Web Analytics · Comparison
PostHog vs. Simple Analytics
PostHog and Simple Analytics 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.
PostHog
All-in-one open-source platform for product analytics, web analytics, session replay, and feature flags.
Simple Analytics
Privacy-friendly, cookieless web analytics that requires no consent banner.
Company facts
Headquarters
San Francisco, CA PostHog is incorporated in San Francisco, CA but is a remote-first company with team across 20+ countries.
Amsterdam, Netherlands Dutch company (Simple Analytics B.V.); founders and operations based in Amsterdam.
Employees
202 Approximately 202 employees as of May 2026 per Tracxn; ~185 per April 2026 LinkedIn data.
3 Very small team — founder Adriaan van Rossum plus a couple of team members as of 2024/2025.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
—
$20 Self-Serve plan at $20/month (monthly billing); entry slider point is 100k pageviews. 2 months free with annual billing.
Offers Free Tier
PostHog offers a perpetual free tier: 1M events/month at no cost, no credit card required, no expiry.
Perpetually free plan available; analytics history limited to 30 days on the free tier.
Free Trial Length (Days)
0 days No free trial period — PostHog provides a perpetual free tier instead of a time-limited trial.
14 days 14-day free trial on paid plans; no credit card required.
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
1M Free tier includes 1M events/month. PostHog meters 'events' (not raw pageviews); each pageview fires as one event.
100k Self-Serve plan starts at 100,000 pageviews/month (adjustable up to 2.5M via slider).
Entry Plan Website Limit
6 sites 6 projects on the paid (pay-as-you-go) plan; PostHog tracks per project. Free plan includes 1 project.
10 sites Starter plan covers up to 10 websites.
Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
PostHog's web analytics dashboard includes real-time data with live visitor activity.
Live visitor stats; embeddable live-stats widget for your own site.
Custom Event Tracking
PostHog supports custom event tracking via JS SDK (posthog.capture()), autocapture, and data attributes.
Custom events supported via sa_event() JS call, data attributes, and server-side API.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Web analytics dashboard supports conversion goals: define a key event or action, see total/unique conversions and conversion rate.
Goals feature reports conversion rates for defined events or pageview paths.
Funnels
PostHog supports multi-step funnels with step-to-step drop-off analysis, breakdowns, and timings.
Multi-step funnels supported via Goals; can chain events and pageviews with step-by-step drop-off.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
PostHog supports revenue tracking: capture monetary values on events, Stripe integration, currency conversion, MRR/ARPU dashboards.
Revenue values can be attached to events via metadata (e.g. revenue, order value) and reported in Goals.
Heatmaps
PostHog includes click heatmaps, scroll maps, and rage-click detection as part of the platform (toolbar overlay).
No heatmap feature — Simple Analytics is a minimalist analytics tool focused on traffic stats.
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
PostHog supports cookieless tracking mode (cookieless_mode: always) where no persistent ID is stored in the browser.
Tracking is cookieless by design — no cookies or persistent identifiers are set.
Consent Banner Required
Default PostHog configuration uses cookies/localStorage and requires a consent banner. Cookieless mode removes the requirement but is not the default.
Vendor explicitly states no cookie or consent banner is required when using Simple Analytics.
GDPR Compliant
PostHog explicitly claims GDPR compliance with EU Cloud hosting, DPA, cookieless option, and data anonymization.
Vendor states it fully adheres to GDPR and UK GDPR by not collecting personal data.
EU Data Residency
PostHog Cloud EU stores all data in AWS eu-central-1 (Frankfurt, Germany). Available at no extra cost.
Data stored in the Netherlands on Dutch-hosted servers (Worldstream, Leaseweb); never leaves the EU.
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
PostHog is open source under MIT license (with a proprietary EE directory). A fully FOSS mirror (posthog-foss) is also published.
Core SaaS product is proprietary; only the public tracking scripts are MIT-licensed open source.
License
MIT Core product is MIT-licensed; /ee directory with enterprise features uses a separate proprietary license.
proprietary Core analytics platform is proprietary SaaS; tracking scripts are MIT-licensed.
Self-Hostable
PostHog supports self-hosting via Docker Compose with documented install guides. Free for self-hosters.
Cloud-only SaaS product; no documented self-hosting or on-premises option.
Data Retention (Months)
84 mo Paid plans retain event data for 7 years (84 months); after 1 year data may move to cold storage (slower queries).
36 mo Simple plan: 3 years
Unlimited Data Retention
Data retention is 7 years (84 months) on paid plans — finite, not unlimited.
No
Google Analytics Import
PostHog documents a GA-to-PostHog migration path via BigQuery export + Python SDK import, with official step-by-step docs.
Official Google Analytics 4 (GA4) import tool; heavily filtered for privacy.
Raw Data Export
PostHog supports raw event-level data export via Exports API, batch exports to S3/Postgres, and real-time pipeline destinations.
Export API provides raw event-level data export; CSV export and data warehouse integrations also available.
Platform & integrations
Has API
PostHog provides a comprehensive REST API for querying analytics data, dashboards, exports, and more.
Stats API, Export API, and Admin API all documented.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
66.7 KB Initial array.js payload; PostHog lazy-loads additional modules.
3.8 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
Official WordPress Plugin
No official PostHog-published WordPress plugin. PostHog docs describe manual snippet insertion; multiple third-party community plugins exist.
Official WordPress plugin at wordpress.org/plugins/simpleanalytics/ maintained by Simple Analytics.
Email Reports
PostHog supports scheduled email subscriptions for dashboards and insights (weekly, monthly, or custom schedule).
Built-in weekly and monthly email reports; sent at 9AM in local timezone with top referrers summary.
Public Dashboard Sharing
PostHog supports fully public dashboard sharing via a shareable link, no account required to view. Embeddable via iframe.
Dashboards can be made fully public or shared via link; Simple Analytics publishes their own publicly.
The verdict
PostHog Best for product analytics depth and self-hosting
PostHog goes well beyond traffic stats: funnels, heatmaps, and ecommerce revenue tracking that Simple Analytics lacks the heatmap side of. It is MIT-licensed and self-hostable, where Simple Analytics is proprietary cloud-only. Its free tier covers 1M events vs 100k, and paid data retention runs 84 months vs 36.
Full profile Simple Analytics Best for cookieless, consent-banner-free privacy
Simple Analytics is cookieless by design and requires no consent banner, while PostHog needs one unless you opt into a non-default cookieless mode. Its tracking script is 3.8 KB vs PostHog's 66.7 KB, and it ships an official WordPress plugin PostHog does not. The tradeoff: no heatmaps and no self-hosting.
Full profileSources · 42 verified references
posthog.com datarequests.org tracxn.com simpleanalytics.com docs.simpleanalytics.com github.com + 4 more
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