PostHog's free tier is a million events a month, and events are easy to spend
A million events a month sounds like more than it turns out to be. On a marketing site it is enormous. On a product where every click and page view is instrumented, one careless autocapture setting can spend it inside a fortnight (as of July 2026).
The rest of the free allowance is unusually complete: 5,000 web session replays, 2,500 mobile replays, 1 million feature flag requests, 1,500 survey responses, 100,000 error exceptions and 1 million data warehouse rows, every month, with no card required. Below: which meter empties first, what happens when it does, and what the per-unit pricing beyond it looks like.
Facts checked July 2026
PostHog free plan at a glance
- Free plan score
- 78/100Strong
- Is it really free?
- Yes, within limits
78 out of 100, the highest free plan score in analytics
78 is the top score in this category and it comes from the two pillars that carry the most weight. Feature depth scores 92, the highest number in this file, because nothing is switched off to force an upgrade: funnels, retention, cohorts, session replay, feature flags, surveys and error tracking are all on the free allowance. Generosity scores 88 on the strength of a published, per-product monthly meter with no card at signup.
What keeps it out of the Outstanding band is freedom at 72, and the reason is worth understanding before you commit. Your data lives in PostHog's cloud. The license is MIT only outside the ee/ directory, and while self-hosting exists in the repository it is not meaningfully supported, so it is not a real exit route the way Umami's or Matomo's is. If owning the deployment is the point for you, Matomo's free plan is the tool that answers it.
78/100
Strong
A million events, 5,000 replays and feature flags a month, with no card asked for.
- Free plan generosity35% of the score
88/100
The allowance is published per product and metered monthly: 1 million analytics events, 5,000 web session replays, 2,500 mobile replays, 1 million feature flag requests, 1,500 survey responses and 100,000 error exceptions, with no card required (as of July 2026). Events are the unit that runs out, and one noisy autocapture setting can spend a million in a fortnight.
- Feature depth for the category25% of the score
92/100
For the product analytics job this is the deepest free tier in the category, and nothing is switched off to force an upgrade. Funnels, retention, cohorts, session replay, feature flags, surveys and error tracking are all on the free allowance, where Hotjar charges for replay volume and Clarity has no event analytics at all.
- Freedom and honesty20% of the score
72/100
No card at signup, and if you never add one PostHog stops ingesting at the cap rather than billing you by surprise. Weighed against that: your data lives in PostHog's cloud, the license is MIT only outside the ee/ directory, and self-hosting exists in the repository without meaningful support, so it is not a real exit.
- What free users report20% of the score
50/100
No G2, Trustpilot or Capterra score is on file for PostHog, and we hold nothing about how the free allowance behaves for the people living on it. We score the middle and say so rather than guess.
Scored July 2026. How we calculate the free plan score.
The limit that moves fastest: 1 million events a month
Each product carries its own monthly meter, which is why the free tier feels open until one of them runs dry (as of July 2026):
- 1 million product analytics events. This is the one that ends free accounts, and it does it faster than people expect.
- 5,000 web session replays and 2,500 mobile replays.
- 1 million feature flag requests, 1,500 survey responses, 100,000 error tracking exceptions, 1 million data warehouse rows.
- Heatmap data is explicitly not billed, which is a small kindness worth knowing.
The behaviour at the ceiling is the part we like most and it is rare enough to state clearly: if you have never added a card, PostHog stops ingesting until the monthly reset rather than billing you by surprise. PostHog's own guidance is not to add one until you actually need more than the free allowance.
The costs that are not on the meter: this is the heaviest tool in the category, in both client bundle and interface, and the learning curve is real. Funnels, cohorts and retention reward people who already think in events, and if your question is which page got traffic, you are carrying a lot of machinery to answer it.
There is no first paid plan, only a per-unit meter
PostHog does not sell tiers, which removes the usual guessing about what a plan unlocks and replaces it with arithmetic. Past the free allowance you pay per unit: from $0.00005 per event, $0.005 per web recording, $0.0001 per flag request, $0.10 per survey response and $0.00037 per exception (as of July 2026). Those are starting rates on a volume-tiered scale, so the effective price per unit falls as you send more.
The consequence is that there is no cliff. A product that quietly grows past a million events pays a few dollars in the first month over, not $49, which is a much friendlier shape than most of this category offers. Enterprise sits above it with SSO, audit logs, custom SLAs and dedicated support, priced on request.
What people actually pay for is nearly always events, and the fix is usually configuration rather than budget. Autocapture is the setting to watch, because instrumenting everything is how a free account becomes a billed one in a week.
If you want the same philosophy with someone else's meter removed entirely, PostHog's repository is public but its self-hosting is not really supported, so that is not the answer here. Umami's free plan is.
Free
Free
All products available with a monthly free allowance on each one, no credit card required
1M events, 5,000 web replays, 2,500 mobile replays, 1M flag requests, 1,500 survey responses, 100K exceptions, 1M warehouse rows per month
Pay as you go
Free
Same products, billed per unit once you pass the free allowance, with unit prices that drop as volume rises
From $0.00005 per event, $0.005 per web recording, $0.0001 per flag request, $0.10 per survey response, $0.00037 per exception
Enterprise
Free
Adds SSO, audit logs, custom SLAs, and dedicated support, priced on request
As of July 2026. Check current pricing on the PostHog pricing page.
Is PostHog really free? Yes, until autocapture gets loud
A real free plan with a ceiling you will meet. Fine until you grow into it.
Yes, within limits, and the limits are large enough that a small product can live inside them for months. No card, no feature gates and a hard stop rather than a surprise invoice is about as honest as a metered free tier gets.
Who genuinely stays free: an early-stage product with real but modest traffic, a team using feature flags and surveys more than raw event volume, a marketing site that would need years to reach a million events. Who does not: any product instrumenting every interaction, because the event meter is spent by machinery rather than by people, and any team that needs the data on their own infrastructure, because self-hosting exists in name more than in practice.
The honest framing is that PostHog is an upgrade rather than a simplification. If GA4 felt shallow, this is where you go. If GA4 felt complicated, this will feel worse, and Umami's free plan answers the question you are actually asking.
Free PostHog alternatives has the ranked list, and the best free analytics tools covers the whole category.
Frequently asked questions about PostHog
What happens when I use up PostHog's free allowance?
If you have not added a card, PostHog stops ingesting until the next monthly reset rather than charging you (as of July 2026). If you have added one, you move onto pay-as-you-go pricing starting at $0.00005 per event. PostHog's own guidance is not to add a card until you need more than the free tier.
Is 1 million events a month a lot?
It depends entirely on what you instrument. For a marketing site it is enormous. For a product where every click, page view and API call is tracked, it can go in a fortnight, and one noisy autocapture setting is the usual cause (as of July 2026).
Can I self-host PostHog to avoid the limits?
Technically the code is there, but PostHog steers self-hosters towards Cloud and does not support small self-hosted deployments the way Matomo or Umami do. The license is also MIT only outside the ee/ directory. If self-hosting is your reason for shopping, pick a different tool on this list.
Where to go next
If this free plan does not stretch far enough, these are the tools we would look at instead.