Web Analytics · Comparison
Matomo vs. PostHog
Matomo 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.
Matomo
Open-source, privacy-first web analytics platform available self-hosted or in the cloud.
PostHog
All-in-one open-source platform for product analytics, web analytics, session replay, and feature flags.
Company facts
Headquarters
Wellington, New Zealand InnoCraft Ltd (Matomo's maker) is headquartered in Wellington, New Zealand. Team is distributed globally.
San Francisco, CA PostHog is incorporated in San Francisco, CA but is a remote-first company with team across 20+ countries.
Employees
52 Approximately 52 employees as of late 2025, distributed across 5 continents.
202 Approximately 202 employees as of May 2026 per Tracxn; ~185 per April 2026 LinkedIn data.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
$26 Matomo Cloud Business plan; USD list price (EUR list is €29/mo).
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Offers Free Tier
Matomo On-Premise is free to self-host under GPL-3.0 with no usage limits. Matomo Cloud has no perpetual free plan (21-day trial only).
PostHog offers a perpetual free tier: 1M events/month at no cost, no credit card required, no expiry.
Free Trial Length (Days)
21 days Matomo Cloud offers a 21-day free trial with full feature access. No credit card required.
0 days No free trial period — PostHog provides a perpetual free tier instead of a time-limited trial.
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
50k Entry Cloud plan starts at 50,000 hits/month. Matomo meters 'hits' (pageviews + events), not pure pageviews.
1M Free tier includes 1M events/month. PostHog meters 'events' (not raw pageviews); each pageview fires as one event.
Entry Plan Website Limit
30 sites Matomo Cloud plans (including entry) support up to 30 websites. On-Premise has no website limit.
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
Matomo provides a real-time visitor dashboard showing live activity, current visitor count, and pages visited.
PostHog's web analytics dashboard includes real-time data with live visitor activity.
Custom Event Tracking
Matomo supports custom event tracking via JavaScript API (trackEvent), data attributes, or Tag Manager.
PostHog supports custom event tracking via JS SDK (posthog.capture()), autocapture, and data attributes.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Matomo supports goal/conversion tracking with configurable goals and conversion rate reporting.
Web analytics dashboard supports conversion goals: define a key event or action, see total/unique conversions and conversion rate.
Funnels
Matomo includes multi-step funnel analysis with step-to-step drop-off reporting, included in Matomo Cloud.
PostHog supports multi-step funnels with step-to-step drop-off analysis, breakdowns, and timings.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Matomo tracks ecommerce orders and revenue with native integrations for WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, and more.
PostHog supports revenue tracking: capture monetary values on events, Stripe integration, currency conversion, MRR/ARPU dashboards.
Heatmaps
Matomo includes heatmaps (click maps, scroll maps) via the Heatmap & Session Recording feature, included in Matomo Cloud.
PostHog includes click heatmaps, scroll maps, and rage-click detection as part of the platform (toolbar overlay).
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
Matomo supports a fully cookieless tracking mode. When configured cookieless, no cookies are set on visitors.
PostHog supports cookieless tracking mode (cookieless_mode: always) where no persistent ID is stored in the browser.
Consent Banner Required
When configured cookieless with privacy settings, Matomo does not require a consent banner. France's CNIL confirmed Matomo is consent-exempt under proper configuration.
Default PostHog configuration uses cookies/localStorage and requires a consent banner. Cookieless mode removes the requirement but is not the default.
GDPR Compliant
Matomo explicitly claims GDPR compliance and is CNIL-approved. Matomo Cloud data is stored in the EU with no transfer to the US; On-Premise stores data in your country of choice.
PostHog explicitly claims GDPR compliance with EU Cloud hosting, DPA, cookieless option, and data anonymization.
EU Data Residency
Matomo Cloud stores 100% of analytics data and backups in the EU. On-Premise data residency is customer-controlled (your country of choice).
PostHog Cloud EU stores all data in AWS eu-central-1 (Frankfurt, Germany). Available at no extra cost.
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
Matomo On-Premise is open source under GPL-3.0. The Cloud version is built on the same open-source core.
PostHog is open source under MIT license (with a proprietary EE directory). A fully FOSS mirror (posthog-foss) is also published.
License
GPL-3.0 Matomo core is GPL-3.0. Premium plugins use a separate proprietary license.
MIT Core product is MIT-licensed; /ee directory with enterprise features uses a separate proprietary license.
Self-Hostable
Matomo On-Premise is the flagship self-hosted edition, freely downloadable and installable on any PHP/MySQL server.
PostHog supports self-hosting via Docker Compose with documented install guides. Free for self-hosters.
Data Retention (Months)
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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
Matomo Cloud retains aggregated report data indefinitely with no time-based aging. On-Premise users own the DB with no limit.
Data retention is 7 years (84 months) on paid plans — finite, not unlimited.
Google Analytics Import
Matomo has an official Google Analytics importer supporting both Universal Analytics and GA4 data imports.
PostHog documents a GA-to-PostHog migration path via BigQuery export + Python SDK import, with official step-by-step docs.
Raw Data Export
Matomo provides raw visit/action-level data export via the Reporting API and dedicated raw data endpoints. Self-hosted instances have direct DB access.
PostHog supports raw event-level data export via Exports API, batch exports to S3/Postgres, and real-time pipeline destinations.
Platform & integrations
Has API
Matomo has a comprehensive Reporting HTTP API for programmatic data retrieval covering all reports and raw data.
PostHog provides a comprehensive REST API for querying analytics data, dashboards, exports, and more.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
61.1 KB Served uncompressed by Matomo Cloud.
66.7 KB Initial array.js payload; PostHog lazy-loads additional modules.
Official WordPress Plugin
Matomo maintains an official WordPress plugin ('Matomo Analytics') published on wordpress.org by the Matomo team.
No official PostHog-published WordPress plugin. PostHog docs describe manual snippet insertion; multiple third-party community plugins exist.
Email Reports
Matomo supports scheduled email reports (daily, weekly, monthly) in PDF, HTML, or CSV format.
PostHog supports scheduled email subscriptions for dashboards and insights (weekly, monthly, or custom schedule).
Public Dashboard Sharing
Matomo supports public dashboard access via anonymous user feature (no login required). Token-based share links also available.
PostHog supports fully public dashboard sharing via a shareable link, no account required to view. Embeddable via iframe.
The verdict
Matomo Best for consent-free privacy and full data retention
Matomo runs cookieless without a consent banner (CNIL-confirmed); PostHog requires one by default. It also keeps report data indefinitely versus PostHog's finite 7-year retention, supports 30 sites to PostHog's 6, and ships an official WordPress plugin PostHog lacks. Cloud starts at $26/mo.
Full profile PostHog Best for a free, high-volume starting point
PostHog's perpetual free tier covers 1M events/month with no card and no expiry, where Matomo Cloud is trial-only (21 days) and its entry plan meters 50k hits. Self-hosting is also free. The trade-offs: a consent banner is required by default, retention caps at 7 years, and the free plan allows one site.
Full profileSources · 42 verified references
matomo.org posthog.com leadiq.com tracxn.com developer.matomo.org plugins.matomo.org + 4 more
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