PostHog, Mixpanel and Amplitude are the three product analytics platforms most teams shortlist once they need more than pageviews. All three track events, build funnels, retention and paths, record sessions and run feature flags and experiments. Where they really differ is how they bill, what each plan unlocks, where your data can live and who on your team will be comfortable using them.
On November 4, 2026 we read each vendor’s pricing page and documentation, ran the same event volumes through each vendor’s own price calculator, and captured each homepage. Every number below comes from those primary sources. For the wider market, including privacy-first and warehouse-native options, see our guide to product analytics tools. If you only need the two-way view, read our Mixpanel vs Amplitude comparison.
TLDR
Short answer: Pick PostHog if engineers own analytics and you want product analytics, session replay, feature flags, error tracking and SQL on one usage-based bill, with an open-source self-host option. Pick Mixpanel if product managers and marketers need fast self-serve reports and you want event pricing with a clear table up to 20 million events. Pick Amplitude if you want the largest free tier (2 million events a month) and the lowest list price of the three at 5 to 20 million events on its Plus plan.
- Free tier: PostHog 1M events, Mixpanel 1M events, Amplitude 2M events a month.
- Cost at 10M events a month, monthly billing: PostHog $324 (anonymous) to $1,080 (identified), Mixpanel $1,176, Amplitude Plus $720.
- Annual billing: Mixpanel drops to $840 and Amplitude Plus to $576 at 10M. PostHog has no annual commitment.
- Self-host: only PostHog, through an MIT-licensed hobby deploy that it does not support.
- HIPAA: PostHog signs a BAA from its $250 a month Boost package, Mixpanel on Enterprise only, Amplitude offers one but does not publish the plan.
In this guide
PostHog vs Mixpanel vs Amplitude at a glance
| PostHog | Mixpanel | Amplitude | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Engineering-led product teams that want one platform for analytics, replay, flags, errors and data | Product and growth teams that want self-serve reports | Product, growth and marketing teams that want analytics plus experimentation and guides |
| Plans | Free, then pay as you go, with Boost, Scale and Enterprise packages | Free, Growth, Enterprise | Free, Plus, Growth, Enterprise |
| Free every month | 1M events, 5K recordings, 1M flag requests, 100K exceptions, 1,500 survey responses | 1M events, 10K session replays, 1k experiment users, 10 active flags | 2M events, 10K session replays, unlimited flags, 1 active experiment |
| Paid entry | Pay as you go, $0 minimum | Growth from $0, first 1M events free | Plus from $0, first 2M events free, card required |
| Published volume range | Calculator for any volume | Up to 20M events on Growth | Up to 70M events on Plus |
| Seats and projects | Unlimited team members; 1 project free, 6 on pay as you go | Unlimited seats on all plans | Unlimited seats on all plans |
| Data history | 1 year free, 7 years paid | 2 years by default; custom on Enterprise | 1 year Free, 2 years Plus, unlimited Growth and Enterprise |
| Self-host | Yes, unsupported | No self-host plan listed | No self-host plan listed |
Sources: PostHog pricing, Mixpanel pricing, Amplitude pricing, read November 4, 2026.
Pricing: what 2M to 20M events a month actually costs
All three charge by event volume, but they count and discount differently, which is why most comparisons get the numbers wrong. We entered the same volumes into each vendor’s own calculator. Figures are analytics events only, before replay, flag or add-on charges.
| Events a month | PostHog anonymous | PostHog identified | Mixpanel Growth (monthly / yearly billing) | Amplitude Plus (monthly / annual billing) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1M | Free | Free | Free | Free |
| 2M | $50 | $248 | $259 / $185 | $0 / $0 |
| 5M | $153 | $560 | $613 / $438 | $281 / $225 |
| 10M | $324 | $1,080 | $1,176 / $840 | $720 / $576 |
| 20M | $643 | $1,927 | $2,289 / $1,635 | $1,575 / $1,260 |
Sources: PostHog pricing calculator, Mixpanel pricing, Amplitude Plus estimator, read November 4, 2026. All prices in US dollars per month.
