posthog

🦔 PostHog provides open-source product analytics, session recording, feature flagging and A/B testing that you can self-host.

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Quick Overview

PostHog is an open-source product analytics platform that helps teams understand user behavior and improve their products. It offers features like event tracking, funnel analysis, session recording, and feature flags, all while allowing companies to maintain control over their data by self-hosting the platform.

Pros

Self-hosted solution, providing full data ownership and privacy
Comprehensive feature set including analytics, session recording, and feature flags
Open-source with a strong community and regular updates
Flexible integration options with various frameworks and platforms

Cons

Requires more setup and maintenance compared to SaaS alternatives
May have higher infrastructure costs for large-scale deployments
Learning curve for teams new to product analytics
Some advanced features may require paid plans

Code Examples

Initializing PostHog in a React application:

import posthog from 'posthog-js'

posthog.init('<YOUR_PROJECT_API_KEY>', {
  api_host: 'https://app.posthog.com'
})

Tracking a custom event:

posthog.capture('button_clicked', {
  button_color: 'blue',
  button_text: 'Sign Up'
})

Identifying a user:

posthog.identify('user_id_123', {
  email: 'jane@example.com',
  name: 'Jane Doe'
})

Using feature flags:

posthog.isFeatureEnabled('new_feature', {
  send_event: true
}).then((enabled) => {
  if (enabled) {
    // Show new feature
  } else {
    // Show old feature
  }
})

Getting Started

To start using PostHog, follow these steps:

Sign up for a PostHog account or set up a self-hosted instance.
Install the PostHog library in your project:
```
npm install posthog-js
```

Initialize PostHog in your application:

import posthog from 'posthog-js'

posthog.init('<YOUR_PROJECT_API_KEY>', {
  api_host: 'https://app.posthog.com' // Use your self-hosted URL if applicable
})

Start tracking events and using PostHog features in your code.

For more detailed instructions and advanced usage, refer to the official PostHog documentation.

Competitor Comparisons

analytics

19,637

Simple, open source, lightweight (< 1 KB) and privacy-friendly web analytics alternative to Google Analytics.

Pros of Plausible

Lightweight and privacy-focused, with no cookies and GDPR compliance
Simple, clean interface with easy-to-understand metrics
Open-source and self-hostable with minimal resource requirements

Cons of Plausible

Limited feature set compared to PostHog's comprehensive toolkit
Less customizable and extensible for complex analytics needs
Fewer integrations with third-party tools and services

Code Comparison

PostHog (Python):

from posthog import Posthog

posthog = Posthog(project_api_key='your_api_key', host='https://app.posthog.com')
posthog.capture('user_id', 'event_name', {'property': 'value'})

Plausible (JavaScript):

plausible('event_name', {props: {property: 'value'}})

PostHog offers a more robust API with various client libraries, while Plausible focuses on simplicity with a straightforward JavaScript snippet. PostHog provides more granular control over event tracking and user properties, whereas Plausible emphasizes minimal code for basic event tracking.

matomo

19,603

Pros of Matomo

More established project with a longer history and larger user base
Offers both self-hosted and cloud-hosted options
Stronger focus on data privacy and GDPR compliance

Cons of Matomo

Less modern tech stack compared to PostHog
More limited event-based analytics capabilities
Slower development pace and fewer frequent updates

Code Comparison

Matomo (PHP):

$tracker = new MatomoTracker($idSite = 1, 'http://example.org/matomo/');
$tracker->doTrackPageView('Page Title');

PostHog (JavaScript):

posthog.capture('page_view', { page_title: 'Page Title' });

Both Matomo and PostHog are open-source analytics platforms, but they differ in their approach and target audience. Matomo (formerly Piwik) is a more traditional web analytics tool, similar to Google Analytics, while PostHog focuses on product analytics and offers features like session recording and feature flags.

PostHog uses a more modern tech stack (React, Django, ClickHouse) and has a stronger emphasis on developer-friendly features. It also provides a more comprehensive suite of product analytics tools out of the box.

Matomo, on the other hand, has a stronger focus on data privacy and compliance, making it a popular choice for organizations with strict data protection requirements. It also offers a wider range of plugins and integrations due to its longer presence in the market.

umami

21,874

Umami is a simple, fast, privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics.

