PostHog vs Umami
Both are alternatives to Amplitude. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as Umami vs PostHog — same comparison, one verdict.
PostHog
TOP PICKProduct analytics, session replay, flags and experiments in one self-hostable product.
PostHog is the most complete answer here because it collapses several line items into one: product analytics, session replay, feature flags, A/B testing, surveys and a data warehouse, all in a product you can run on your own infrastructure. For teams currently paying Amplitude for analytics and LaunchDarkly for flags, that consolidation is often the real saving rather than any single rate. Around 37.4k stars and pushed to daily. The licence needs stating precisely: the core is MIT, but the `ee/` directory is licensed separately as enterprise — so it is MIT-with-a-carve-out rather than plain MIT, which is how it is usually described.
Umami
One clean dashboard, no cookies, five minutes to deploy.
Umami is deliberately small: page views, referrers, countries, devices and events on a single readable dashboard, with no cookies, no personal data and a script around two kilobytes. It runs on Node with Postgres or MySQL and deploys in minutes. MIT, about 38k stars. It is the honest recommendation for a large number of teams who believe they need product analytics and actually need to know which pages people read and where they came from — and the tracking script being 2 KB rather than 45 KB is a real difference on a phone.
Side by side
| PostHog | Umami | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 85 | 95 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT core, with an `ee/` enterprise directory carve-out | MIT |
| Pricing | Generous free tier on cloud; self-hostable at no licence cost for the MIT core. | Free and open source to self-host. Umami Cloud has a free tier and paid plans. |
PostHog is Macrostack's recommended Amplitude alternative, so it's our pick here.
PostHog
Strengths
- +Replaces analytics, session replay, flags and experiments with one tool
- +Self-hostable, so behavioural data never leaves your infrastructure
- +Autocapture means useful data before anyone writes a tracking plan
- +Very generous free tier if you would rather use the hosted version
Trade-offs
- −Self-hosting at volume means operating ClickHouse — a real commitment
- −The `ee/` directory is not MIT despite the project's reputation
- −Heavier and more complex than a focused analytics tool
- −Analysis depth still trails Amplitude for sophisticated cohort work
Umami
Strengths
- +Genuinely simple — one dashboard, no training required
- +No cookies and no personal data, so no consent banner
- +Roughly 2 KB script, a meaningful page-speed win on mobile
- +MIT with no enterprise carve-out
Trade-offs
- −No funnels, cohorts or retention analysis worth the name
- −Not a product-analytics tool — do not expect it to be
- −No session replay or heatmaps
- −Small feature surface by design; you will outgrow it if you need depth
Related alternative guides
Facts verified 2026-07-31. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.