Free alternatives to PostHog
PostHog puts analytics, replay, feature flags, and surveys under one login, and the free tier is generous at 1 million events a month (as of July 2026). The trouble starts when the events run out. One noisy autocapture setting can spend a million events in a week, the interface is a lot to learn, and self-hosting is in the repository but not really supported. If PostHog turned out to be more platform than you needed, these are lighter or simpler places to land.
Facts checked as of July 2026Read our PostHog review
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Umami
Best Free Alternative ToPostHogThe same free-and-cookieless idea with a fraction of the weight, and no event budget to blow
Umami is what a lot of people actually wanted when they reached for PostHog: simple, private web analytics with events and funnels, minus the suite. One page shows visitors, referrers, pages, and countries, it is cookieless, and both the free Cloud Hobby plan and the MIT-licensed self-host cost nothing. There is no autocapture setting quietly spending a million events, because the model is simpler by design. If PostHog felt like overkill, this is the reset.
- Free plan (as of July 2026)
- United States
- Open source (MIT)
United States- Best for:
- Teams who wanted analytics, not a product-analytics platform
- The catch:
- It has no feature flags, surveys, or error tracking, its replay is thin next to PostHog's, and its Cloud limits are unpublished.
Compared to PostHog
- Advantage: Much lighter and simpler than PostHog's suite
- Advantage: Cookieless, so no consent banner, unlike PostHog
- Advantage: No event budget to overspend into a bill
- Advantage: Free hosted plan plus a free MIT self-host
- Tradeoff: No feature flags, surveys, or error tracking
- Tradeoff: Session replay is far thinner than PostHog's
Free event-based analytics at any volume, with no 1-million-event ceiling to hit
If what you liked about PostHog was event analytics but the free tier kept running out, GA4 is the free-at-scale answer. It is event-based like PostHog, handles funnels and audiences, and never charges you for volume on the standard tier. It cannot watch a session or flip a feature flag, so it is a narrower tool, but for teams whose real need was free event tracking at scale, it is the one that does not send you a bill.
- Free plan (as of July 2026)
- United States
- Best for:
- High-volume teams who used PostHog mainly for event analytics
- The catch:
- The GA4 interface is famously complex, it uses cookies, and explorations sample above 10 million events per query with 14-month retention.
Compared to PostHog
- Advantage: Free at any event volume, with no 1M monthly cap
- Advantage: Event-based analytics, funnels, and audiences like PostHog
- Advantage: Google Ads and Search Console integration PostHog lacks
- Tradeoff: No session replay or feature flags at all
- Tradeoff: Uses cookies and needs GDPR handling, unlike a lighter setup
- Tradeoff: Explorations sample above 10M events per query and retention caps at 14 months
Event depth, funnels, and replay you can self-host for free, with no per-event meter running
Matomo is the pick when you wanted PostHog's depth but on infrastructure you control and without watching an event counter. The self-hosted On-Premise edition is GPL-3.0 with unlimited hits and unlimited users, and it covers goals, funnels, custom dimensions, session recordings, and heatmaps. Nothing counts down toward a monthly cap, because you own the box. The trade is that you now administer that box.
- From €29/month (as of July 2026)
- New Zealand
- Open source (GPL-3.0)
New Zealand- Best for:
- Teams who want owned, unlimited event depth without a usage meter
- The catch:
- Free means running a PHP and MySQL server with archiving set up, Matomo Cloud starts at €29 per month, and some behaviour features are paid plugins.
Compared to PostHog
- Advantage: Unlimited hits when self-hosted, no 1M-event free cap
- Advantage: Full data ownership on your own server
- Advantage: Funnels, goals, and heatmaps comparable to PostHog's analysis
- Tradeoff: No feature flags, which PostHog includes free
- Tradeoff: You run and maintain the server, where PostHog Cloud just works
- Tradeoff: Session recording and heatmap plugins cost extra on self-hosted
A calm single-page dashboard for teams who overbought with PostHog and only wanted traffic and funnels
Plausible is the anti-PostHog: one page, no event schema, no exploration builder, cookieless. If you instrumented everything in PostHog and then only ever looked at traffic, sources, and a funnel or two, Plausible does that and stops there. It is not free hosted though. Plausible Cloud gives you a 30-day trial and then charges from $9 per month, so free means self-hosting the AGPL Community Edition.
