Product analytics

Google Analytics vs Plausible vs PostHog

Google Analytics, Plausible, PostHog side by side: price, free tier, who each one fits and when to skip it.

Item	Google Analytics	Plausible	PostHog
What it does	Google's free web and app analytics (GA4), with traffic sources, conversions and a native link to Google Ads.	Lightweight, cookie-free web analytics hosted in the EU, with a one-page dashboard and open-source code.	All-in-one product platform: event analytics, session replay, feature flags, experiments, surveys and error tracking.
Best for	Founder running Google Ads who needs to see which campaign brings sign-ups, at zero cost.	Landing page or SaaS site that wants visits and conversions without a cookie banner, since it collects no personal data.	Early-stage SaaS that wants funnels, session replays and feature flags in one tool without paying until 1M events a month.
Skip it if	You don't want a cookie consent banner on your site, since GA4 uses cookies and LGPD calls for consent before tracking.	You need in-app funnels per logged-in user or session replay; it only measures pages and simple events.	You need a simple LGPD-friendly visit counter: session replay and person profiles call for consent and careful masking of personal data.
Setup	A little code. 30 minutes for the tag; numbers can take 24 to 48 hours to settle. Add an afternoon for the consent banner.	A little code. About 10 minutes to paste the script and see the first visits.	A little code. 15 minutes for the snippet; an afternoon to name and send your key events.
Price	Free; Analytics 360 price is not public	From $9/month (10K pageviews)	Pay as you go: $0.00005/event after 1M
What it costs in practice	Standard GA4 is free at any small-SaaS volume: $0/month. The real cost is the cookie banner and the time to set up events and consent. Analytics 360, the paid version, has no public price.	A SaaS site with 7K pageviews and 2K custom events a month stays in the 10K tier: Starter at $9/month, or about $90/year with 2 months free on yearly billing. Two sites push you to Growth at $14/month. Rough estimate.	A SaaS sending 2M events a month, all from logged-in users: the first 1M is free, the next 1M costs 1M × ($0.00005 + $0.000198) ≈ $248/month. Sent as anonymous events, the same volume is about $50. Rough estimate.
Free plan	Standard Google Analytics is free.	30-day free trial, no card; Community Edition is free to self-host.	Every month: 1M events, 5K session replays, 1M flag requests and 100K exceptions.
Free tier	Free, no price on the site	30-day trial; free if self-hosted	1M events/month + 5K replays
First paid plan	Analytics 360: not public	Starter: $9/month for 10K pageviews	Pay as you go, $0.00005/event after 1M
Self-host	No	Yes, Community Edition (AGPL)	Yes, open-source hobby deploy
Open source	No: no	Yes: yes	Yes: yes
Before you build	Explorations and funnel reports only see 2 or 14 months of data on the free version; longer retention is only for Analytics 360. Pick 14 months on day one. When a query needs more than 10 million events, GA4 samples: it reads part of the data and scales it up, so the numbers become estimates. Consent mode doesn't come with a banner; you supply one. With the basic setup, visitors who decline aren't counted at all. Today's numbers aren't final: daily data can take 24 to 48 hours to process, so don't judge a launch in its first hours.	Custom events count toward your monthly limit just like pageviews, so tracking every click can push you into a higher tier. Over your tier two months in a row, you're asked to upgrade; if you don't within a week, your dashboards are locked until usage drops or you pay more. Strict ad blockers still block the script: Plausible itself expects 5% to 25% of visitors to go uncounted unless you set up a proxy. Funnels and ecommerce revenue are only on Business; Starter covers 1 site and Growth up to 3.	Events tied to a logged-in person cost more than anonymous ones: above the free 1M, an identified event adds $0.000198 on top of the $0.00005 base, about 5x the price. When you hit a billing limit, PostHog stops ingesting and the data sent after that is lost for good, not queued. With cookies on logged-out visitors, PostHog itself says you should show a cookie banner; under LGPD plan the consent flow before launch. Ad blockers can block PostHog, so part of your users never shows up; the official fix is a reverse proxy on your own domain. The free plan keeps data for 1 year and allows 1 project; paid keeps 7 years and allows 6.
Price checked	Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing	Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing	Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing

Prices are read from each official pricing page on the date shown and can change. Always confirm before signing up.

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PostHog vs Google Analytics vs Plausible

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