PostHog vs Mixpanel
PostHog and Mixpanel compared on event pricing (anonymous vs identified), free tiers, session replay, feature flags, self-hosting, data retention and SSO, using each vendor's current 2026 pricing.
Quick Answer
PostHog is the pick for engineering-led teams that want analytics, session replay, feature flags, error tracking and a data warehouse in one usage-billed tool, and it is far cheaper for anonymous traffic. Mixpanel is the pick for product and growth teams who want the most polished analysis UI, and on annual billing it is cheaper than PostHog when nearly every event is tied to an identified user.
Last updated October 18, 2026. Uses PostHog's current per-event and identified-event rate tables and free allowances, and Mixpanel's October 2026 Free/Growth/Enterprise plans and Growth event tiers.
| Feature | PostHog | Mixpanel |
|---|---|---|
| Free Events / Month | 1M | 1M |
| Free Session Replays / Month | 5K | 10K |
| Paid Pricing Model | Per event, tiered; identified events cost extra | Event-volume tiers (annual or monthly) |
| ~2M Identified Events / Month | ~$248/month (all identified); ~$50 if anonymous | $185/month annual, $259 monthly |
| ~20M Events / Month | ~$643 anonymous / ~$1,928 identified | $1,635/month annual, $2,289 monthly |
| Feature Flags | 1M requests free, then per request | 10 active (Free), 50 (Growth) |
| Self-Hosting | MIT Docker Compose, unsupported, free features only | No self-hosted plan listed |
| Event Data Retention | 1 year (Free), 7 years (pay-as-you-go) | 2 years default; custom on Enterprise |
| Team Seats | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| SAML SSO | Paid platform package | Included on Growth |
Pricing at a glance
Entry prices and free tiers as listed on TechLogHub for Mixpanel; the other tool is not listed in the directory yet.
| Tool | Free tier | Starts at | Billing | Plans listed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mixpanel pricing | Yes | — | — | Free · Growth · Enterprise |
Prices as written by the maker on their listing; medians and context on each tool's pricing page. See the 2026 pricing report for the directory-wide picture.
PostHog
Open-source product platform combining product and web analytics, session replay, feature flags and experiments, error tracking, surveys, a data warehouse and LLM analytics, billed per product on usage.
Pros
- Generous free tier on every product: 1M events, 5K recordings, 1M flag requests, 100K exceptions and 1,500 survey responses per month
- Anonymous events are cheap: $0.00005 per event from 1M to 2M, falling to $0.000009 above 250M
- One SDK and one bill for analytics, replay, flags, experiments, error tracking and surveys, replacing several tools
- Pay-as-you-go keeps event data for 7 years and lets you set per-product billing limits
- Unlimited team members on every plan
- MIT-licensed Docker Compose deployment for teams that must self-host small volumes
Cons
- Identified events carry a person-profiles surcharge ($0.000198 per event from 1M to 2M), so fully identified traffic costs about five times the anonymous rate at that tier
- Per-product usage billing is harder to forecast than a single event tier
- Self-hosting is unsupported, free-plan features only, and PostHog suggests it only below roughly 300K events per month
- SSO, audit logs and custom roles are a separately priced platform package with no public price
- Free plan is limited to 1 project and 1 month of recording retention
Best For
Engineering-led startups and SaaS teams that want analytics, replay, flags and error tracking in one tool, especially with lots of anonymous or marketing-site traffic.
Mixpanel
Event-based product analytics platform focused on funnels, retention, flows and cohorts, with session replay, experiments, feature flags and warehouse connectors, sold as Free, Growth and Enterprise plans.
Mixpanelon TechLogHub: reviews, pricing & alternativesPros
- Free plan includes 1M events and 10K session replays per month, double PostHog's free replay allowance
- Predictable event-tier pricing: Growth is $185/month for 2M events and $1,635/month for 20M on annual billing
- Growth includes SAML SSO/SCIM, warehouse connectors and multi-touch attribution
- Unlimited seats on every plan, plus unlimited saved reports and cohorts on Growth
- Mature, analyst-friendly UI for funnels, retention and flows that non-engineers pick up quickly
- Startup Program gives eligible startups their first year free with 1 billion events
Cons
- Monthly billing costs about 40% more than annual ($259 vs $185 per month at 2M events)
- Free plan caps saved reports at 5 per seat and excludes group analytics, data pipelines and warehouse connectors
- Group analytics, data pipelines and metric trees are paid add-ons even on Growth
- No self-hosted edition among its published Free, Growth and Enterprise plans
- Growth tops out at 20M events per month before Enterprise pricing
Best For
Product, growth and analytics teams that want best-in-class funnel and retention analysis with predictable annual pricing on identified-user data.
