Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

PostHog VS Mixpanel

Compare PostHog VS Mixpanel and see what are their differences

PostHog logo PostHog

An open source suite of product and data tools including product analytics, feature flags, session replay, A/B testing, surveys, and more.

Mixpanel logo Mixpanel

Mixpanel is the most advanced analytics platform in the world for mobile & web.
  • PostHog Landing page
    Landing page //
    2024-07-05

For developers just starting out, PostHog is a free way to understand how your product is being used, without having to send any data to 3rd parties.

For enterprise customers, one data security becomes a key concern, or B2C businesses where using a SaaS solution is unaffordable, it's typical to see teams hosting an event capture platform, a data lake, and sophisticated analytics tools. The end result is that data scientists are needed and most developers don't have easy access to product intel. PostHog solves that gap - it lets everyone understand how your product is being used, without having to send data to 3rd parties, even once you have scaled to millions of visitors.

It has a JS snippet that can autocapture events, and pre-built libraries to push backend data to. Build up full user histories, visualize product trends, funnels, and run experiments with new features.

  • Mixpanel Landing page
    Landing page //
    2024-08-10

  mixpanel.comSoftware by Mixpanel

PostHog

$ Details
freemium
Release Date
2020 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
California
Founder(s)
James Hawkins, Tim Glaser
Employees
20 - 49

Mixpanel

$ Details
-
Release Date
2009 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
California
Founder(s)
Suhail Doshi
Employees
250 - 499

PostHog features and specs

  • Self-Hosting Option
    PostHog can be self-hosted, allowing you to maintain control over your data and ensuring compliance with strict data privacy regulations.
  • Complete Analytics Suite
    Provides a complete suite of product analytics tools including feature flags, session recordings, and heatmaps, enabling comprehensive user behavior analysis.
  • Open-Source
    Being open-source, PostHog allows for high customizability and the potential to contribute to the codebase, fostering a community-driven development approach.
  • Privacy-Focused
    Designed with privacy in mind, PostHog globally complies with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy laws, reducing the risk of legal complications.
  • Event-Driven Architecture
    Its event-driven architecture provides high flexibility in tracking custom events, allowing for more detailed and tailored analytics.
  • Integrations
    PostHog integrates with a variety of tools and services such as Slack, GitHub, and Zapier, streamlining workflows and enhancing productivity.

Mixpanel features and specs

  • User-Focused Analytics
    Mixpanel offers detailed insights into user behavior, enabling businesses to understand how users interact with their product, which helps in making data-driven decisions.
  • Event Tracking
    The platform allows for precise event tracking, providing real-time analysis of user actions and conversions, which is helpful for optimizing user experience and marketing strategies.
  • Advanced Segmentation
    Mixpanel's advanced segmentation capabilities help in understanding various user groups, enabling personalized marketing campaigns and enhanced user engagement.
  • A/B Testing
    The built-in A/B testing feature allows for experimenting with different variations of features and interfaces to determine what works best for users.
  • Custom Dashboards
    Users can create customizable dashboards to monitor key metrics and KPIs, making it easier to keep track of important data and trends.

Possible disadvantages of Mixpanel

  • Cost
    Mixpanel can be expensive compared to other analytics tools, particularly for startups or small businesses with limited budgets.
  • Complexity
    The platform can be complex and overwhelming for new users without a background in analytics, requiring a steep learning curve to effectively utilize all features.
  • Limited Free Plan
    The free plan offered by Mixpanel has significant limitations, including caps on the number of events tracked, which can be restrictive for growing businesses.
  • Data Retention
    Data retention policies might limit the amount of historical data accessible in lower-tier plans, potentially hindering long-term analysis.
  • Integration Issues
    While Mixpanel integrates with various other tools, some users report challenges and limitations with certain integrations, which can affect the overall workflow.

Analysis of PostHog

Overall verdict

  • Yes, PostHog is a robust and versatile analytics tool. Its open-source nature, coupled with a rich feature set comparable to major analytics platforms, makes it an excellent choice for teams looking for an in-depth and customizable analytics solution.

Why this product is good

  • PostHog is a full-featured analytics platform that provides powerful tools for product teams to understand user behavior without sending data to third parties. It offers features such as event tracking, session recording, feature flags, and heatmaps, making it a comprehensive solution for product analytics. The platform is open-source, allowing for customization and self-hosting, which is a significant advantage for teams with specific needs or concerns about data privacy.

