Happy Valley

PostHog vs RudderStack

PostHog and RudderStack are both analytics tools aimed at developers and small businesses. Both have a free plan.

PostHog

Open-source product analytics, replays and flags

RudderStack

Warehouse-native customer data pipelines, a Segment alternative

PricingFreemiumFreemium · $265
Starting priceNot published$265/mo
Free planYesYes
Free trial—30 days
Built forDevelopers, Small businessesDevelopers, Small businesses, Enterprise
Platformswebweb
CountryUS · 2020US · 2019
Rating——

Choose PostHog if

Engineering-led startups and scale-ups that want analytics, replay, flags and experiments without three vendors.

  • Several products in one with shared data
  • Generous free allowances; usage-based beyond
  • Open source and engineer-friendly

Look elsewhere if: Marketing-only web analytics (Plausible) or large enterprises standardized on Amplitude.

Choose RudderStack if

Data and engineering teams with a cloud warehouse that want a developer-friendly, cost-controlled Segment alternative.

  • Warehouse-first design keeps customer data in your own infrastructure
  • Generous free tier of 250K events per month
  • Event-based pricing usually undercuts Segment at similar volumes

Look elsewhere if: Marketing teams without engineering support or companies without a data warehouse (Segment, Customer.io, Hightouch).

PostHog vs RudderStack pricing

PostHog

  • Free$01M events, 5K recordings, 1M flag requests, 1,500 survey responses/mo
  • Pay-as-you-gofrom $0.00005/per eventPer product after free tier, as low as $0.000009/event; billing limits
  • Boost$250/moPlatform package: unlimited projects, SSO enforcement, HIPAA BAA
  • Scale$750/moPriority support, SAML; includes Boost
  • EnterpriseCustomRBAC, dedicated support, training

RudderStack

  • Free$0250K events/mo, 10 reverse ETL connections, 5 transformations
  • Growth$265/mo1M events/mo; 15% off annually; scales to 25M events
  • EnterpriseCustom5-min warehouse sync, Profiles, HIPAA, SSO, VPC deployment

PostHog · Key features

  • Product analytics: funnels, retention, paths, trends, lifecycle
  • Session replay with console and network logs
  • Feature flags and multivariate experiments
  • Surveys and in-app feedback
  • Data warehouse, HogQL SQL and CDP destinations
  • Error tracking and LLM observability

Cons

  • UI can feel dense; analytics UX trails Amplitude
  • Costs need monitoring across many products
  • Self-hosting only recommended for small scale

RudderStack · Key features

  • Event stream SDKs for web, iOS, Android and server languages
  • Over 200 cloud destinations plus warehouse and data lake loading
  • Reverse ETL that syncs warehouse tables back to SaaS tools
  • JavaScript and Python transformations on events in flight
  • Tracking plans that validate event schemas and catch bad data
  • Profiles for identity resolution and customer 360 tables in the warehouse

Cons

  • Needs engineering ownership; less marketer-friendly than Segment
  • Profiles, HIPAA and VPC deployment are Enterprise-only
  • Elastic License 2.0 is not an OSI open-source license

PostHog vs RudderStack: FAQ

Do PostHog and RudderStack have a free plan?

Yes, both PostHog and RudderStack have a free plan; paid plans add more usage and features.

Not sure yet?