What the bill looks like: anonymous versus identified events
Both tools give you the first 1M events free every month, but they price beyond that differently. Mixpanel Growth sells event tiers: 1.5M events for $100 per month on annual billing, 2M for $185, 3M for $270 and 20M for $1,635, with monthly billing roughly 40% higher ($140, $259, $378 and $2,289). PostHog bills every event at a base rate that falls with volume, from $0.00005 per event between 1M and 2M down to $0.000009 above 250M. Events tied to a person profile (identified events) add a second charge, from $0.000198 per event between 1M and 2M, falling to $0.000001 above 250M. PostHog's docs say anonymous events can be up to 4x cheaper because identified ones require expensive joins against person data. Worked through: 2M fully identified events cost about $248 per month on PostHog versus $185 on Mixpanel annual or $259 monthly. The same 2M events sent anonymously cost $50 on PostHog. At 20M events, PostHog is roughly $643 anonymous or $1,928 fully identified, against Mixpanel's $1,635 annual or $2,289 monthly. So the real question is how much of your traffic needs a person profile. Marketing-site and logged-out traffic favours PostHog heavily; a B2B app where everything happens after login favours Mixpanel on an annual contract.
One platform versus a focused analytics tool
PostHog's pitch is consolidation. One SDK and one bill cover product and web analytics, session replay, feature flags, experiments, error tracking, surveys, data warehouse sources, data pipelines, workflows, logs and LLM analytics, each with its own free allowance. For a small team that would otherwise pay for an analytics tool, a replay tool, a flags service and an error tracker, that can remove three vendors. The cost is complexity: each product is metered separately, so you set billing limits per product to avoid surprises. Mixpanel stays focused on analysis. It has session replay (10K free, 20K included on Growth), experiments and feature flags (10 active flags on Free, 50 on Growth), but its depth is in funnels, retention, flows, cohorts, attribution and governance features such as data standards and event approval on Enterprise. Its warehouse connectors on Growth let you analyse data that already lives in Snowflake or BigQuery without duplicating pipelines. If your analytics users are engineers who also want to ship flags and debug errors from the same place, PostHog fits. If your analytics users are PMs and analysts building dashboards for the company, Mixpanel's interface and report model are the stronger fit.
Self-hosting, retention and access control
PostHog offers a free Docker Compose deployment under the MIT licence, but its docs are blunt about the limits: self-hosted instances get no support, only free-plan features are available, Kubernetes deployments are no longer supported, and PostHog suggests self-hosting only if you expect to stay under roughly 300K events, 1K recordings and 300K flag calls per month. You need a VM comparable to 4 vCPU and 16 GB RAM. Treat it as an option for data-residency-constrained hobby projects, not a way to avoid the cloud bill at scale. Mixpanel's published plans include no self-hosted edition. Retention favours PostHog's paid plan. PostHog Free keeps events for 1 year and recordings for 1 month; pay-as-you-go keeps events for 7 years and recordings for 90 days. Mixpanel's default data retention is 2 years across plans, with custom policies on Enterprise, and replay retention is 30 days on Free and Growth. For access control, Mixpanel includes SAML SSO and SCIM on Growth, which makes it easier to pass a security review at mid-market size. PostHog sells SSO, audit logs, custom roles and project permissions as a platform package without a public price, so budget a sales conversation if you need them.
Switching costs and how to decide
Both products are event-based, so the tracking plan you design (event names, properties, user identification) carries across. The migration cost is in the SDK calls, the dashboards you rebuild, and any flags or replays you would need to move. Teams switching to PostHog for consolidation also retire the separate flags or replay tool, which is where the savings usually come from. A practical way to decide is to export a month of event volume and split it into identified and anonymous events. If most of it is anonymous, PostHog's base rate makes it the cheaper choice by a wide margin. If almost all of it is identified and you will sign an annual contract, price Mixpanel Growth first. Then check who will live in the tool day to day: engineers tend to prefer PostHog's breadth and SQL access, while product teams tend to prefer Mixpanel's report builder. Early-stage companies should look at both startup offers before deciding on price alone. Mixpanel's Startup Program gives companies founded under 5 years ago with up to $8M in funding a free first year with 1 billion events and 1 million session replays, which can outweigh list-price differences for the first twelve months.
Verdict
Choose PostHog if engineers own analytics, you also want session replay, feature flags, experiments and error tracking without buying separate tools, or a large share of your events are anonymous (marketing sites, logged-out funnels), where PostHog costs a fraction of Mixpanel. Choose Mixpanel if product managers and analysts are the main users, almost all events belong to identified users, and you can commit to annual billing: at 2M identified events it is $185 a month against roughly $248 on PostHog, and the gap holds near 20M. If you must self-host, PostHog is the only one of the two with a published self-hosted deployment; Mixpanel's Free, Growth and Enterprise plans list none.