In-depth: PostHog vs Mixpanel

Jan 08, 2024

Want to know how PostHog and Mixpanel compare? If you remember nothing else, remember these two points:

Mixpanel is a product analytics tool only.
PostHog is an all-in-one platform that includes product analytics and much more.

How is PostHog different?

1. It's more than product analytics

PostHog is the only product analytics platform built to natively work with session replay, feature flags, A/B testing, and surveys. This means you get all the tools you need to deploy new features, test their performance, observe and analyze how users interact with them, and gather feedback. Everything you need to truly understand user behavior, perfectly integrated.

2. It's built for engineers

We support all popular (and some unpopular) SDKs, have extensively documented APIs, and a powerful SQL query builder, so you can analyze data how you want. We make it easy to test in production, conduct phased rollouts, run beta programs, and so much more.

3. We're open source and transparent

PostHog is built on transparency. Our product is open source and released under an MIT License. You can read our source code, raise issues and PRs, build your own integrations, and vote on our public roadmap. Got a question? Ask it in our community forum.

Comparison PostHog and Mixpanel

Platform

Entering a credit card unlocks almost all our features and you only pay for what you use. You get a generous free allowance every month and you can set billing limits to prevent surprise bills.

	PostHog	Mixpanel
Product analytics Track events and conversion, analyze user behavior	✔	✔
Web analytics Easy to use analytics for marketing websites	✔	✔
Session replay Watch real users use your product, diagnose bugs	✔	✖
Feature flags Roll out features safely, toggle features for cohorts or individuals	✔	✖
A/B testing Run tests on new features, optimize conversion funnels	✔	Analysis only*
User surveys Collect and analyze feedback, run NPS and PMF surveys	✔	✖
Data pipelines Export event data to data warehouses	✔	✔
Customer data platform Sync cusomter data between third-party tools	Beta	✖
Data warehouse Centralized data storage for business intelligence	Beta	✖
Heatmaps Visualize where users click in your app or website	✔	✖
Notebooks Ad-hoc analysis and collaboration	✔	✔
Dark mode Choose between light and dark UI	✔	✔
Open source Build your own apps and contribute code	✔	Libraries only

*You can't run A/B tests using Mixpanel, only analyse the results of tests created using third-party integrations.

Product analytics

There are two key differences here:

PostHog supports autocapture, which makes it much faster to implement as you don't have to manually instrument every event. Don't want autocapture? Just turn it off and rely on one of our many SDKs – we offer the best of both worlds.
PostHog has a SQL-based query builder for power users, which enables you to generate custom data analyses using PostHog event data. In future, our query builder will let you analyze data as you would in a business intelligence tool, like Metabase, inside PostHog.

	PostHog	Mixpanel
Autocapture Capture frontend clicks and events automatically	✔	✖
Query editor Write your own queries in SQL	✔	✖
Dashboards Combine insights into shareable dashboards	✔	✔
Graphs and trends Build custom insights and visualizations	✔	✔
Funnels Track users through a sequence of events	✔	✔
Retention Visualize which users stay, for how long	✔	✔
User paths Track user flows and where they drop-off	✔	✔
Cohorts Combine users based on properties and events for group analysis	✔	✔
Group analytics Track metrics at a company and account level	✔	✔
Lifecycle analysis Understand who is dormant, churning, and thriving	✔	✔
Stickiness insights See how many times users perform an event in a period of time.	✔	✔
Custom formulas Use formulas to calculate unique insights	✔	✔
Correlation analysis Suggested events and properties that lead to success or failure	✔	✔

Feature flags

Feature flags make it easy to roll out features to specific users or groups, and safely test in production. Our feature flags are also tightly integrated with other tools, meaning you can target session replays, surveys and other features using existing feature flags. See benefits of feature flags for more.

	PostHog	Mixpanel
Boolean flags Simple flags returning true or flag	✔	✖
Multivariate flags Flags with multiple customizable values	✔	✖
Payloads Flags with string, number, or JSON payloads	✔	✖
Local evaluation Store flag definitions locally	✔	✖
Percentage rollouts Target percentages of a group	✔	✖
Custom targeting Target users based on user properties, custom contexts	✔	✖
Scheduling Schedule flags to turn on or off	Beta	✖
Environments Manage flags for dev, staging, prod	Partial	✖
Scheduling Schedule flags to turn on or off	✔	✖
Bootstrapping Flags available on frontend application load	✔	✖
Early access Manage betas, test features	✔	✖

A/B testing

PostHog's A/B testing features are free when you enter card details. You can't run A/B tests using Mixpanel, but you can analyze the results of experiments created using third-party A/B testing tools.

	PostHog	Mixpanel
Built-in A/B testing Setup and run A/B tests using feature flags	✔	✖
Experiment analysis Analyze results of A/B tests	✔	✔
Custom goals Customize metrics that a test tracks	✔	✔
Secondary metrics Monitor impact on unrelated metrics	✔	✔
Statistical significance Automatically checks for statistical significance	✔	✔
Split testing Split participants into groups	✔	✖
Multivariate (A/B/n) testing Test multiple variants of a change	✔	✖
Recommended run time Automatically calculate the recommended run time and sample size	✔	✖
Dynamic cohorts Add new users to an experiment automatically by setting a user property	✔	✖
Holdout testing Withhold multiple features to measure cumulative impact	Partial	✖
Statistics engine How the results of an experiment are calculated	Bayesian	Frequentist

Session replay

Replays enable you watch how users experience your app, diagnose issues, improve support, and understand real user behavior in a way raw data can't. You get 5,000 recordings for free every month, so you'll pay nothing if you remain below this limit.

