head to head · open source
PostHog vs Countly
PostHog has 39,835 GitHub stars, 3,394 forks, 5,637 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Countly has 5,904 stars, 981 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped yesterday. PostHog leads on adoption by 575% (39,835 vs 5,904 stars). PostHog is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; Countly is written in JavaScript under a custom or non-standard licence. PostHog has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Countly 17%. PostHog was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (analytics, feature-flags), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| PostHog | Countly | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | Custom / other | Custom / other |
| Written in | Python | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 981 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick PostHog if
- You weight community size — 40K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Countly if
- You want the Countly feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and Countly fits your workflow better
About PostHog
PostHog is an open source platform for building self driving products, combining product analytics, web analytics, session replay, feature flags, experiments, error tracking, logs, surveys, a data warehouse, data pipelines, AI observability, and workflows in a single system, aimed at product, engineering, and growth teams that want to own their product data rather than rent it.
read the full PostHog overview →
About Countly
Countly is a privacy first, AI ready analytics and customer engagement platform that organizations deploy themselves rather than consume only as a hosted service. The server side component lives in this repository and is written in JavaScript, sitting in the JavaScript and Node.js ecosystem alongside the client SDKs that ship separately for iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, NodeJS, Unity, Java and JavaScript. The platform is built around the idea that customer data should stay under the operator's control: Countly runs on premises or in a private cloud, and the project describes full data ownership, deployment…
read the full Countly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is PostHog or Countly more popular?
PostHog has 39,835 GitHub stars and Countly has 5,904. PostHog has the larger community by that measure.
Are PostHog and Countly free?
Neither PostHog nor Countly declares a licence in this registry, so check each project's own repository before relying on either for a commercial use. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between PostHog and Countly?
PostHog is written in Python and Countly in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, PostHog or Countly?
Choose PostHog if you want the larger community (39,835 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Countly if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.