Head to head
Absolutely Analytics vs PostHog
Measuring a website, or building a product. Scored on ten weighted measures, with every price read on the same day.
Absolutely Analytics
8.9/10
No. 1 of 30
PostHog
7.1/10
No. 6 of 30
These two are barely competitors, and the most useful thing this page can do is say so plainly. PostHog is a product analytics platform with feature flags, experiments, session replay, error tracking, surveys and a data warehouse behind one signup, and it gives away a million events, five thousand recordings and a million flag requests every month, forever. Absolutely Analytics is a 1,270-byte script that tells you who came, what they read and whether they stayed, without a consent banner.
They get compared because both appear on lists of Google Analytics alternatives. They answer different questions.
The verdict
It depends entirely on whether the thing you are measuring is a website or a software product.
If you are building software and want to ship a feature behind a flag, measure its effect on a funnel, watch three recordings of people failing to use it and read the errors they hit, PostHog does all of that in one tool and its free tier is generous enough that most teams never pay. Nothing here competes with that, and Absolutely Analytics does not try: it has no feature flags, no experiments and no A/B testing at all.
If you are measuring a website, PostHog is the wrong instrument and an expensive one in ways that do not appear on the invoice. The script is tens of kilobytes against 1,270 bytes, which is a real performance cost on every page view. It sets cookies by default, so in the UK and EU you are back to a consent banner and the visitors who decline vanish from your data. And setup is a project: events have to be designed, named and instrumented, and a badly modelled taxonomy takes months to unpick.
A common and sensible arrangement is both: PostHog inside the authenticated product, Absolutely Analytics on the marketing site.
Side by side
| Absolutely Analytics | PostHog | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall score | 8.9 / 10 | 7.1 / 10 |
| Rank on this list | No. 1 of 30 | No. 6 of 30 |
| From | $9 per month | Free then usage-based |
| What that buys | 10,000 pageviews and custom events a month, rising in eight published rungs to 10M | 1M events, 5,000 session replays and 1M feature flag requests free every month, forever |
| Free tier | No free tier. A 30-day trial of the exact tier you picked | Yes, and it is the most generous on this list |
| Cookies | None, so no consent banner | Yes, by default |
| Script size | 1,270 bytes gzipped | Tens of kilobytes |
| Hosting | Hosted, with a choice of storage jurisdiction | US or EU cloud, or self-hosted |
| Trading since | 2024 | 2020 |
| What it is for | Measuring a website | Building and measuring a software product |
| Script size | 1,270 bytes gzipped | Tens of kilobytes |
| Cookie banner needed in the UK and EU | No | Yes, cookies are set by default |
| Feature flags and experiments | Not offered | 1M flag requests free every month |
| Free tier | None; 30-day trial | 1M events, 5K replays, 100K exceptions, monthly, forever |
| Setup effort | One tag, seconds | Event taxonomy design, days |
| Billing predictability | Fixed rung on a published ladder | Usage metered across many product lines |
The ten measures, scored
| Measure | Absolutely Analytics | PostHog |
|---|---|---|
| Insight quality | 9 | 8 |
| Privacy architecture | 10 | 5 |
| Value for money | 8 | 9 |
| Setup and time to data | 10 | 5 |
| Script weight | 10 | 3 |
| Analytical depth | 6 | 10 |
| Behaviour tooling | 8 | 9 |
| Data ownership | 7 | 9 |
| Accuracy | 9 | 6 |
| Vendor conduct | 10 | 8 |
| Weighted overall | 8.9 | 7.1 |
Higher is better. The overall figure is the weighted mean, relative to the 30 tools on this list. How this works.
Which one should you pick
Choose PostHog if
You are building a software product and want flags, experiments, replay and analytics in one tool with a free tier you may never outgrow.
Choose Absolutely Analytics if
You are measuring a website and want honest numbers in a kilobyte, with no banner, no taxonomy project and a bill you can predict.
Common questions
Can I use both?
Yes, and many teams should. PostHog inside the authenticated product where you already have consent and need flags and replay, Absolutely Analytics on the public marketing site where the consent banner and the payload are real costs.
Does PostHog need a cookie banner?
By default yes, because it sets cookies. It can be configured for cookieless operation, which reduces the functionality that made you buy it. Absolutely Analytics has no cookie mode to switch off.
Is PostHog free?
Genuinely, for most teams. The company states that 97 per cent of its customers use it for free, and the allowance renews every month rather than expiring as a trial. Paid usage starts only above those lines.
Which is better for a marketing site?
Absolutely Analytics, on weight and consent alone. PostHog's payload is tens of kilobytes on every page view, and the reports it unlocks in exchange are product questions that a marketing site does not have.
Both entries above are desk reviews written from published evidence, and every judgement is my opinion rather than a statement of fact. Read the full reviews for Absolutely Analytics and PostHog, or tell me where I have got something wrong.