In-depth: PostHog vs Matomo

Jan 12, 2024

PostHog and Matomo are both open-source analytics platforms you can self-host on your own infrastructure, giving you complete control over your data and unrivaled privacy compliance. However, there are some important differences between the two platforms.

Matomo is primarily pitched as a Google Analytics alternative for marketing analytics, and offers useful tools for migrating GA data into Matomo for a seamless transition. Its focus on session tracking makes it ideal for running analytics on large content and e-commerce websites

In contrast, PostHog is a comprhensive Product OS that includes product analytics, session recording, feature flags, A/B testing, and much more.

How is PostHog different from Matomo?

1. It's an all-in-one platform

Matomo charges extra for product analytics features like funnel analysis, cohorts, path analysis, and session recording, and they're not tightly integrated. In PostHog, these are core features in all editions, including the open source release, while Experimentation is free up to 1 million events per month.

2. Seamless integration with modern data stacks

PostHog is built to work seamlessly with your data stack. That means we offer data import and export integrations with most popular data warehouses, as well as numerous integrations with CRMs (Hubspot, Salesforce), data platforms (Segment, Airbyte, Rudderstack), engineering tools, and more via PostHog apps.

3. It's built for engineers

PostHog is about giving engineering and product teams the tools they need to build better products. The core product analytics tools are part of this, but we go further by providing market-leading feature flag functionality, and integrating Session Recording so you can deploy one platform that does everything, rather than integrating multiple discrete tools into your stack.

Feature comparison

This table compares three self-hosted plans: Matomo On-Premise, PostHog Open Source, and PostHog Cloud.

Matomo On-Premise ships with a robust set of core web analytics features, while advanced product analytics features are available at various prices from the Matomo On-Premise Marketplace.

All features in PostHog Open Source are totally free, including core product analytics tools.

PostHog Cloud adds experimentation, group analytics, and support for multiple projects. It's free to use up to 1 million events per month.

Integrations and data sources

Matomo doesn't offer many dedicated integrations for syncing data with other platforms, but its Tracking and Reporting APIs allow you to query a large range of parameters. It also offers a Google Analytics importer.

In addition to extensive selection of dedicated integrations, PostHog offers two APIs: a public API for pushing data into PostHog, and a private API for exporting data and performing various actions.

Strengths of PostHog

Combining feature flags and product analytics

Feature flags are at the core what makes PostHog a great tool for product-lead businesses. They're especially useful for gradually rolling out new features, and quickly rolling back if you detect problems, but they can be used in other creative ways.

Need feedback on a design change? Roll it out to internal users first to gather feedback. Need to optimize messaging for different regions or demographics? Use a feature flag targeted on user properties. Want to change something without the CEO noticing? Create a flag just for them. Ok, we don't actually recommend the latter, but you get the idea.

Feature flags also integrate with other analytics insights, so you can breakdown a conversion funnel by a feature flag, or filter trends, paths, and numerous other insights by specific feature flags. Using Feature Flags and product analytics together gives developers a complete toolset.

Automatic event tracking

PostHog and Matomo both support event tracking, but PostHog goes one step further by autocapturing events so you don't have to instrument every single thing before you start tracking it. This means you start capturing useful data from the moment you deploy PostHog, but it also makes rolling out updates much easier as you don't have to define your events each time.

Strengths of Matomo

E-commerce and marketing analytics

Matomo is especially well-suited to content and e-commerce websites. Unlike Google Analytics, it doesn't employ any data sampling, and it offers a wide-range of features specifically designed to aid marketing teams. For example, Matomo's Multi Channel Conversion Attribution reports (a paid feature) allow marketing teams to understand how all their activities impacted a conversion, not just the last interaction.

Integration with popular content management systems

Matomo is ideal for anyone who uses popular off-the-shelf content management systems or e-commerce platforms. Websites with fewer than 50,000 page views per month can safely install Matomo straight from the WordPress plugin library, and Matomo offers an official integration with WooCommerce as well. There are community integrations for numerous other platforms, including Drupal, Joomla, DatoCMS, Pimcore, and Adobe Commerce.

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:

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.

Ready to find out more?