Web Analytics · Comparison
PostHog vs. Statcounter
PostHog and Statcounter 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.
Statcounter
Simple real-time web analytics tracking visitor behaviour, traffic sources, and page performance.
Company facts
Headquarters
San Francisco, CA PostHog is incorporated in San Francisco, CA but is a remote-first company with team across 20+ countries.
Dublin, Ireland Headquartered at Guinness Enterprise Centre, Taylor's Lane, Dublin 8, Ireland.
Employees
202 Approximately 202 employees as of May 2026 per Tracxn; ~185 per April 2026 LinkedIn data.
8 Very small team; multiple sources indicate 7–10 employees as of 2024–2025.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
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$9 Premium plan starts at $9/month for 20,000 sessions/month.
Offers Free Tier
PostHog offers a perpetual free tier: 1M events/month at no cost, no credit card required, no expiry.
Basic plan is free forever with 5,000 sessions/month and 14 days data retention.
Free Trial Length (Days)
0 days No free trial period — PostHog provides a perpetual free tier instead of a time-limited trial.
30 days 30-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.
20k Entry Premium plan includes 20,000 sessions/month. Statcounter uses 'sessions' not pageviews.
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.
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Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
PostHog's web analytics dashboard includes real-time data with live visitor activity.
Live visitor feed and real-time visitor updates available on all plans including free Basic.
Custom Event Tracking
PostHog supports custom event tracking via JS SDK (posthog.capture()), autocapture, and data attributes.
Statcounter does not support user-defined custom events. Goal tracking is URL/page-based only.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Web analytics dashboard supports conversion goals: define a key event or action, see total/unique conversions and conversion rate.
Supports URL-based conversion goal tracking; shows conversion rate from landing page to goal URL.
Funnels
PostHog supports multi-step funnels with step-to-step drop-off analysis, breakdowns, and timings.
No multi-step funnel analysis feature found in Statcounter's product.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
PostHog supports revenue tracking: capture monetary values on events, Stripe integration, currency conversion, MRR/ARPU dashboards.
No ecommerce or revenue tracking feature found; no monetary value attribution in any report.
Heatmaps
PostHog includes click heatmaps, scroll maps, and rage-click detection as part of the platform (toolbar overlay).
Interactive click heatmaps available on Premium Plus plan ($19/mo and above).
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
PostHog supports cookieless tracking mode (cookieless_mode: always) where no persistent ID is stored in the browser.
Statcounter sets a persistent analytics cookie ('is_unique') by default. No cookieless tracking mode available.
Consent Banner Required
Default PostHog configuration uses cookies/localStorage and requires a consent banner. Cookieless mode removes the requirement but is not the default.
Statcounter sets persistent analytics cookies; a consent banner is required for EU/ePrivacy compliance.
GDPR Compliant
PostHog explicitly claims GDPR compliance with EU Cloud hosting, DPA, cookieless option, and data anonymization.
Statcounter claims GDPR compatibility, arguing it is anonymous tracking and IP addresses are not personal data under its use.
EU Data Residency
PostHog Cloud EU stores all data in AWS eu-central-1 (Frankfurt, Germany). Available at no extra cost.
No first-party EU data-storage guarantee; company is Dublin-based but visitor data location is undocumented and infrastructure signals point to US providers (Cloudflare/Rackspace).
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.
Statcounter is a proprietary closed-source SaaS product.
License
MIT Core product is MIT-licensed; /ee directory with enterprise features uses a separate proprietary license.
proprietary Closed-source SaaS with a proprietary license.
Self-Hostable
PostHog supports self-hosting via Docker Compose with documented install guides. Free for self-hosters.
Cloud-only SaaS; no self-hosting or on-premises option available.
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 Entry Premium plan retains data for 3 years (36 months).
Unlimited Data Retention
Data retention is 7 years (84 months) on paid plans — finite, not unlimited.
Entry Premium plan has a 3-year (36-month) data retention limit; Premium Plus is 5 years.
Google Analytics Import
PostHog documents a GA-to-PostHog migration path via BigQuery export + Python SDK import, with official step-by-step docs.
No Google Analytics historical data import tool found.
Raw Data Export
PostHog supports raw event-level data export via Exports API, batch exports to S3/Postgres, and real-time pipeline destinations.
Only aggregated summary reports are exportable as CSV/Excel; raw visit-level data export is not available.
Platform & integrations
Has API
PostHog provides a comprehensive REST API for querying analytics data, dashboards, exports, and more.
Statcounter API at api.statcounter.com allows programmatic access to analytics data; requires paid plan.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
66.7 KB Initial array.js payload; PostHog lazy-loads additional modules.
17.2 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 Statcounter plugin published on wordpress.org under the vendor's name.
Email Reports
PostHog supports scheduled email subscriptions for dashboards and insights (weekly, monthly, or custom schedule).
Scheduled email reports available daily, weekly, or monthly with customizable stat selection.
Public Dashboard Sharing
PostHog supports fully public dashboard sharing via a shareable link, no account required to view. Embeddable via iframe.
Stats can be made publicly viewable via a 'Public Stats' option; no login required to view.
The verdict
PostHog Best for product analytics depth and data ownership
PostHog goes well beyond pageviews: custom events, funnels, heatmaps, and revenue tracking — all absent in Statcounter. It is open source (MIT) and self-hostable, supports raw event-level export and GA import, and offers EU data residency, none of which Statcounter provides. The free tier covers 1M events/month with 7-year retention.
Full profile Statcounter Best for lightweight, low-cost basic site stats
Statcounter is the simpler, lighter pick: a 17.2 KB script versus PostHog's 66.7 KB, an official WordPress plugin PostHog lacks, paid plans from $9/month, and a 30-day trial. The trade-off is scope — no custom events, funnels, revenue tracking, raw-data export, self-hosting, or EU data residency. Best when you only need traffic counts.
Full profileSources · 40 verified references
posthog.com statcounter.com tracxn.com github.com api.statcounter.com us-assets.i.posthog.com + 1 more
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