Recommended for

    PostHog is particularly well-suited for product teams, developers, and startups that require deep insights into user interactions and need the flexibility of a self-hosted solution. It is also a good fit for organizations that prioritize data privacy and want to maintain full control over their data.

Analysis of Mixpanel

Overall verdict

  • Mixpanel is generally regarded as a good choice for companies seeking detailed analytics on user interactions and product usage trends. It is particularly beneficial for teams that prioritize data-driven strategies in enhancing user experience, optimizing marketing efforts, and driving growth.

Why this product is good

  • Mixpanel is considered a strong option for businesses looking for robust product analytics. It provides detailed insights into user behavior and engagement through its advanced event tracking and funnel analysis features. The platform excels in offering real-time data, advanced segmentation, and A/B testing capabilities, which enable teams to make data-driven decisions. Additionally, its user-friendly interface and comprehensive reporting tools make it accessible for users with varying levels of technical expertise.

Recommended for

    Mixpanel is recommended for product teams, marketers, and data analysts within tech companies who need to delve deeply into user behavior. It is particularly useful for startups and mid-sized businesses in the SaaS, e-commerce, and mobile app industries that aim to optimize their products and improve user retention through comprehensive analytics.

PostHog videos

PostHog Walk Through

More videos:

  • Review - Open Source Product Analytics With PostHog

Mixpanel videos

Mixpanel vs. Google Analytics - What are the differences?

More videos:

  • Review - Mixpanel Overview Video
  • Review - Amplitude vs Mixpanel? Pros and Cons of Each

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to PostHog and Mixpanel)
Analytics
23 23%
77% 77
Web Analytics
22 22%
78% 78
Marketing Analytics
100 100%
0% 0
Mobile Analytics
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using PostHog and Mixpanel. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare PostHog and Mixpanel

PostHog Reviews

The best Hotjar alternatives & competitors, compared
According to BuiltWith, as of February 2024, PostHog is used on 5,169 (0.52%) of the top 1 million websites. Hotjar is used by 72,048 of the top 1 million websites. Typical PostHog users are engineers and product managers at startups and mid-size companies, such as Webshare, AssemblyAI, and Purplewave.
Source: posthog.com
The 8 best free and open-source feature flag services
BlogBackSign inBlogThe 8 best free and open-source feature flag servicesPosted byThe best open-source feature flag tools1. PostHogWhat is PostHog?Supported librariesHow much does it cost?2. UnleashWhat is Unleash?Supported SDKsHow much does it cost?3. GrowthBookWhat is GrowthBook?Supported SDKsHow much does it cost?4. FlagsmithWhat is Flagsmith?Supported SDKsHow much does it...
Source: posthog.com

Mixpanel Reviews

  1. Deepak Kumar
    · Technical Reviewer at A/B Testing ·
    Mixpanel helps track user behavior and measure success for your application

    I recommend Mixpanel to anyone who needs to do tracking of user behavior in web applications in order to measure against goals.

    🏁 Competitors: VWO, Optimizely, Convertize.io, Picreel
    👍 Pros:    Easy to use|Powerful analytics|Tracks every user actions
    👎 Cons:    Dashboard is complex|Pricing is too high|Hard to implement own data

