In-depth: PostHog vs Mixpanel

Mar 11, 2025

How is PostHog different?

1. We're an all-in-one platform

PostHog puts all your data in one place and combines it with every tool you need to build a successful product. This means:

  • Product analytics for analyzing behavior, funnels, activation, and retention
  • Web analytics for tracking your marketing website and content
  • Session replay for observing how people use your product and diagnosing problems
  • Feature flags for testing in production and shipping new features
  • Experiments for verifying improvements to your product and website
  • Error tracking for monitoring exceptions and problems in your code
  • Surveys for capturing user feedback, tracking NPS, and booking interviews
  • A built-in data warehouse for analyzing your business and event data together

In other words, it's everything you need in one app with a single login and contract. A genuine single source of truth for your product and customer data.

2. We build for developers

This means you get support from the engineers who actually build the product, extensively documented APIs, and a SQL query builder, so you can analyze data how you want. We're open source, so you can inspect our source code and vote on what we should build via our public roadmap.

3. We promise transparent and cheap pricing (forever)

We default to charging as little as possible while still making a profit – we also have a generous free tier on all our products. We can do this because we're efficient. We don't splurge on outbound sales, or D-list comedians to host an annual convention you'll never attend. Our pricing is also 100% transparent.

Comparing PostHog and Mixpanel

As an all-in-one-platform, PostHog isn't just an alternative to Mixpanel, it can also replace tools like Hotjar for session replay and surveys, and LaunchDarkly for experiments and feature flags.

Platform

PostHogMixpanel

Product analytics

Track events and conversion, analyze user behavior

Web analytics

Easy to use analytics for marketing websites

Session replay

Watch real users use your product, diagnose bugs

Feature flags

Roll out features safely, toggle features for cohorts or individuals

Experiments

Run tests on new features, optimize conversion funnels

Analysis only

Surveys

Collect and analyze feedback, run NPS and PMF surveys

Error tracking

Track and monitor errors and exceptions in your code

LLM observability

Gather usage and performance data for your AI and LLM product

Data pipelines

Export and import data in warehouses

Customer data platform

Sync customer data between third-party tools

Data warehouse

Centralized data storage for business intelligence

Group analytics

Track metrics at a company and account level

Managed reverse proxy

Send events from your own domain, managed by us

Open source

Inspect and contribute code

Libraries only

Good to know: If we don't have something you want now, there's a good chance we're planning on building it already. Visit our public roadmap to see what we're considering, and vote for features and products you're interested in. We ship fast!


Product analytics

PostHog and Mixpanel offer broadly similar product analytics features, including the ability to create insights using natural language.

PostHogMixpanel

AI insight builder

Create insights and chat to your data using AI

Alerts

Get notifications when insights fall outside set thresholds

Autocapture

Capture frontend clicks and events automatically

Cohorts

Combine users based on properties and events for group analysis

Correlation analysis

Suggested events and properties that lead to success or failure

Clickmaps

See what elements people click on in your app

Dashboards

Combine insights into shareable dashboards

Funnels

Track users through a sequence of events

Formulas

Use formulas to calculate unique insights

Graphs and trends

Build custom insights and visualizations

Heatmaps

Visualize where users click in your app

Lifecycle analysis

Understand who is dormant, churning, and thriving

Retention

Visualize retention for users and groups

Scrollmaps

Visualize how far users scroll in your app

Stickiness insights

See how many times users perform an event in a period of time.

SQL query editor

Write your own queries in SQL

User paths

Track user flows and where they drop-off

Good to know: Our generous free tier means every PostHog customer gets 1 million analytics events for free every single month. More than 90% of companies use PostHog for free, and our startup program comes with $50,000 in credit.


Website analytics

PostHog is also a powerful alternative to Google Analytics that bridges the gap between lightweight tools like Plausible, and expensive enterprise platforms like Adobe Analytics.

PostHogMixpanel

Bounce rate

See the percentage of users that leave after one pageview

Conversions

Track actions you want users to take

Clickmaps

See what elements people click on in pages

Custom channel types

Create custom channel types by defining rules that match incoming events

Entry and exit paths

See the pages users first visit and the last ones before they leave

Heatmaps

Visualize where users click on your website

Outbound clicks

See the links that take users away

Pageviews

Track visitors and their views

Scrollmaps

Visualize how far users scroll on your website

Sessions

Track unique sessions and their durations

Traffic breakdown

See where your visitors and conversions are coming from

UTM tracking

Track marketing campaigns with UTM tags

Web vitals

Monitor the performance of your website

Good to know: You can use the PostHog toolbar to view clickmaps, heatmaps, and scrollmaps for your website. You can also use the toolbar to turn feature flags on and off, debug events, and create no-code experiments.


Session replay

PostHog's session replay can be used by anyone, but it includes numerous developer-level features that make it useful for engineers, product managers, and support engineers who want to diagnose issues, and identify potential improvements.