How each vendor counts an event
- PostHog gives every organization 1M free events a month, then bills identified events (tied to a known person) at a higher rate than anonymous events. That is why the same 10M events cost $324 or $1,080. A group analytics add-on, used for account-level B2B reporting, adds $0.000071 per identified event. There are no minimums or annual commitments, and you can set a billing limit per product so a spike never overcharges you (PostHog pricing).
- Mixpanel bills events on Growth, with the first 1M free and a published table from 1.5M to 20M events. Paying yearly cuts the rate by roughly 29% at every tier we checked. Identity events such as $identify and $merge are not billable (Mixpanel pricing docs). Group Analytics and Data Pipelines are paid add-ons on Growth and Enterprise (Mixpanel pricing).
- Amplitude Plus starts at $0 with the first 2M events free and needs a credit card. Its estimator, behind the Estimate bill button on the pricing page, shows prices up to 70M events, with annual billing about 20% lower than monthly. Growth and Enterprise are custom quotes (Amplitude pricing).
Two caveats. First, event volume depends on how you instrument. Autocapture in any of the three tools can multiply your event count, so model costs on a sample of real traffic. Second, PostHog’s anonymous rate only helps if much of your traffic is logged out, such as marketing pages. For a logged-in SaaS app, use the identified column. Several comparisons we checked state that Amplitude does not publish volume pricing or that Mixpanel bills by monthly tracked users. On November 4, 2026 both claims were out of date. For Heap and Pendo costs too, see our product analytics pricing guide.
Startup programs
| PostHog | Mixpanel | Amplitude | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Offer | $50,000 in credits for 12 months | First year free on the Startup Plan, including 1 billion events and 1 million session replays | 1 year of the Growth plan free (Startup Scholarship) |
| Eligibility | Company under 2 years old, less than $5M raised | Founded less than 5 years ago, up to $8M in total funding | Fewer than 20 employees, less than $10M in funding |
Sources: PostHog for Startups, Mixpanel pricing FAQ, Amplitude pricing FAQ, read November 4, 2026.
Features compared: replay, flags, experiments, data and SQL
| Feature | PostHog | Mixpanel | Amplitude |
|---|---|---|---|
| Autocapture | Clicks, heatmaps, dead clicks, exceptions, sessions and web vitals | Pageviews, scrolls, forms, clicks, dead and rage clicks; web and mobile | Sessions, page views, clicks, forms, downloads and attribution on web |
| Session replay | 5K free recordings; kept 1 month free, 90 days paid | 10K free replays, 20K on Growth (up to 500K); kept 30 days | 10K free replays; 20K on Growth, 50K on Enterprise; kept 1 month |
| Feature flags | 1M free requests a month, then usage-based | 10 active flags free, 50 on Growth | Unlimited on every plan |
| Experiments | Billed with feature flags | 1k experiment users free, 5k on Growth | 1 active experiment on Free and Plus, results views on Growth and up |
| Heatmaps | Yes (autocapture) | Heatmaps and clickmaps on all plans | From Plus |
| Warehouse data in | Data warehouse syncs Stripe, Postgres, Salesforce, HubSpot and more | Warehouse Connectors for Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, Redshift and Postgres, from Growth | Snowflake and other warehouse imports |
| SQL | Built-in SQL on a ClickHouse dialect | Export via Data Pipelines add-on | Export to Snowflake and other destinations |
| Account-level analytics | Group analytics add-on | Group Analytics add-on | Accounts (Group) add-on for Growth and Enterprise |
Sources: PostHog autocapture, PostHog pricing, PostHog data warehouse, PostHog SQL, Mixpanel autocapture, Mixpanel pricing, Mixpanel Warehouse Connectors, Amplitude autocapture, Amplitude pricing, Amplitude Snowflake import, Amplitude Snowflake export, read November 4, 2026.
The practical split is this. PostHog behaves like a developer platform: you can query everything with SQL, join product events to Stripe or HubSpot data inside the tool, and add error tracking, surveys and logs on the same bill. Mixpanel is the most focused on fast, point-and-click reports, and it can mirror warehouse tables so edits and deletes in Snowflake or BigQuery flow through (Mixpanel docs). Note that warehouse events count toward your Mixpanel event limit (pricing). Amplitude bundles analytics with experimentation, web experiments, guides and surveys, and its older warehouse-native mode, which queried Snowflake in place, is now a legacy feature that new customers cannot use (Amplitude docs).
