogAmplitude

Free usage

How much free usage do you get each month?

1 million API requestsNone

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

Recommended run time

Calculates the recommended run time and sample size

Holdout testing

Withhold multiple features to measure cumulative impact

Partial

Statistics engine

How the results of an experiment are calculated

BayesianSequential

Session replay

Replays enable 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 not video recordings of users. We reconstruct sessions by capturing Document Object Model (DOM) mutations. You have complete control over what is captured and all private and personal data is masked.

PostHogAmplitude

Free usage

How much free usage do you get each month?

5,000 recordingsn/a

Web app recordings

Capture recordings from single-page apps

Mobile app recordings

Capture recordings in iOS and Android apps

Beta

Identity detection

Link recordings to user IDs

Console logs

Capture extra content from a users' browser environment

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

Minimum duration

Only record sessions longer than the minimum 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

Surveys

Surveys are great for tracking customer satisfaction scores like Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer satisfaction (CSAT), and customer effort score (CES). We include survey templates for all these and more helping you get started fast. Read our guide comparing NPS, CSAT and CES to see which one you should use and when.

PostHogAmplitude

Free usage

How much free usage do you get each month?

250n/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

Integrations

PostHog and Amplitude both offer a wide range of integrations, sources and destinations. PostHog offers more integrations with developer tools, such as Sentry, Zapier and Zendesk, while Amplitude has more integrations with marketing and advertising platforms. See our data pipeline docs for a full list of PostHog integrations.

PostHogAmplitude

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

Pricing

PostHog charges for actual usage – i.e. product analytics events, feature flag API requests, and so on. No credit card is required to signup and use PostHog, but entering a credit card unlocks almost all features and you'll pay nothing if you stay within our generous free tier limits:

Free usage per month
Product analytics1 million events
Session replay5,000 recordings
Feature flags1 million API requests
A/B testing1 million API requests
Surveys250 responses

Amplitude charges based on monthly tracked users (MTUs). The cost of add owns, such as A/B testing (not available on self-serve plans), group analytics, and unlimited cohorts (self-serve plans are limited to five) isn't disclosed.

Our free tiers are for life, which means you'll always get your first 1 million events (or 5,000 replays and so on) for free every month, no matter how many you end up using.

Amplitude offers a free Starter plan, but it lacks many important features:

PostHogAmplitude

Free usage

Free tier usage each month

1 million events50k tracked users

Unlimited

Active accounts

UsersUnlimited

Saved insights

Number of you charts you can create

Unlimited10 only

Custom events

Create custom tracking events

Formulas

Create custom insights using formulas

Feature flags

Release and control features

A/B testing

Run tests on users and groups

Billing limits

Set limits to avoid surprise bills

We charge progressively less per event, replay, API request the more you use – e.g. we charge $0.000100 per event up to 2 million events, but all events after 10 million a month only cost $0.000025, 75% less.

Eligible companies can also get $50,000 in credit in our PostHog for Startups program.

Security and compliance

PostHogAmplitude

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

SOC 2 security certification

2FA

Enforce login with two-factor authentication

SAML/SSO

Use SAML or single sign-on authentication

EnterpriseEnterprise

FAQ

Can PostHog also 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. 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.

Can I use PostHog with a CDP? (Segment, Rudderstack, etc.)

Yes. See Using PostHog with a CDP 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.

How does PostHog compare to other Amplitude alternatives?

Still need some convincing? See our guide to the most popular Amplitude alternatives.


Ready to find out more?