Web Analytics · Comparison
Pirsch Analytics vs. PostHog
Pirsch 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.
Pirsch Analytics
Server-side, cookieless web analytics hosted in Germany, built for GDPR compliance.
PostHog
All-in-one open-source platform for product analytics, web analytics, session replay, and feature flags.
Company facts
Headquarters
Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany Emvi Software GmbH registered at Nickelstraße 1b, 33378 Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany.
San Francisco, CA PostHog is incorporated in San Francisco, CA but is a remote-first company with team across 20+ countries.
Employees
2 Pirsch is a two-person team: Marvin Blum (backend/infra) and Daniel Schramm (design/UX).
202 Approximately 202 employees as of May 2026 per Tracxn; ~185 per April 2026 LinkedIn data.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
$6 Standard plan starts at $6/month for 10,000 monthly pageviews (as of June 2026).
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Offers Free Tier
No perpetual free plan; only a 30-day free trial is offered.
PostHog offers a perpetual free tier: 1M events/month at no cost, no credit card required, no expiry.
Free Trial Length (Days)
30 days 30-day free trial with 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)
10k Standard entry plan includes 10,000 monthly pageviews at $6/month.
1M Free tier includes 1M events/month. PostHog meters 'events' (not raw pageviews); each pageview fires as one event.
Entry Plan Website Limit
50 sites Standard entry plan covers up to 50 websites.
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
Live visitor count and real-time visitor map are core dashboard features.
PostHog's web analytics dashboard includes real-time data with live visitor activity.
Custom Event Tracking
User-defined custom events supported via JS snippet or server-side API.
PostHog supports custom event tracking via JS SDK (posthog.capture()), autocapture, and data attributes.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Conversion goals can be defined against events or pageviews with conversion rate reporting.
Web analytics dashboard supports conversion goals: define a key event or action, see total/unique conversions and conversion rate.
Funnels
Multi-step funnel analysis (up to 8 steps) is available on the Plus plan.
PostHog supports multi-step funnels with step-to-step drop-off analysis, breakdowns, and timings.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Revenue tracked via custom events with monetary metadata; Shopify integration available.
PostHog supports revenue tracking: capture monetary values on events, Stripe integration, currency conversion, MRR/ARPU dashboards.
Heatmaps
Heatmaps are not offered; a feature request exists on the forum but is unimplemented.
PostHog includes click heatmaps, scroll maps, and rage-click detection as part of the platform (toolbar overlay).
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
Cookieless by design; uses a daily-rotating fingerprint hash with no browser cookies.
PostHog supports cookieless tracking mode (cookieless_mode: always) where no persistent ID is stored in the browser.
Consent Banner Required
Pirsch explicitly states no cookie consent banner is needed for its analytics.
Default PostHog configuration uses cookies/localStorage and requires a consent banner. Cookieless mode removes the requirement but is not the default.
GDPR Compliant
Vendor claims GDPR, CCPA, PECR, and Schrems II compliance.
PostHog explicitly claims GDPR compliance with EU Cloud hosting, DPA, cookieless option, and data anonymization.
EU Data Residency
All analytics data stored on Hetzner servers in Falkenstein, Germany.
PostHog Cloud EU stores all data in AWS eu-central-1 (Frankfurt, Germany). Available at no extra cost.
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
Core analytics library is open source (AGPLv3) on GitHub.
PostHog is open source under MIT license (with a proprietary EE directory). A fully FOSS mirror (posthog-foss) is also published.
License
AGPLv3 Core analytics library (pirsch-analytics/pirsch) is licensed under AGPLv3.
MIT Core product is MIT-licensed; /ee directory with enterprise features uses a separate proprietary license.
Self-Hostable
Self-hosting available via Enterprise License for on-premise deployment.
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
Both Standard and Plus plans include unlimited data retention.
Data retention is 7 years (84 months) on paid plans — finite, not unlimited.
Google Analytics Import
Official import from Google Analytics (UA and GA4) is documented with step-by-step guide.
PostHog documents a GA-to-PostHog migration path via BigQuery export + Python SDK import, with official step-by-step docs.
Raw Data Export
Stats API enables full programmatic data retrieval; CSV export and raw exports on request 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
RESTful Stats API with no rate limit on statistics endpoints.
PostHog provides a comprehensive REST API for querying analytics data, dashboards, exports, and more.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
3.5 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
66.7 KB Initial array.js payload; PostHog lazy-loads additional modules.
Official WordPress Plugin
Official WordPress plugin published by Emvi Software GmbH on wordpress.org.
No official PostHog-published WordPress plugin. PostHog docs describe manual snippet insertion; multiple third-party community plugins exist.
Email Reports
Scheduled weekly and monthly email summary reports are supported.
PostHog supports scheduled email subscriptions for dashboards and insights (weekly, monthly, or custom schedule).
Public Dashboard Sharing
Dashboards can be made public or shared via private access links without requiring viewer accounts.
PostHog supports fully public dashboard sharing via a shareable link, no account required to view. Embeddable via iframe.
The verdict
Pirsch Analytics Best for lightweight, privacy-first site analytics
Pirsch is the leaner pick: a 3.5 KB script versus PostHog's 66.7 KB, cookieless by default with no consent banner required, and an official WordPress plugin PostHog lacks. The $6/month plan covers 50 sites with unlimited retention, where PostHog's entry plan caps at 6 projects and retains data 84 months. No heatmaps, though.
Full profile PostHog Best for a free tier plus heatmaps and product depth
PostHog offers a perpetual free tier (1M events/month, no card), while Pirsch only gives a 30-day trial before its $6/month plan. It also adds heatmaps, scroll maps, and rage-click detection that Pirsch does not. Tradeoffs: a heavier 66.7 KB script, a consent banner by default, and finite 84-month retention versus Pirsch's unlimited.
Full profileSources · 43 verified references
pirsch.io posthog.com tracxn.com docs.pirsch.io github.com api.pirsch.io + 2 more
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