What PostHog costs
Usage-based and free until you're at real scale: every product has a monthly free tier that resets, you're billed once at capture (storing history is free), and roughly 90% of companies use it for free. The model, the tiers, and the two gotchas.
PostHog is usage-based and free until you're at real scale. The model:
- Every product has a monthly free tier that resets each month. You only pay, per-product, once you exceed it.
- There's no charge for storing historical events — you're billed once when an event is captured, not for keeping it.
- PostHog says roughly 90% of companies use it for free, and most early-stage startups run free for 6–12 months.
Approximate monthly free tiers (these change — treat as a guide, confirm on posthog.com/pricing before relying on them):
| Product | Free per month (approx.) |
|---|---|
| Product Analytics | ~1M events |
| Session Replay | ~5,000 recordings |
| Feature Flags | ~1M requests |
| Surveys | ~1,500 responses |
| Error Tracking | ~100K exceptions |
| Data Warehouse | ~1M rows |
⚠️ Two things to verify rather than take on faith, because they move and they bite: the exact free-tier numbers and per-unit prices (they drift), and Group Analytics — it's reportedly a paid add-on, and enabling it can cause all identified events in the project to bill, not just grouped ones. If you're a B2B product tempted by company-level rollups, check the current pricing page first.
The practical takeaway: you will not pay anything to follow this course, and you'll have a long runway before cost is a question. When it becomes one, the lever is event volume — which is exactly why the instrumentation chapter tells you to be deliberate about what you track rather than capturing everything that moves. The single biggest cost lever, the anonymous-vs-identified setting, is covered there too; set it right on day one and your bill can be ~4× smaller.
US cloud or EU cloud
PostHog Cloud runs in two independent regions, and you pick one at signup. Data does not move between them and you cannot merge across them — the one decision in this chapter that's hard to undo.
Why PostHog vs the alternatives
A growth team should be able to say why it chose its tools. PostHog is this course's default but not the only honest choice — the real landscape (Mixpanel, Amplitude, GA4, Segment, Heap, Statsig, Plausible, build-your-own) and where PostHog wins and loses.