Web Analytics · Comparison
Google Analytics vs. PostHog
Google Analytics and PostHog compared across Company facts, Pricing, Analytics capabilities, Privacy & compliance, Data ownership & deployment and Platform & integrations — every fact sourced and re-verified from each vendor's public material.
Google Analytics
Free web and app analytics platform by Google with audience and conversion insights.
PostHog
All-in-one open-source platform for product analytics, web analytics, session replay, and feature flags.
Company facts
Headquarters
Mountain View, CA Google's main campus (Googleplex) is in Mountain View, CA. GA4 is a Google product.
San Francisco, CA PostHog is incorporated in San Francisco, CA but is a remote-first company with team across 20+ countries.
Employees
190.8k Alphabet/Google had ~190,820 full-time employees at year-end 2025 per company reporting.
202 Approximately 202 employees as of May 2026 per Tracxn; ~185 per April 2026 LinkedIn data.
Pricing
Offers Free Tier
GA4 standard is entirely free to use with no time limit. Google Analytics 360 is the paid enterprise tier.
PostHog offers a perpetual free tier: 1M events/month at no cost, no credit card required, no expiry.
Free Trial Length (Days)
0 days No free trial needed — GA4 standard is permanently free. No paid plan exists at entry level.
0 days No free trial period — PostHog provides a perpetual free tier instead of a time-limited trial.
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
—
1M Free tier includes 1M events/month. PostHog meters 'events' (not raw pageviews); each pageview fires as one event.
Entry Plan Website Limit
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6 sites 6 projects on the paid (pay-as-you-go) plan; PostHog tracks per project. Free plan includes 1 project.
Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Realtime report shows active users in last 5 and 30 minutes, events, sources, and pages as they happen.
PostHog's web analytics dashboard includes real-time data with live visitor activity.
Custom Event Tracking
Custom events tracked via gtag('event', '<name>', {params}) or Google Tag Manager on any plan.
PostHog supports custom event tracking via JS SDK (posthog.capture()), autocapture, and data attributes.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Any event can be marked as a key event (conversion); GA4 reports key-event counts and rates by source, medium, and campaign.
Web analytics dashboard supports conversion goals: define a key event or action, see total/unique conversions and conversion rate.
Funnels
Funnel Exploration (in Explore) supports up to 10 steps with per-step drop-off rates, open and closed funnel modes.
PostHog supports multi-step funnels with step-to-step drop-off analysis, breakdowns, and timings.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Native ecommerce reporting includes revenue by transaction, purchase journey, checkout journey, and monetization overview.
PostHog supports revenue tracking: capture monetary values on events, Stripe integration, currency conversion, MRR/ARPU dashboards.
Heatmaps
GA4 has no built-in click/scroll heatmap feature. Heatmaps require a separate third-party tool (e.g. Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity).
PostHog includes click heatmaps, scroll maps, and rage-click detection as part of the platform (toolbar overlay).
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
GA4 uses first-party cookies (_ga, _ga_<id>) by default. Cookieless operation is not a supported mode.
PostHog supports cookieless tracking mode (cookieless_mode: always) where no persistent ID is stored in the browser.
Consent Banner Required
GA4 sets cookies and processes personal data; GDPR/ePrivacy require a consent banner for EU users.
Default PostHog configuration uses cookies/localStorage and requires a consent banner. Cookieless mode removes the requirement but is not the default.
GDPR Compliant
Google states it operates as a GDPR data processor for GA4, with Data Processing Terms, ISO 27001, and consent tooling.
PostHog explicitly claims GDPR compliance with EU Cloud hosting, DPA, cookieless option, and data anonymization.
EU Data Residency
EU traffic is initially collected on EU servers but is then forwarded to Google Analytics processing servers globally; data is not stored exclusively in the EU.
PostHog Cloud EU stores all data in AWS eu-central-1 (Frankfurt, Germany). Available at no extra cost.
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
GA4 is a proprietary cloud service. No source code is publicly available.
PostHog is open source under MIT license (with a proprietary EE directory). A fully FOSS mirror (posthog-foss) is also published.
License
proprietary GA4 is a closed-source cloud product. API client libraries are Apache 2.0 but the platform is proprietary.
MIT Core product is MIT-licensed; /ee directory with enterprise features uses a separate proprietary license.
Self-Hostable
GA4 is cloud-only with no self-hosting option. All data is sent to Google's servers.
PostHog supports self-hosting via Docker Compose with documented install guides. Free for self-hosters.
Data Retention (Months)
14 mo Free GA4 properties can choose 2 or 14 months retention for user/event-level data; 14 months is the maximum on the free tier.
84 mo Paid plans retain event data for 7 years (84 months); after 1 year data may move to cold storage (slower queries).
Unlimited Data Retention
Free GA4 caps retention at 14 months for user/event-level data. No unlimited/forever retention option on any GA4 tier.
Data retention is 7 years (84 months) on paid plans — finite, not unlimited.
Google Analytics Import
GA4 cannot import historical Universal Analytics analytics data. Data Import covers external business data (cost, item, user, offline events) only — not migrating legacy GA report history.
PostHog documents a GA-to-PostHog migration path via BigQuery export + Python SDK import, with official step-by-step docs.
Raw Data Export
Raw event-level data exportable to BigQuery (free sandbox available); daily and streaming export modes. Data API also available.
PostHog supports raw event-level data export via Exports API, batch exports to S3/Postgres, and real-time pipeline destinations.
Platform & integrations
Has API
GA4 Data API (v1) enables programmatic querying of analytics data with runReport, runRealtimeReport, and more.
PostHog provides a comprehensive REST API for querying analytics data, dashboards, exports, and more.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
135.7 KB gtag.js baseline payload; varies with property configuration.
66.7 KB Initial array.js payload; PostHog lazy-loads additional modules.
Official WordPress Plugin
Site Kit by Google is an official Google-published WordPress plugin that includes GA4 integration.
No official PostHog-published WordPress plugin. PostHog docs describe manual snippet insertion; multiple third-party community plugins exist.
Email Reports
GA4 admins can schedule up to 50 reports for email delivery (daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly) in PDF or CSV format.
PostHog supports scheduled email subscriptions for dashboards and insights (weekly, monthly, or custom schedule).
Public Dashboard Sharing
GA4 reports cannot be shared publicly without a Google account. Share links require recipients to have GA property access.
PostHog supports fully public dashboard sharing via a shareable link, no account required to view. Embeddable via iframe.
The verdict
Google Analytics Best for free WordPress sites in the Google stack
Both are free, but Google Analytics ships an official WordPress plugin (Site Kit) where PostHog has none. Raw events export to BigQuery, and a lighter setup if you stay in Google's ecosystem. The trade-off: no heatmaps, no cookieless mode, EU traffic leaves the EU, and retention caps at 14 months versus PostHog's 84.
Full profile PostHog Best for product analytics, privacy control, and ownership
PostHog adds heatmaps, cookieless tracking, and public dashboard sharing that GA4 lacks, plus EU data residency in Frankfurt. It is MIT open source and self-hostable where GA4 is proprietary cloud-only, retains data for 84 months versus 14, ships a lighter 66.7 KB script, and offers a documented GA import path.
Full profileSources · 43 verified references
about.google posthog.com macrotrends.net tracxn.com marketingplatform.google.com support.google.com + 5 more
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