If experimentation is your main need rather than analytics, compare dedicated platforms first. Our Statsig vs GrowthBook breakdown covers two that pair well with any of these three.
Security, compliance and data residency
| PostHog | Mixpanel | Amplitude | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SSO | SSO enforcement in Boost ($250 a month); SAML in Scale ($750 a month) | SAML SSO and SCIM from Growth | SSO and project permissions from Growth; SCIM on Enterprise |
| HIPAA BAA | Boost, Scale or Enterprise package only | Enterprise only | Can sign a BAA; plan not published |
| Data region | US (Virginia) or EU (Frankfurt) cloud | US by default; EU or India residency chosen at project creation | EU data center option on every plan |
| Custom data retention | 7 years on paid plans by default | Enterprise only (default 2 years) | Unlimited data access on Growth and Enterprise |
Sources: PostHog platform packages, PostHog HIPAA docs, Mixpanel pricing, Mixpanel EU residency, Mixpanel autocapture, Amplitude pricing, Amplitude security and privacy, read November 4, 2026.
Two details trip teams up. Mixpanel’s EU residency must be selected when you create the project, and data only lands in the EU if your SDK sends to the EU ingestion URL (Mixpanel docs). And for regulated health data, the cheapest path to a signed BAA among the three is PostHog’s Boost package at $250 a month on top of usage (PostHog docs). Mixpanel also recommends turning autocapture off if you have a BAA (Mixpanel docs).
PostHog
| Best for | Engineering-led teams that want analytics, replay, flags, errors and SQL in one place |
| Entry point | Free; pay as you go with no minimum |
| Standout | Identified vs anonymous event pricing, built-in SQL and data warehouse, open source |
| Watch out for | Identified events cost 3 to 5 times as much as anonymous ones at our test volumes; SSO and BAA need a paid package |
PostHog describes itself as a single place to ingest, store and query product and company data (PostHog). Its source code is on GitHub, where the repository has about 40,600 stars and is MIT licensed outside its enterprise directory (GitHub). You can self-host with a Docker Compose hobby deploy, but PostHog says self-hosted deployments are officially unsupported, it does not do tagged releases, and you assume all the scaling and security risk (PostHog self-host docs).
- Strengths: the widest product suite on one bill, per-product billing limits, SQL access to everything, cheap anonymous events, 7-year retention on any paid plan.
- Limits: its strongest features (SQL, warehouse joins, self-hosting) are built for technical users, identified events at scale cost close to Mixpanel’s yearly rate, and SSO and BAA sit in paid packages.
Mixpanel
| Best for | Product managers and growth teams that want fast self-serve reports |
| Entry point | Free; Growth from $0 with a published table to 20M events |
| Standout | Unlimited seats, clear event pricing, Mirror sync from the warehouse |
| Watch out for | Highest list price of the three at our test volumes; HIPAA and custom retention on Enterprise only |
Mixpanel is the most transparent of the three on price: every Growth tier from 1.5M to 20M events is listed with monthly and yearly rates (Mixpanel pricing). Free and Growth both include unlimited seats, and the Free plan caps saved reports at 5 per seat. Warehouse Connectors are included on paid event-based plans when you update or renew (Mixpanel docs).
- Strengths: easy reports for non-analysts, unlimited seats, autocapture with privacy defaults, generous replay quota on Free.
- Limits: SQL work happens in your warehouse after export through the paid Data Pipelines add-on, Group Analytics is a paid add-on for B2B account reporting, and EU residency must be chosen up front.
Amplitude
| Best for | Product, growth and marketing teams that want analytics, experiments and in-app guides together |
| Entry point | Free with 2M events; Plus from $0 |
| Standout | Largest free tier and lowest list price at 5M to 20M events on Plus |
| Watch out for | Experiment results, SSO and unlimited history need custom-priced Growth or Enterprise |
Amplitude says every plan, including Free, includes the full platform with limited volumes: analytics, session replay, feature and web experimentation, guides and surveys, and its AI features (Amplitude pricing). The catch is in the plan table. Free and Plus allow one active experiment and do not include experiment results, Plus keeps 2 years of data, and SSO starts on Growth. Amplitude’s security page says it can enter a BAA but does not say which plan you need (Amplitude security).
