PostHog vs Umami (2026)
A side-by-side comparison of features, pricing, licensing, and self-hosting.
Bottom line: choose PostHog if you want product analytics, session replay, and experimentation in one platform; choose Umami if you just need simple, privacy-friendly website traffic analytics with the lightest possible footprint.
PostHog is genuinely broad — event tracking, funnels, session replay, feature flags, and A/B testing replace parts of Google Analytics, Hotjar, and LaunchDarkly in one MIT-licensed tool, with a generous free cloud tier (1 million events/month). Self-hosting at real scale requires Kafka, ClickHouse, and Redis, which is a meaningfully bigger operational commitment than a single-purpose analytics tool, and it's overkill for teams that only need basic traffic reporting.
Umami does one thing — pageview and traffic analytics — and does it with almost no operational weight: MIT licensed, deployable to Vercel or any Node host in minutes, with no pageview caps or feature gates on the self-hosted version. It has no funnels, no session replay, and no experimentation features, and its own hosted cloud product is less mature than some competitors' offerings.
For product teams that need behavioral analytics and experimentation alongside traffic data, PostHog's breadth is worth the extra ops overhead. For anyone who just wants clean, private traffic numbers with minimal setup, Umami is the simpler and lighter tool.
PostHog
Open-source product analytics suite with events, funnels, session replay, feature flags, and A/B tests.
Pros
- Single platform replaces GA, Hotjar, LaunchDarkly, and parts of Segment
- Generous free cloud tier — 1 million events per month at no cost
- Full self-host option with no event-volume or feature restrictions
Cons
- Self-hosting at scale requires Kafka, ClickHouse, and Redis — significant ops burden
- Cloud pricing grows quickly for high-volume products beyond the free tier
Umami
Simple, self-hostable analytics with MIT licensing, no pageview caps, and a free cloud tier.
Pros
- MIT license — fully free to self-host with no feature gates or pageview limits
- Deploys in minutes to Vercel or any Node host without operational complexity
- Clean, minimal UI that is easy to hand off to non-technical teammates
Cons
- No native funnels, session replay, or A/B testing capabilities
- Cloud product at umami.is is less mature than Plausible's hosted offering
PostHog vs Umami: spec comparison
| Spec | PostHog | Umami |
|---|---|---|
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Starting price | Free / self-host | Free / self-host |
| Pricing model | open-core | open-source |
| Language | Python | TypeScript |
| Platforms | web, ios, android, self-hosted | web, self-hosted |
| Founded | 2020 | 2020 |
| GitHub stars | 35,235 | 37,408 |
FAQ
PostHog vs Umami: which is better?
Neither is universally better. PostHog (Free / self-host) suits Product and engineering teams that want unified analytics, session replay, and experimentation in a single self-hostable platform.; Umami (Free / self-host) suits Developers who want fully free, MIT-licensed analytics with no per-site pricing, no feature caps, and complete data ownership.. The spec table above breaks down the differences.
Is PostHog or Umami cheaper?
Both start at the same price (Free / self-host).