PostHog

All-in-one product analytics, session replay, feature flags, and A/B testing

Replaces

40k Python MIT today

Overview

PostHog is an all-in-one product analytics platform combining event-based product analytics, web analytics, session replay, feature flags, surveys, and experiments. It is the most complete open-source alternative to Mixpanel and Amplitude, with a generous open-source self-hosted option and a hosted cloud. Built on ClickHouse for fast analytical queries over large event volumes.

Setup and operations guides

Use these practical guides to plan the deployment, security, backups, and recovery work behind this project.

Self-Host PostHog: Read the Limits Before You DeployDecide whether PostHog’s advanced hobby deployment fits your team before accepting its resource, retention, backup, and support burden.Read the guide

Key features

Event-based product analytics with funnels, retention, and trend analysis
Session replay to watch real user interactions
Feature flags and A/B testing (experiments)
Surveys and web analytics in the same install
Built on ClickHouse for fast queries over large event volumes
S3-style hosted cloud option alongside self-hosting

Our take

PostHog is the most feature-complete open-source answer to Mixpanel and Amplitude, folding product analytics, session replay, feature flags, surveys, and A/B testing into a single platform backed by ClickHouse for genuinely fast queries at scale. The breadth is the selling point: you replace several paid SaaS tools with one install. The catch is operational weight — this is a 5/5 difficulty deploy, and running ClickHouse plus the rest of the stack in production is a real commitment in resources and maintenance. PostHog has also been candid that the self-hosted edition is less of a focus than their cloud, so smaller teams should weigh the managed option before signing up to operate it themselves.

Ideal for: Product and growth teams that want analytics, replay, and experimentation in one stack without stitching together Mixpanel, Hotjar, and a flagging service.

Where it falls short of Mixpanel

Self-hosting the full ClickHouse + Kafka + Postgres + Redis stack is heavy; the project actively steers smaller users toward PostHog Cloud.
Some enterprise features live under a separate proprietary ee license, not pure MIT.
The all-in-one breadth means it is more complex to operate than a focused tool like Mixpanel.

We list the gaps honestly so you can decide if the trade-off is worth owning your data.

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