Heap vs PostHog
We give Heap a 2.2 GPA and PostHog a 3.2, out of 4.0. PostHog grades higher on value for money, the free plan and features. They get the same grade on ease of use and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
PostHog
Open-source product analytics with replays, flags and surveys
How we grade them
| 2.2GPAHeapFair | 3.2GPAPostHogVery good | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CNo published figure for this size. A site with 10,000 visitors makes at least 10,000 sessions, the free cap, so you'd tip into Growth, which is only quoted after you install the snippet. Pro and Premier go through sales. No price, so a C. | AA site with 10,000 visitors a month fits in the free 1M events and 5,000 recordings, so the figure is $0. There's no base fee after that, just usage from $0.00005 an event. Boost, at $250 a month, is only for SSO, HIPAA and more projects. |
| Free plan and trial | CFree up to 10,000 sessions a month, with core charts, SSO and 6 months of history. Past the cap your data keeps arriving, but you can't see it until you upgrade. There's a trial too, though its length isn't stated. | BNo card and no time limit: 1M events, 5,000 recordings, 1M flag requests and 1,500 survey responses every month, with unlimited members. Usage stops at the limit, so no surprise bill. You get 1 project, and recordings are kept a month. |
| Features | CAutocapture, funnels, journeys, retention and segments, with the Sense AI assistant from Growth up. Graded against Amplitude, Mixpanel and PostHog, which include replays even free, here replays and heatmaps are an add-on for Pro and Premier only. | AAnalytics, web analytics, replays, flags, A/B tests, surveys, error tracking, logs and a data warehouse with pipelines in and out. Graded against Amplitude, Mixpanel and Heap, it covers the whole job, and none of them bundles errors, logs and a warehouse too. |
| Ease of use | CNo rating on record. Not having to tag events up front is a real head start, but you still define events afterwards and learn the charts, and paid plans start with a sales conversation. | CNo rating on record. The cloud version is a snippet and a sign-up, but there are a lot of products to learn and events to plan. The free self-hosted version is a Docker deploy PostHog doesn't officially support, which is a developer's job. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb only, with no desktop or phone app. It connects to Salesforce, Snowflake, Segment, Shopify, Iterable, Klaviyo and Marketo, and Heap Connect sends data to your warehouse on Pro and Premier. | BWeb only, so it can't reach an A. It pulls data in from Stripe, HubSpot, Salesforce and Postgres, sends events out to Braze, Klaviyo and others, and works with Snowflake, BigQuery and Zendesk. |
| Best for | analysing clicks you never planned to track | a whole product toolkit on one free allowance |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Heap and PostHog. How we grade
Where they differ
- PostHog is open source and self-hostable, according to its own site.
- Heap also covers dashboards.
- PostHog also covers surveys and a/B testing.
At a glance
| Heap | PostHog | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free plan |
| Starts at | Not published | $0.00005 per analytics event past the free 1M (pay-as-you-go) |
| Free plan | Up to 10,000 sessions a month, core analytics charts, unlimited enrichment sources, guides integrations, single sign-on and 6 months of data history. | Monthly allowance that resets: 1M analytics events, 5,000 recordings, 1M flag requests, 1,500 survey responses, 100K exceptions. Unlimited members, 1 project, 1-year retention. |
| Free trial | Free trial offered from the site; its length and plan are not stated | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Heap Inc. (part of Contentsquare) | PostHog |
| Price read from | heap.io | posthog.com |
| Checked | Oct 18, 2026 | Oct 18, 2026 |
Who each one suits
Heap
- Product teams that do not want to plan event tracking up front
- SaaS and online stores studying sign-up and checkout funnels
- Companies already using Contentsquare
PostHog
- Startups and developers who want many product tools under one bill
- Teams that want to cap spend with a billing limit per product
- Companies that prefer open-source software they can host themselves
Worth knowing
Heap
- No paid prices are published: Growth is quoted after you install the snippet, and Pro and Premier are priced by monthly sessions through sales.
- Session replay, heatmaps and error analysis are an add-on for Pro and Premier only.