PostHogMixpanel

Canvas recording

Capture canvas elements in your app

Chat with your recordings

Discover useful recordings using AI-powered chat

Console logs

Capture extra content from a user's browser

Conditional recording

Only capture the sessions you want

DOM explorer

Explore an interactive snapshot of replays

Export recordings

Save important recordings offline

Event timeline

See events triggered during recordings

Iframe recording

Record embedded iframes

Identity detection

Link recordings to user IDs

Minimum duration

Only record sessions longer than the minimum duration

Performance monitoring

Track network events within a session

Playlists

Sort recordings into static and dynamic playlists

Privacy masking

Censor personal information from playback

Record via feature flag

Only record sessions for users that have the flag enabled

Sample recorded sessions

Limit the percentage of sessions recorded

Library support for replays

Mixpanel only recently introduced session replay, so its mobile SDKs are still in development. PostHog has wide support for all popular web and mobile SDKs.

PostHogMixpanel

JavaScript (Web)

Capture recordings using JavaScript web snippet

iOS (Swift)

Record iOS app recordings

Closed Beta

Android (Kotlin)

Record Android app recordings

React Native

Record sessions in React Native mobile apps

Flutter

Record sessions in Flutter mobile apps

Wireframe mode

Low performance impact mobile recordings using wireframes

Screenshot mode

Mobile session reconstructions using app screenshots

Good to know: You can use Max AI in PostHog to chat with your recordings using natural language – e.g. "show me sessions over 5 minutes long" or "show me sessions from users in Belgium". You can also ask Max AI to summarize what happened during a session.


Feature flags

Feature flags make it easy to roll out features to specific users or groups, and safely test in production. You can also use them control access to beta features, and make scheduled changes to your app.

PostHogMixpanel

Boolean flags

Simple flags returning true or false

Bootstrapping

Flags available on frontend application load

Custom targeting

Target users based on user properties, custom contexts

Early access

Manage betas, test features

Environments

Manage flags for dev, staging, prod

Partial

Flag history

Timeline of flag changes and who made them

Local evaluation

Store flag definitions locally

Multivariate flags

Flags with multiple customizable values

Payloads

Flags with string, number, or JSON payloads

Percentage rollouts

Target percentages of a group

Remote config

Pass config without making code changes or redeploying your app

Scheduling

Schedule flags to turn on or off

Good to know: Our feature flags are tightly integrated with other tools, meaning you can target session replays, surveys and other features using existing feature flags. See benefits of feature flags for more.


Experiments

Experiments in PostHog are billed with feature flags.

You can't run A/B tests using Mixpanel, but you can analyze the results of experiments created using third-party testing tools.

PostHogMixpanel

Built-in A/B testing

Setup and run A/B tests using feature flags

Experiment analysis

Analyze results of A/B tests

No-code experiments

Modify your website and run experiments without writing code.

Beta

Custom goals

Customize metrics that a test tracks

Secondary metrics

Monitor impact on unrelated metrics

Statistical significance

Automatically checks for statistical significance

Split testing

Split participants into groups

Multivariate (A/B/n) testing

Test multiple variants of a change

Recommended run time

Automatically calculate the recommended run time and sample size

Dynamic cohorts

Add new users to an experiment automatically by setting a user property

Holdout testing

Withhold multiple features to measure cumulative impact

Statistics engine

How the results of an experiment are calculated

BayesianFrequentist

Good to know: You can evaluate the results of experiments using events tracked using PostHog, or event tables stored in our data warehouse. This means you can include all kinds of business event data as primary or secondary metrics in your experiments.


Surveys

You can't build a successful product on data alone. Surveys are useful for gathering feedback and booking interviews, notifying users of changes, and keeping track of customer satisfaction metrics.

PostHogMixpanel

AI response summaries

Automated summary of user feedback

API mode

Get survey details via the API and display however you like

Cohort targeting

Show surveys to predefined static list of users

Custom HTML

Add custom HTML to your survey text

Custom colors & positioning

Customize the colors of your surveys to match your brand

Conditional questions

Define next step based on question response

Display based on device

Show surveys only on desktop, tablet or mobile

Event-based triggers

Show a survey whenever users trigger specific event

Feedback widget

Continuously collect feedback via button CTA

Feature flag targeting widget

Continuously collect feedback via button CTA

Multiple choice

Select more than one answer from multiple

NPS surveys

Net Promoter Score survey template

Open text

Free text answers and feedback

PMF surveys

Product-market fit survey template

Product rating

Rank using emojis or number

Single choice

Select one answer from multiple

User property targeting

Display surveys based on user properties (e.g. country, email, etc.)

Good to know: Surveys are great for tracking customer satisfaction scores like Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer satisfaction (CSAT), and customer effort score (CES). We include survey templates for all these and more. Read our guide comparing NPS, CSAT, and CES to see which survey type you should use and when.


