head to head · open source
PostHog vs shynet
PostHog has 40,600 GitHub stars, 3,579 forks, 5,637 open issues and last shipped yesterday. shynet has 3,157 stars, 212 forks, 63 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. PostHog leads on adoption by 1,186% (40,600 vs 3,157 stars). PostHog is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; shynet is written in Python under Apache-2.0. PostHog has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, shynet 7%. 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, python), 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 | shynet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 3.2K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-03-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.6K | ⑂ 212 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick PostHog if
- You weight community size — 41K 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 shynet if
- You want the shynet feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and shynet fits your workflow better
About PostHog
Docs Community Roadmap Why PostHog? Changelog Bug reports PostHog is the open source platform for building self driving products PostHog provides every tool you need to build a successful product, and captures all the context agents need to proactively diagnose problems, uncover opportunities, and ship fixes: Self driving mode: Turn signals in your product data (errors, rage clicks, failed queries, and more) into researched reports and pull requests you review and merge. Product analytics: Autocapture or manually instrument event based analytics to understand user behavior and analyze data with visualization or…
read the full PostHog overview →
About shynet
Modern, privacy friendly, and cookie free web analytics. Getting started » Screenshots • Features • Office Hours Motivation There are a lot of web analytics tools. Unfortunately, most of them come with the following caveats: They require handing all of your visitors' info to a third party company They use cookies to track visitors across sessions, so you need to have those annoying cookie notices They collect so much personal data that even the NSA is jealous They are closed source and/or expensive, often with limited data portability They are hard to use Shynet has none of these caveats. You host it…
read the full shynet overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is PostHog or shynet more popular?
PostHog has 40,600 GitHub stars and shynet has 3,157. PostHog has the larger community by that measure.
Are PostHog and shynet free?
Both are open source. PostHog has no licence declared in this registry, and shynet is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between PostHog and shynet?
PostHog is written in Python and shynet in Python. 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 shynet?
Choose PostHog if you want the larger community (40,600 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose shynet if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.