- Past your plan's monthly session limit, data keeps arriving but you cannot view it until you upgrade.
- Free keeps 6 months of data and Growth 12; up to 3 years is an add-on on Pro and Premier.
PostHog
- Usage is metered per product, so the monthly bill moves with traffic; billing limits can be set for each product to cap it.
- SSO enforcement, a HIPAA BAA and unlimited projects need the $250-a-month Boost package on top of usage; SAML sign-in needs Scale at $750.
- The free plan keeps recordings for 1 month and data for 1 year, allows 1 project, and drops events past its limits.
- Self-hosted PostHog is officially unsupported and has no tagged releases; PostHog recommends always running the latest image.
Key features
Heap
- Automatic event capture
- Records clicks, pageviews and other interactions on web and mobile from one snippet, so you can define and analyze events after they happened.
- Funnels, journeys and retention
- Charts for funnels, retention and visual maps of the paths people take, with segments for comparing groups of users.
- Sense AI assistant
- Contentsquare's AI answers questions about your data in chat, writes summaries and suggests follow-ups. It is listed from the Growth plan up.
- Session replay and heatmaps
- The Experience Analytics add-on for Pro and Premier adds session replay, heatmaps and error analysis linked to the analytics.
- Warehouse sync
- Heap Connect sends data to your warehouse, such as Snowflake, automatically and retroactively. It is an add-on for Pro and included with Premier.
PostHog
- Product and web analytics
- Funnels, trends, retention, user paths and a web analytics dashboard, built from events. The first 1M events a month are free.
- Session replay
- Recordings of real visits to see where people get stuck, linked to funnels and errors. 5,000 recordings a month are free; recordings are kept 90 days on pay-as-you-go.
- Feature flags and experiments
- Roll features out to chosen users and run A/B tests, billed together by flag requests, with 1M requests free each month.
- Surveys
- In-app surveys with 1,500 free responses a month, and white-labeled surveys on the Boost package.
- Error tracking and logs
- Captures exceptions (100K free a month) and ingests logs (10 GB free), so you can go from a replay to the error behind it.
- Data warehouse and pipelines
- Syncs data in from Stripe, HubSpot, Salesforce, Postgres and others, and sends events out to tools such as Braze and Klaviyo.
Plans
Heap
Free$0
Up to 10,000 monthly sessions, core charts, 6 months of data history and SSO.
GrowthCustom
Price estimated after you install the tracking snippet. Adds the Sense AI assistant, unlimited users and reports, CSV exports, 12 months of data.
ProCustom
Sold through sales, priced by sessions: account analytics, engagement matrix, report alerts, 2 environments; session replay as an add-on.
PremierCustom
Sold through sales: warehouse sync, behavioral targeting, unlimited projects, advanced permissions, dedicated CSM, regional storage.
PostHog
Free$0
Full free allowance on every product, unlimited team members, 1 project, community support. Usage stops at the limits, so no surprise bill.
Pay-as-you-go$0
plus usage above the monthly free allowance
No base fee. Analytics from $0.00005 an event and replays from $0.005 a recording, cheaper at volume. 6 projects, 7-year data, email support.
Boost$250
per month, plus usage
Platform package: unlimited projects, SSO enforcement, 2FA enforcement, white labeling, HIPAA BAA and 12 months of replay retention.
Scale$750
per month, plus usage
Everything in Boost plus SAML and OIDC sign-in, approval workflows, real-time alerts and priority support with an 8-hour target.
EnterpriseCustom
Sold through sales: role-based access, a dedicated account manager, training, and up to 5 years of replay retention.
Self-hosted (hobby deploy)$0
MIT-licensed Docker Compose deployment you host yourself. Officially unsupported, with no paid support plan.
Ways to pay less
Heap
No public discounts listed.
PostHog
- Startups
$50,000 in credits for early-stage startups
Companies under 2 years old that have raised less than $5M get $50,000 of PostHog credit for 12 months, plus partner perks. A company email domain is required.
- Nonprofit
Discount for nonprofits
PostHog says it gives nonprofits a discount in most cases: create an account, then contact sales with details of the organization.