Pros of umami

Lightweight and simple to set up, ideal for basic website analytics
Privacy-focused with no cookies and GDPR compliance
Free and open-source with a clean, minimalist interface

Cons of umami

Limited feature set compared to PostHog's comprehensive analytics suite
Lacks advanced user behavior tracking and product analytics capabilities
Smaller community and ecosystem for extensions and integrations

Code Comparison

umami (JavaScript):

export async function getWebsiteStats(...) {
  return runQuery(
    prisma.website.findUnique({
      where: { id },
      select: {
        pageviews: true,
        uniques: true,
        bounces: true,
        totaltime: true,
      },
    })
  );
}

PostHog (Python):

def get_event_count_for_team(team_id: int, event_name: str, ...) -> int:
    return EventDefinition.objects.filter(
        team_id=team_id,
        name=event_name,
        deleted=False,
    ).aggregate(Count("id"))["id__count"]

Both repositories offer web analytics solutions, but they cater to different needs. umami is more focused on simplicity and privacy, while PostHog provides a more comprehensive suite of product analytics tools. The code snippets demonstrate the different approaches: umami uses JavaScript and focuses on basic website stats, while PostHog uses Python and offers more complex event tracking capabilities.

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README

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Docs - Community - Roadmap - Changelog - Bug reports

See PostHog in action

PostHog is an all-in-one, open source platform for building better products

Specify events manually, or use autocapture to get started quickly
Analyze data with ready-made visualizations, or do it yourself with SQL
Only capture properties on the people you want to track, save money when you don't
Gather insights by capturing session replays, console logs, and network monitoring
Improve your product with Experiments that automatically analyze performance
Safely roll out features to select users or cohorts with feature flags
Send out fully customizable surveys to specific cohorts of users
Connect to external services and manage data flows with PostHog CDP

PostHog is available with hosting in the EU or US and is fully SOC 2 compliant. It's free to get started and comes with a generous monthly free tier:

1 million product analytics events
5k session replays
1 million feature flag requests
250 survey responses

We're constantly adding new features, with web analytics and data warehouse now in beta!

Get started for free
Docs
Contributing
Philosophy
Open-source vs paid

Get started for free

PostHog Cloud (Recommended)

The fastest and most reliable way to get started with PostHog is signing up for free toÂ PostHog Cloud or PostHog Cloud EU. Your first 1 million events (and 5k replays) are free every month, after which you pay based on usage.

Open-source hobby deploy (Advanced)

You can deploy a hobby instance in one line on Linux with Docker (recommended 4GB memory):

 /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/posthog/posthog/HEAD/bin/deploy-hobby)"

Open source deployments should scale to approximately 100k events per month, after which we recommend migrating to a PostHog Cloud instance. See our docs for more info and limitations. Please note that we do not provide customer support for open source deployments.

Docs

ui-demo

Want to find out more? Request a demo!

PostHog brings all the tools and data you need to build better products.

Analytics and optimization tools

Event-based analytics: Capture your product's usage automatically, or customize it to your needs
User and group tracking: Understand the people and groups behind the events and track properties about them when needed
Data visualizations: Create and share graphs, funnels, paths, retention, and dashboards
SQL access: Use SQL to get a deeper understanding of your users, breakdown information and create completely tailored visualizations
Session replays: Watch videos of your users' behavior, with fine-grained filters and privacy controls, as well as network monitoring and captured console logs
Heatmaps: See where users click and get a visual representation of their behaviour with the PostHog Toolbar
Feature flags: Test and manage the rollout of new features to specific users and groups, or deploy flags as kill-switches
Experiments: run simple or complex changes as experiments and get automatic significance calculations
Correlation analysis: Discover what events and properties correlate with success and failure
Surveys: Collect qualitative feedback from your users using fully customizable surveys

Data and infrastructure tools

Import and export your data: Import from and export to the services that matter to you with the PostHog CDP
Ready-made libraries: Weâve built libraries for JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Node, Go, Android, iOS, PHP, Flutter, React Native, Elixir, Nim, and an API for anything else
Plays nicely with data warehouses: import events or user data from your warehouse by writing a simple transformation plugin, and export data with pre-built apps - such as BigQuery, Redshift, Snowflake, and S3

Read a full list of PostHog features.

Contributing

We <3 contributions big and small. In priority order (although everything is appreciated) with the most helpful first:

Vote on features or get early access to beta functionality in our roadmap
Open a PR (see our instructions on developing PostHog locally)
Submit a feature request or bug report

Philosophy

Our mission is toÂ increase the number of successful productsÂ in the world. To do that, we build product and data tools that help you understand user behavior without losing control of your data.

In our view, third-party analytics tools do not work in a world of cookie deprecation, GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, and many other four-letter acronyms. PostHog is the alternative to sending all of your customers' personal information and usage data to third parties.

PostHog gives you every tool you need to understand user behavior, develop and test improvements, and release changes to make your product more successful.

PostHog operates in public as much as possible. We detail how we work and our learning on building and running a fast-growing, product-focused startup in our handbook.