- Strengths: 2M free events, published Plus pricing up to 70M events, EU data center on every plan, unlimited seats and flags.
- Limits: Growth and Enterprise are quote-only, Plus caps experimentation, and the warehouse-native mode is closed to new customers.
Which should you pick?
- Pick PostHog if developers will own the setup, you want replay, flags, errors and SQL on one usage bill, much of your traffic is anonymous, or you need a HIPAA BAA without an enterprise contract.
- Pick Mixpanel if non-technical teammates will build most reports, you want a price table you can budget against without a sales call, and you can live without SQL inside the tool.
- Pick Amplitude if you want to stay free for longer (2M events), you sit between 5M and 20M identified events and want the lowest list price, or you expect to need enterprise governance later.
- Pick something else if you mainly need a GA4 replacement for marketing sites. See our list of Google Analytics 4 alternatives. For app-first teams, compare our picks for mobile app analytics platforms.
Before you commit, do what practitioners in a recent r/analytics thread recommend: write down 20 to 30 core events, send the same events to each tool on a trial, and see which one answers three real questions your team asks every week. Our guide to marketing analytics covers how product data fits into wider reporting.
How we compared these tools
On November 4, 2026 we read the pricing pages, FAQs and plan tables for PostHog, Mixpanel and Amplitude, plus their documentation on autocapture, data warehouse sync, SQL, self-hosting, data residency and HIPAA. We entered 2M, 5M, 10M and 20M events into PostHog’s calculator (identified and anonymous separately) and Amplitude’s Plus estimator (monthly and annual), and read Mixpanel’s published Growth table. We captured each homepage the same day. We did not instrument one product in all three tools, so we make no claim about data accuracy or query speed, and real bills will differ with add-ons, replay volume and discounts.
Frequently asked questions
Is PostHog cheaper than Mixpanel?
For anonymous events, yes by a wide margin: 10M anonymous events cost $324 a month on PostHog against $1,176 on Mixpanel with monthly billing. For identified events the gap narrows: 10M identified events cost $1,080 on PostHog, and Mixpanel drops to $840 if you pay yearly.
Is PostHog cheaper than Amplitude?
It depends on event type. At 10M events a month, PostHog costs $324 for anonymous events and $1,080 for identified events, while Amplitude Plus costs $720 with monthly billing or $576 billed annually. Amplitude is also free up to 2M events, against 1M on PostHog.
Which has the best free plan: PostHog, Mixpanel or Amplitude?
Amplitude has the most free events at 2M a month. Mixpanel and Amplitude each include 10K session replays, against 5K recordings on PostHog. PostHog gives the most other products for free, including 1M feature flag requests, 100K exceptions and 1,500 survey responses a month.
Can you self-host PostHog, Mixpanel or Amplitude?
Only PostHog. It offers a free Docker Compose hobby deploy under an MIT license, but says self-hosted deployments are officially unsupported and it gives no guarantees. Mixpanel and Amplitude list only cloud plans.
Which tools sign a HIPAA BAA?
PostHog signs a BAA for PostHog Cloud customers on its Boost ($250 a month), Scale or Enterprise package. Mixpanel includes HIPAA tools and BAAs on Enterprise only. Amplitude says it can enter a BAA but does not publish which plan qualifies.
Do Mixpanel and Amplitude charge per user or per event?
Both publish event-based pricing. Mixpanel Growth bills events from 1.5M to 20M a month, and Amplitude Plus bills events up to 70M a month. Both include unlimited seats.
Which tool lets you query data with SQL?
PostHog, which has built-in SQL based on ClickHouse and can join product events with synced Stripe, Postgres, Salesforce or HubSpot data. Mixpanel and Amplitude export data to warehouses such as Snowflake, where you can run SQL.
Do these tools offer startup discounts?
Yes. PostHog gives $50,000 in credits for 12 months to companies under 2 years old with less than $5M raised. Mixpanel gives eligible startups their first year free. Amplitude’s Startup Scholarship gives one year of Growth free to companies with fewer than 20 employees and less than $10M in funding.