- From $9/month (as of July 2026)
- Estonia
- Open source (AGPL-3.0)
Estonia- Best for:
- Teams who found PostHog was ten times the tool they needed
- The catch:
- No free cloud, no session replay or feature flags, and funnels plus ecommerce revenue are gated to the $19 Business tier.
Compared to PostHog
- Advantage: Simple and cookieless, against PostHog's heavier instrumented setup
- Advantage: Sub-1 KB script and no event budget to manage
- Advantage: Free and unlimited if you self-host
- Tradeoff: No free hosted plan, where PostHog has a generous one
- Tradeoff: No session replay, feature flags, or surveys
- Tradeoff: Funnels and ecommerce revenue need the paid Business tier
Unlimited free session replay and heatmaps, where PostHog's free replay caps at 5,000 a month
If the part of PostHog you actually used was session replay, Clarity does that with no cap and no bill. Recordings, click and scroll heatmaps, and rage-click flags, free forever with no traffic limit. PostHog's free tier stops at 5,000 web recordings a month; Clarity does not stop. It has no event analytics or feature flags, so it only replaces one slice of PostHog, but it replaces that slice without a meter.
- Completely free (as of July 2026)
- United States
- Best for:
- Teams who mainly used PostHog to watch recordings
- The catch:
- Recordings are kept only 30 days, it uses cookies, Microsoft receives the data, and it has no product analytics or feature flags.
Compared to PostHog
- Advantage: Unlimited free recordings, versus PostHog's 5,000 web replays a month
- Advantage: Free forever with no traffic limit
- Advantage: Simple to set up next to your main analytics
- Tradeoff: No event analytics, funnels, or feature flags PostHog provides
- Tradeoff: Thirty-day recording retention
- Tradeoff: Behavioral data goes to Microsoft
The smallest, simplest option for teams who realized they only wanted pageview numbers
GoatCounter is the far end of the scale from PostHog. No events to instrument, no cohorts, no replay, just pageviews, top pages, referrers, and countries. The hosted service is free for reasonable public usage, and the self-host is one Go binary on SQLite. For a project where PostHog's suite was never going to be used, this is an honest, tiny alternative.
- Free plan (as of July 2026)
- Netherlands
- Open source (EUPL-1.2 (modified))
Netherlands- Best for:
- Personal projects that never needed product analytics at all
- The catch:
- No events, funnels, or replay, it is a solo project, and the free hosted limits are unpublished with a dead pricing page.
Compared to PostHog
- Advantage: Free hosted and trivially simple next to PostHog
- Advantage: Self-hosts from one binary, no infrastructure to run
- Advantage: Cookieless, so no consent banner
- Tradeoff: No events, funnels, replay, or feature flags whatsoever
- Tradeoff: A solo project with no company support
- Tradeoff: Free hosted limits are unpublished
Pay-what-you-want privacy analytics for teams who wanted the opposite of an event platform
Counter.dev is for the PostHog user who wound up wanting almost nothing PostHog does. It sets no cookies, logs no IP addresses, and costs whatever you decide, including nothing. You get visitors, referrers, countries, browsers, and screen sizes, and no way to instrument an event. It is AGPL-3.0 with a self-host option, and honest about being a small, thinly funded service.
- Free plan (as of July 2026)
- Germany
- Open source (AGPL-3.0)
Germany- Best for:
- Privacy-minded side projects that never needed events or flags
- The catch:
- It is hobby-scale by the author's own numbers, has none of PostHog's analytics depth, and publishes no data retention policy.
Compared to PostHog
- Advantage: Costs nothing unless you choose to pay
- Advantage: No cookies and no IP logging, a stronger privacy stance
- Advantage: AGPL-3.0 with a self-host option
- Tradeoff: None of PostHog's events, funnels, replay, or flags
- Tradeoff: Thinly funded, so plan for it to change or stop
- Tradeoff: No published data retention policy
How to choose
If you wanted analytics rather than a product-analytics suite, start with Umami: free hosted, cookieless, and one page instead of an exploration builder. If you need event depth you can own and run yourself, Matomo self-hosted is unlimited and free. If free-at-scale event analytics is the real requirement and Google is acceptable, GA4 does that better than anything here. Keep PostHog if the replay-plus-flags workflow is why you came, because nothing on this list replaces all four products at once.