	PostHog	Mixpanel
Web app recordings Capture recordings from single-page apps	✔	✖
Mobile app recordings Capture recordings in iOS and Android apps	Beta	✖
Identity detection Link recordings to user IDs	✔	✖
Console logs Capture extra content from a users' browser environment	✔	✖
Playlists Sort recordings into static and dynamic playlists	✔	✖
Performance monitoring Track network events within a session	✔	✖
Privacy masking Censor personal information from playback	✔	✖
Conditional recording Only capture the sessions you want	✔	✖
DOM explorer Explore an interactive snapshot of replays	✔	✖
Export recordings Save important recordings offline	✔	✖
Minimum duration Only record sessions longer than the minimum duration	✔	✖
Sample recorded sessions Restrict the percentage of sessions that will be recorded	✔	✖
Record via feature flag Only record sessions for users that have the flag enabled	✔	✖

Surveys

Surveys are great for tracking customer satisfaction scores like Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer satisfaction (CSAT), and customer effort score (CES). We include survey templates for all these and more. Read our guide comparing NPS, CSAT, and CES to see which survey type you should use and when.

	PostHog	Mixpanel
Open text Free text answers and feedback	✔	✖
Product rating Rank using emojis or number	✔	✖
Single choice Select one answer from multiple	✔	✖
Multiple choice Select more than one answer from multiple	✔	✖
NPS surveys Net Promoter Score survey template	✔	✖
PMF surveys Product-market fit survey template	✔	✖
User property targeting Target users based on any of their user properties	✔	✖
Custom colors & positioning Customize the colors of your surveys to match your brand	✔	✖
Custom HTML Add custom HTML to your survey text	✔	✖
API mode Create surveys via the API	✔	✖

Integrations

PostHog and Mixpanel both offer a wide range of integrations, sources and destinations. Mixpanel offers more overall, though many of its integrations cover features like A/B testing and surveys that are built into PostHog already. See our data pipeline docs for a full list.

	PostHog	Mixpanel
Imports Import data from data warehouses and other sources	✔	✔
Exports Export data to data warehouses other destinations	✔	✔
Segment Send events via Segment	✔	✔
Rudderstack Send events via Rudderstack	✔	✔
Zapier Trigger Zapier automations	✔	✔
Sentry Connect to Sentry data	✔	✖
Zendesk Two-way integration for customer support	✔	✖
Customer.io Messaging and marketing automation	✔	✔
Slack Alerts for Slack	✔	✔
Microsoft Teams Alerts for Microsoft Teams	✔	✔
Community integrations Build your own integration	✔	Cohorts Sync only
Google Ads Import ROI data from Google Ads	✖	✔

Security and compliance

	PostHog	Mixpanel
User privacy options Anonymize users, drop personal data	✔	✔
History, audit logs Manage and view flag edits and related users	✔	✔
GDPR-ready Can be compliant with GDPR	✔	✔
HIPAA-ready Can be compliant with HIPAA	✔	✔
SOC 2 SOC 2 security certification	✔	✔
2FA Enforce login with two-factor authentication	✔	✔
SAML/SSO Use SAML or single sign-on authentication	Enterprise	Enterprise

Frequently asked questions

Can PostHog also replace Google Analytics?

Yes. PostHog can replace Google Analytics for many use cases – our marketing team uses PostHog, for example. You can integrate PostHog into your website using Google Tag Manager. See our comparison of PostHog and Google Analytics 4 and An intro to PostHog for Google Analytics users for more.

Is PostHog easy to deploy?

Yes. Just paste our JS snippet within the <head> tags your product or website and you're good to go in just a few minutes. See our installation documentation for more options. We support dozens of client-side and server-side SDKs.

How much does PostHog cost?

You only pay for what you use and every PostHog users gets a generous amount of free usage each month:

	Free usage per month
Product analytics	1 million events
Session replay	5,000 recordings
Feature flags	1 million API requests
A/B testing	1 million API requests
Surveys	250 responses

You'll never pay anything if you stay within these limits and you can set billing limits to avoid surprise bills.

We charge progressively less the more you use – e.g. we charge $0.000100 per event up to 2 million events, but all events after 10 million a month only cost $0.000025, 75% less per event.

A full breakdown and pricing calculator is on our pricing page.

How can I estimate my usage?

The easiest way is to sign up to PostHog, integrate our snippet, then check the projection on your billing page after a few days. Alternatively, you can guesstimate by multiplying your current monthly active users by an estimate of events generated per user – 50 to 100 per user is a good starting point. See Estimating usage & costs in our docs for more.

Does PostHog block bots by default?

Yes. See the full blocklist in our docs.

Can I use PostHog with a CDP? (Segment, Rudderstack, etc.)

Yes. See Using PostHog with a CDP in our docs.

What about ad blockers?

We recommend all users deploy a reverse proxy, which enables you send events to PostHog Cloud using your own domain. Events sent from your own domain and are less likely to be intercepted by tracking blockers, ensuring you capture the best data possible. We have reverse proxy setup guides for AWS Cloudfront, Caddy, Cloudflare, Netlify, Vercel, and more, in our docs.

How do PostHog and Mixpanel compare to Amplitude?

Amplitude is closer to Mixpanel than PostHog – it doesn't support features session replays or surveys, and doesn't offer autocapture, but it does offer feature flags and A/B testing on some paid tiers. Read our PostHog vs Amplitude comparison for information.

Ready to find out more?

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