Our judgment on PostHog vs Amplitude: PostHog is an all-in-one platform priced per product on usage, with an EU cloud in Frankfurt and an MIT-licensed self-host option that its own docs call officially unsupported. Amplitude is a hosted analytics product with a larger free event allowance and an EU data centre at AWS Frankfurt. Neither forces a self-hosting decision unless you pick PostHog's.
Every price, limit and plan feature below is as listed in October 2026 (checked 18 October 2026) on each vendor's own pricing or docs page. Neither pricing page shows a date, so check again before you sign. Analytics is one of several stack calls a founder makes early, and Hire developers by tech stack: rates, vetting and interview guides covers the others.
Which one for your situation?
These picks are judgment, not measurements.
| Situation | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A customer requires EU-resident analytics data | Either, after checking | Both vendors offer an EU region; Amplitude's EU page lists Analytics and Experiment as supported, so check anything else you'd use |
| PM or analyst-led team that wants reports and a big free event allowance | Amplitude | Free plan includes 2M events a month; PostHog's free tier is 1M events |
| Developer-led team that wants replay, flags, experiments, surveys and error tracking in one tool | PostHog | All of them sit on PostHog's pricing page, each with its own free allowance |
| You want to run it on your own infrastructure | PostHog, with eyes open | Amplitude's pages mention no self-hosting; PostHog's docs say self-hosted deployments are officially unsupported |
What do the free tiers and paid plans include today?
PostHog's pricing page lists a monthly free tier per product: 1M analytics events, 5K session recordings, 1M feature flag requests, 1,500 survey responses and 100K error tracking exceptions. It adds unlimited team members, 1 project and 1-year data retention. Moving to pay-as-you-go raises that to 6 projects and 7-year retention. PostHog says a card is needed only for usage beyond the free limits, advanced features or extra projects. The page also mentions discounts for startups and non-profits.
Amplitude's pricing page lists a Free plan with 2M events a month, and 10,000 session replay sessions. Plus "Starts at $0", with the first 2M events a month free and up to 700K monthly tracked users (MTU) or 70M events. Growth and Enterprise are custom. Replay sessions run 10,000, 10,000, 20,000 and 50,000 across Free, Plus, Growth and Enterprise. Feature flags are unlimited on all plans. Active experiments are 1, 1, 2 and 2 across the same four plans, and A/B/n testing is not included on Free or Plus.
The units don't line up. PostHog bills each product on its own usage meter. Amplitude counts events first and then MTU, which its pricing page defines as "a unique user who triggers one or more events in your product within a calendar month". We won't give a cost at 100,000 users, because neither page we read lists per-unit paid rates in its text, and any number we gave would be a guess.
Be careful with third-party comparison pages. Several comparison pages still quote older Amplitude free-tier limits; the current pricing page shows Free at 2M events and 10,000 replay sessions. If a page you're reading doesn't match the vendor's, trust the vendor and check the date.
Where is your EU users' data stored?
Most comparison pages we read skip this question, and it's one a customer's procurement team will ask.
PostHog Cloud has a US and an EU region. PostHog's GDPR documentation says the EU cloud is "hosted on servers based in Frankfurt" and states: "We recommend using PostHog Cloud EU for GDPR compliance." It also says: "You should not transfer EU users' personal data outside the EU." PostHog's GDPR guide also recommends anonymizing EU user data if you stay on the US cloud. Organisations on the EU cloud get IP capture off by default.
Amplitude's EU Data Centre page describes a "Complete solution of Amplitude Analytics at AWS Frankfurt", covering ingestion, storage, query and visualization. The same page says: "The EU Data Centre currently supports Amplitude Analytics and Experiment." Session Replay and Guides & Surveys aren't on that list, so check with Amplitude before assuming they run in the EU. Its pricing page marks "EU data center option" as included on all four plans.
Is a vendor-hosted EU region enough? Our judgment: it settles where the stored data sits, and nothing more. Who can access it, which sub-processors touch it and what the contract says are questions for your DPO, and none of this is legal advice. PostHog's own guide says as much: "This guide is not legal advice." For a contrast in the same category, Clerk has no EU region while Auth0 lets you pick one, which is the kind of difference you'd rather find before you integrate.
Can you self-host, and what does the licence mean?
PostHog says you can run a free hobby deployment with Docker Compose, under the MIT licence. Its self-hosting docs are blunt about the rest: "self-hosted deployments are officially unsupported." They also say: "We don't offer customer support for product, infrastructure, or other questions for self-hosted instances."
Three more details from the same docs page. Paid-plan features are available only on Cloud. Kubernetes is no longer supported for new installs. And PostHog says it doesn't publish CVEs and doesn't do tagged releases for self-hosted PostHog, so there's no versioned release to pin; in our reading, you'd track the latest image and patch against that.
Amplitude's pages describe a hosted service and mention no self-hosting option. That isn't the same as saying there isn't one, so ask if it matters to you.
Our judgment: self-hosting trades vendor fees for operations work, and for PostHog you'd do that work without vendor help. Some comparison pages present self-hosting as a plain option and leave out the unsupported status. If your reason is cost, price the engineer hours that upgrades, backups and incident response will take, then compare with the cloud bill. If your reason is data residency, PostHog Cloud EU is the route its own docs recommend.
What do you get beyond analytics, and how do you get data out?
PostHog's pricing page lists session replay, feature flags, experiments, surveys and error tracking next to analytics, each with its own free allowance. Amplitude's pricing page lists Session Replay, Guides & Surveys and Feature Experimentation, with the replay, flag and experiment limits given above.