Price comparison

PostHog and Mixpanel both charge based on the number of events ingested, however:

  • Mixpanel charges the same for events generated by identified and anonymous users.
  • PostHog charges up to 80% less for events generated by anonymous users.

Anonymous events are the default event type in PostHog, so you only get charged for identified events when you call identify in your code – see our anonymous vs identified events explainer for more on this.

As the below table shows, however, PostHog is cheaper than Mixpanel even if you're only tracking identified users.

Monthly eventsPostHog (100% identified events)Mixpanel
0-1 millionFreeFree
3 million$352/month$378/month
5 million$560/month$612/month
10 million$1,080/month$1,465/month
15 million$1,600/month$1,722/month
20 million$1,927/month$2,289/month

And it becomes even cheaper if 20% of your events are from anonymous users, which is typical for many of our customers.

Monthly eventsPostHog (20% anonymous events)Mixpanel
0-1 millionFreeFree
3 million$310/month$378/month
5 million$490/month$612/month
10 million$940/month$1,465/month
15 million$1,391/month$1,722/month
20 million$1,783/month$2,289/month

We recommend tracking your marketing website and product in a single project, and you can track all events on your website anonymously to save money.

Monthly eventsPostHog (100% anonymous events)Mixpanel
0-1 millionFreeFree
3 million$84/month$378/month
5 million$153/month$612/month
10 million$324/month$1,465/month
15 million$496/month$1,722/month
20 million$643/month$2,289/month

Good to know: Web analytics makes it easy to track and monitor high-level website metrics, like page views, bounce rate, and the top sources of traffic, but you can still create custom product analytics insights and dashboards using anonymous events. See our web vs product analytics explainer for more.


Data integrations

PostHog has a built-in data warehouse, so you can import and query data directly from our other sources like Stripe and Zendesk, or from an existing warehouse.

Mixpanel relies on data warehouse connectors to combine customer and product data. This means you don't import data directly from third-party tools. You need to get them into a third-party warehouse and then import that data into Mixpanel for analysis.

PostHogMixpanel

Data warehouse

Query customer and product data together

Warehouse import

Import data from third-party warehouse

Stripe

Stripe customer data connector

Zendesk

Send and receive data from Zendesk

Hubspot

Send and receive data from Hubspot

Sentry

Send and receive data from Sentry

Segment

Send events via Segment

Rudderstack

Send events via Rudderstack

Zapier

Trigger Zapier automations

Customer.io

Messaging and marketing automation

Intercom

Messaging and marketing automation

See our docs for full lists of destinations and data warehouse sources.

Security and compliance

PostHogMixpanel

User privacy options

Anonymize users, drop personal data

History, audit logs

Manage and view flag edits and related users

GDPR-ready

Can be compliant with GDPR

HIPAA-ready

Can be compliant with HIPAA

SOC 2

SOC 2 security certification

2FA

Enforce login with two-factor authentication

SAML/SSO

Use SAML or single sign-on authentication

EnterpriseEnterprise

Good to know: A Business Associate Agreement for HIPAA compliance is available for customers with our Teams add-on. The add-on also includes our managed reverse proxy, priority support, SSO and 2FA enforcement, numerous collaboration features, and support multiple environments within projects so you can separate dev and production data, but use the same insights and dashboards across them all.


Frequently asked questions

Can I migrate my data from Mixpanel to PostHog?

Yes. See our Mixpanel to PostHog migration guide.

Can PostHog replace Google Analytics?

Yes. PostHog can replace Google Analytics for many use cases – our marketing team uses PostHog, for example. You can also integrate PostHog into your website using Google Tag Manager.

See our comparison of PostHog and Google Analytics 4 and An intro to PostHog for Google Analytics users for more.

What's included in PostHog's free tier?

Every PostHog user gets a generous amount of free usage each month:

 Free usage per month
Product analytics1 million events
Data warehouse1 million synced rows
Session replay5,000 recordings
Feature flags1 million API requests
A/B testing1 million API requests
Surveys250 responses

You'll never pay anything if you stay within these limits and you can set billing limits to avoid surprise bills.

A full breakdown and pricing calculator is on our pricing page.

Can I use PostHog with a CDP? (Segment, Rudderstack, etc.)

Yes. See Using PostHog with a CDP in our docs.

What about ad blockers?

We recommend all users deploy a reverse proxy, which enables you to send events to PostHog Cloud using your own domain. Events sent from your own domain and are less likely to be intercepted by tracking blockers, ensuring you capture the best data possible.

We make this super easy by offering a managed reverse proxy – a no code solution that takes minutes to setup. We also have reverse proxy setup guides for AWS Cloudfront, Caddy, Cloudflare, Netlify, Vercel, and more in our docs.

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