10 Best Mixpanel Alternatives for Product Analytics in 2024
Hotjar is an all-in-one feedback and analytics software suite to optimize your website and make data-driven decisions. Hotjar Observe is the suite’s most popular Mixpanel alternative—pair it with Hotjar Ask, Hotjar Engage, and Hotjar Funnels for all the tools you need to succeed. 😎
Source: clickup.com
7 best Mixpanel alternatives to understand your users
On the other hand, Mixpanel requires you to manually define the events you want to track from the start. While this might take some extra time, it provides more detailed reports right off the bat, which makes the analysis straightforward. The choice between Heap and Mixpanel depends on whether you prioritize comprehensive data capturing (Heap) or a more detailed analysis...
Source: www.hotjar.com
Best Mixpanel Alternatives for SaaS
These are some of the aspects that I appreciate about Mixpanel. It’s important to note that my preferences may vary depending on individual needs and requirements. I highlight some of the features and benefits that I appreciate about Mixpanel: Mixpanel focuses on individual user behavior and allows me to track and analyze user interactions at a granular level. This...
Source: userpilot.com
Unleashing Alternatives: 15 Advanced Tools for Web Analytics Just Like Google Analytics(Brief and Crisp)
Mixpanel, another great tool provides businesses an immediate overview of user interactions with their products. This helps them to adapt quickly, offering more personalized experiences, or making needed adjustments right on the spot. With Mixpanel, you can expect the following benefits:
Source: medium.com
Unleashing Alternatives: 15 Advanced Tools for Web Analytics Just Like Google Analytics(Brief and Crisp)
Mixpanel, another great tool provides businesses an immediate overview of user interactions with their products. This helps them to adapt quickly, offering more personalized experiences, or making needed adjustments right on the spot. With Mixpanel, you can expect the following benefits:

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, PostHog should be more popular than Mixpanel. It has been mentiond 58 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

PostHog mentions (58)

  • Posthog/.cursorrules
    I'm unable to see their website https://posthog.com Is it just me? - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Rethink State💡 Why You Should Model Your Frontend State Around Events
    Send events to analytics tools like PostHog. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • 5 Essential Tools Every Bootstrapped SaaS Startup Needs to Succeed
    For SaaS startups looking for a powerful, privacy-conscious analytics platform, PostHog provides an all-in-one solution designed for modern product teams. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • The Risks of User Impersonation
    The next rung up are User recordings. For users that are having issues, we have concrete recorded data for their flow. The flows would include anything relevant to the application, how they used it, what actions they took. All so we can actually see what happened in context for when there is a problem. No one wants to spend any time looking at recordings if they don't have to. It is also very difficult to identify... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • My 2025 Tech Stack: Tools & Tech I'm Using This Year
    Posthog. Posthog has a lot of sub products but I use it mainly for analytics and session replays. I have to say Posthog is an impressive product. Everything from dev experience to dashboards is just awesome. Great to see GA finally got some real competition. I'm looking forward to try all the other products from them. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
View more

Mixpanel mentions (28)

  • API Pricing Strategies: Segmentation and Personalized Models
    Mixpanel/Amplitude: Event-based analytics platforms configurable for API usage tracking. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • API Analytics: A Strategic Toolkit for Optimization
    To collect these metrics effectively, you'll need specialized tools like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Segment, or Amplitude. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • 5 best product analytics software solutions for product managers
    Mixpanel is a product analytics tool that provides product managers with real-time insights into user behavior, helping them make more informed decisions with instant access to their data. It enables detailed event tracking, such as button clicks and page views, across both web and mobile applications. It offers a centralized platform that consolidates product analytics metrics such as data views, event tracking,... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Preparing your E-commerce Platform for Holiday Traffic: A Developer’s Guide
    Even with thorough preparation, the holiday traffic can bring unexpected challenges. To stay ahead, set up dashboards and alert systems using tools like Grafana, Datadog, or New Relic to monitor platform performance, track errors, and detect anomalies. Additionally, leverage analytics tools such as Google Analytics or Mixpanel to identify drop-off points and optimize the customer journey. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Setup Mixpanel Analytics in a NextJS Application
    I assume you already have a NextJS project setup. Also, create a new Mixpanel account from here (If you haven’t already). - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing PostHog and Mixpanel, you can also consider the following products

Plausible.io - Plausible Analytics is a simple, open-source, lightweight (< 1 KB) and privacy-friendly web analytics alternative to Google Analytics. Made and hosted in the EU, powered by European-owned cloud infrastructure 🇪🇺

Google Analytics - Improve your website to increase conversions, improve the user experience, and make more money using Google Analytics. Measure, understand and quantify engagement on your site with customized and in-depth reports.

Adobe Analytics - Adobe Analytics is an industry-leading solution that empowers you to understand your customers as people and steer your business with customer intelligence.

Fathom Analytics - Simple, trustworthy website analytics (finally)

Matomo - Matomo is an open-source web analytics platform

Heap - Analytics for web and iOS. Heap automatically captures every user action in your app and lets you measure it all. Clicks, taps, swipes, form submissions, page views, and more.