On exports, PostHog's batch exports documentation lists these destinations: Azure Blob Storage, BigQuery, Databricks, S3, Snowflake, Postgres and Redshift. We didn't read an Amplitude page that lists export destinations, so we won't compare them. Ask Amplitude for the destination list and the export format in writing, the same way you would for any vendor that holds your event history.
Where your analytics data lands once it leaves the tool is its own decision, and where your analytics data lands in a warehouse compares two of the destinations PostHog lists.
PostHog vs Amplitude at a glance
| Criterion | PostHog | Amplitude |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing unit | Per-product usage (events, recordings, flag requests, responses, exceptions) | Events, then monthly tracked users (MTU) |
| Free tier | 1M events a month, unlimited team members, 1 project, 1-year retention | Free plan: 2M events a month |
| Session replay free | 5K recordings a month | 10,000 sessions a month |
| Feature flags | 1M flag requests a month free | Unlimited on all plans |
| EU data location | EU (Frankfurt) cloud, per PostHog's GDPR documentation | AWS Frankfurt; EU Data Centre supports Analytics and Experiment; "EU data center option" included on all plans |
| Self-hosting | Hobby Docker Compose deploy; officially unsupported, no customer support | Pages read mention none |
| Licence | MIT (per PostHog's self-host docs) | Not stated on pages read |
| SSO | Paid platform add-on; check PostHog's pricing page for the current tier | Growth and Enterprise plans |
| Data export | Batch exports to Azure Blob Storage, BigQuery, Databricks, S3, Snowflake, Postgres, Redshift | Destination list not on pages read |
Who owns instrumentation on your team?
No market figures here, only judgment.
Analytics tools get chosen by a product manager and then live in an engineer's codebase. Events, identify calls and flag checks are code. They sit in your front end and your back end, and each one is a place where the tool is wired into the product. That's the CTO's reason to own this decision even when someone else runs the dashboards.
The tracking plan is the part that rots. If nobody owns the list of event names and properties, you end up with signup, Sign Up and user_signed_up in the same chart, and every report needs a footnote. Name one engineer who reviews new events the way someone reviews a database migration. That matters more than the vendor, and it's the question no ranking page we read even raises.
The tools shift the split a little. A developer-led team that wants replay, flags and experiments in one place will keep more of this in code, and PostHog fits that habit. A PM-led team working in reports may do more through the analytics interface, and Amplitude's pitch is aimed there. That's our reading of how the two are positioned, not something either page states. We haven't compared SDK coverage across the two, so check that each tool supports the languages and frameworks in your product before you commit.
What this means for choosing a product-analytics tool
Make three decisions before you compare features.
First, does a customer contract or your DPO require EU-resident analytics data? Both vendors offer an EU region, so this rules neither out. It changes what you check: PostHog's EU cloud versus Amplitude's Frankfurt data centre, and which Amplitude products it covers.
Second, will you accept self-hosted PostHog with no vendor support, or pay for the cloud? Treat the free Docker Compose deploy as a hobby setup, which is how PostHog's own docs describe it.
Third, which engineer owns the tracking plan after the founder's first setup? Name them now.
Enterprise buyers will ask where product and analytics data live, so rehearse the answer by reading up on answering a customer's security questionnaire, where "EU Frankfurt, Cloud EU, no transfers outside the EU" is a better reply than "we think it's in Europe".
Hiring engineers who own the tracking plan
Either tool gets wired in by your product's engineers, not by a separate analytics team. We don't supply analytics or data specialists. We do place senior engineers in React, Node.js, Python, iOS, Android, Flutter and Go. We send a shortlist of 3-5 vetted candidates within 72 hours, from four vetting stages that about 10% of applicants pass. There's no recruitment fee, our margin is 20% and capped, and a replacement guarantee applies. GDPR is native for EU member states. See how HighCircl hiring works.
FAQ
Is PostHog cheaper than Amplitude?
It depends on your units, and we can't say from the pages we read. PostHog's free tier is 1M analytics events a month, with separate free allowances for replay, flags, surveys and exceptions. Amplitude's Free plan has 2M events a month. Neither page we read lists per-unit paid rates in its text, so any cost-at-volume claim would be a guess. Estimate your own events, recordings and monthly tracked users, then price them with each vendor.
Does Amplitude offer EU data residency?
Yes. Amplitude's EU Data Centre page describes Amplitude Analytics hosted at AWS Frankfurt, covering ingestion, storage, query and visualization. The same page says it currently supports Amplitude Analytics and Experiment, so confirm coverage before relying on it for Session Replay or Guides & Surveys. Amplitude's pricing page marks the EU data center option as included on all four plans.
Is PostHog GDPR compliant?
We can't certify that, and PostHog's own GDPR guide says it is not legal advice. What the guide does say: PostHog recommends Cloud EU for GDPR compliance, the EU cloud is hosted in Frankfurt, and you should not transfer EU users' personal data outside the EU. Whether your setup is compliant is a question for your DPO.
Can I self-host PostHog?
Yes, with a Docker Compose hobby deployment under the MIT licence. PostHog's docs also say self-hosted deployments are officially unsupported, that it offers no customer support for self-hosted instances, and that paid-plan features are available only on Cloud. Kubernetes is no longer supported for new installs.
Which is better for a startup?
Our judgment: pick on who will use it. A developer-led team that wants replay, flags and experiments under one bill will find PostHog's single pricing page easier to reason about. A PM-led team that mostly wants reports will like Amplitude's larger free event allowance. Check EU coverage before either, if your first customers are European.