head to head
Mixpanel vs PostHog
PostHog is the open source alternative to Mixpanel — product analytics. Here is the honest comparison.
Yes — PostHog is a viable free replacement for Mixpanel. PostHog is open source under its own open-source terms, written in Python, with 39,835 GitHub stars, 3,394 forks and 5,637 open issues; it was last pushed 3 hours ago. Mixpanel costs from $28, while self-hosting PostHog carries no licence fee — the trade is your operational time instead of a subscription. 2 other open source Mixpanel alternatives are tracked here, led by Umami at 38,885 stars. PostHog ranks #1 of 3 tracked open source Mixpanel alternatives by stars. The tracked set, by adoption: Umami (38,885 stars), Plausible (29,116 stars). Replacement criteria on this page: 4 reasons to move to PostHog and 3 reasons to stay on Mixpanel.
choose PostHog if
- Your Mixpanel bill is growing with seats or usage
- You need your data in a format and server you control
- Your compliance posture requires auditing the code that touches sensitive data
- You have (or can rent) a server and basic Docker comfort
stick with Mixpanel if
- You need the polished onboarding and support SLAs of a commercial vendor
- Your team has zero capacity to operate software, even self-hosted-simple
- You depend on a Mixpanel integration ecosystem that the OSS alternatives have not replicated
Side by side
| PostHog (open source) | Mixpanel | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (self-hosted) | Free / $28+/month |
| License | Custom / other | Proprietary |
| Source code | Public, auditable | Closed |
| Self-hosting | Yes — PostHog/posthog | Cloud only |
| Data ownership | Your server, your format | Vendor's cloud |
| Community | ★ 40K · ⑂ 3.4K | — |
| Built with | Python | — |
Why people look for a Mixpanel alternative
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 →
Other open source alternatives to Mixpanel
last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked
Frequently asked questions
Is PostHog a good replacement for Mixpanel?
PostHog is an open source alternative to Mixpanel (Product analytics). It is written in Python and licensed under its own terms, with 39,835 GitHub stars.
Is PostHog free compared to Mixpanel?
Yes. PostHog is open source — there is no licence fee, and you can self-host it. Mixpanel is typically a paid subscription, so the trade-off is licence cost against the operational work of running it yourself.
How do I migrate from Mixpanel to PostHog?
Migration effort depends on the data formats involved. Check PostHog's documentation for import options, and compare the feature table above to confirm the capabilities you depend on are covered before switching.