Visitant vs PostHog
PostHog is a developer platform: product analytics, session replay, feature flags, experiments, surveys, error tracking and a data warehouse, with 1,000,000 events a month free and usage-based pricing above that. Visitant is a small cookie-free dashboard for shop and blog owners that also counts the AI side of traffic. Honest verdict: if you are building a software product and want everything in one place, PostHog is the bigger tool by a wide margin. If you want to know who visits, including AI, without cookies and without a pricing calculator, Visitant is the simpler one.
- PostHog free tier: 1,000,000 events and 5,000 recordings a month, 1 project, 1 year of data. Above that: $0.00005 per event for events 1-2M, falling to $0.000009 above 250M.
- PostHog sets a first-party cookie by default (
ph_..._posthog, 365 days); a memory-only mode exists. Visitant sets 0 cookies. - PostHog groups AI assistant referrals into an "AI" channel type (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot per its docs). It has no server-side crawler log; Visitant has both.
- PostHog has session replay, heatmaps, feature flags, surveys and self-hosting (MIT, no support); Visitant has none of these.
- In our view the PostHog dashboard needs a developer to set up well; Visitant is meant to be read by the shop owner.
Prices and features checked 2026-09-25 at posthog.com. If something changed, tell us: promptowy@gmail.com
Features
| Visitant | PostHog | |
|---|---|---|
| Cookie-free, no consent banner | yes0 cookies, no IP stored | partialcookie by default (365 days); persistence: "memory" avoids it |
| EU hosting | yesPoland | yesPostHog Cloud EU in Frankfurt, chosen at signup |
| Script size (vendor's own number) | yes1.9 KB gzipped | n/ano number on the vendor site; in our view posthog-js is many times larger |
| Free tier | yes5,000 events/mo, 2 sites, 13 months of data | yes1,000,000 events and 5,000 recordings/mo, 1 project, 1 year of data |
| Pricing model | yes4 flat plans | yesusage-based per product, plus optional platform add-ons from $250/mo |
| Data retention | yes13 months on Free, 5 years on Pro | yes1 year free, 7 years pay-as-you-go; replays 1 month free, 3 months paid |
| Goals and custom events | yesevery plan | yesevents, actions, autocapture |
| Funnels | paid extraPro and up | yes |
| Revenue per source | paid extraPro and up | yesrevenue events; revenue analytics product in beta |
| Core Web Vitals | paid extraPro and up | yesin web analytics |
| Session replay | no | yes5,000 free/mo, then from $0.005 per recording |
| Heatmaps | no | yes |
| Feature flags, experiments, surveys | no | yeseach with its own free allowance |
| Stats API and export | yesCSV on every plan, API on Pro and up | yesAPI, exports, data warehouse |
| Public share links | yesevery plan | yesshared dashboards |
| Team seats | yes1 / 3 / 15 / 100 by plan | yesno seat limit; projects 1 free, 6 pay-as-you-go |
| AI assistant referrals as a channel | yes21 assistants | yes"AI" channel type |
| AI crawler log (server-side) | yes44 crawlers, checked against published IP ranges | noLLM analytics is for your own AI app, not for crawlers |
| AI agents kept out of human counts | yesSignature-Agent, webdriver | n/anot documented |
| Self-hosting / open source | no | yesMIT, Docker Compose, no vendor support |
Pricing
| Free | $0/mo | 5,000 events |
| Pro | $12/mo | 100,000 events |
| Business | $39/mo | 1,000,000 events |
| Scale | $149/mo | 10,000,000 events |
AI crawler hits never count toward the limit. Going over the limit never locks the dashboard.
| Free | $0 | 1,000,000 events and 5,000 recordings/mo, 1 project, 1 year of data |
| Events 1-2M | $0.00005 per event | pay-as-you-go, 6 projects, 7 years of data |
| Events 2-15M | $0.0000343 per event | |
| Events 15-50M | $0.0000295 per event | |
| Events 50-100M | $0.0000218 per event | |
| Events 100-250M | $0.000015 per event | |
| Events 250M+ | $0.000009 per event | |
| Recordings 5-15k | $0.005 per recording | then $0.0035, $0.002, $0.0017, $0.0015 at higher volumes |
| Boost / Scale add-on | $250 / $750 per mo | SSO enforcement, unlimited projects, 12 months of replays; Enterprise $2,000/mo |
Prices in USD, monthly usage billing, read on 2026-09-25. Every product has its own free allowance that renews monthly. The per-event ladder is for anonymous events; identified events carry an extra person-profile rate. Platform add-ons: Boost $250/mo, Scale $750/mo, Enterprise $2,000/mo (flat rates in the same billing data).
The AI loop
Credit where due: PostHog is one of the few tools that already labels referrals from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot as an "AI" channel, so the assistant half of the loop is there. What is missing is the first step. Visitant's server snippet records fetches by 44 known AI crawlers, split into training, AI search and user-fetch, each hit checked against the IP ranges the operator publishes and spoofed ones flagged, so you know a page was read by GPTBot weeks before ChatGPT sends the first person. The browser script then groups 21 assistants into one channel, adds a "likely AI" estimate from text-fragment landings, and keeps AI agents (Signature-Agent, webdriver) out of human counts. Goals, funnels and revenue are split per assistant. PostHog's LLM analytics is a different thing: it traces the AI calls your own app makes. Crawler hits never count toward the Visitant plan limit.
- You build a software product and want analytics, replay, flags, experiments, surveys and error tracking in one tool.
- 1,000,000 free events a month covers you, and you have a developer to set it up.
- You want to self-host: PostHog is MIT-licensed with a Docker Compose deployment.
- You need a data warehouse, SQL access or pipelines to your own systems.
- You run a shop or a blog and want a dashboard you can read without a developer.
- You want 0 cookies out of the box instead of configuring a memory-only mode.
- You publish content that AI assistants quote and want the crawler log (44 crawlers) next to the assistant referrals (21) and revenue per assistant.
- You want a flat price: $12/mo for 100,000 events with no per-event calculator.
Questions
Is PostHog free for a small site?
Usually yes: 1,000,000 events and 5,000 recordings a month are free and renew monthly. Above that you pay per unit, starting at $0.00005 per event.
Does PostHog need a cookie banner?
By default PostHog stores a first-party cookie for 365 days, so in the EU that normally means consent. It offers a memory-only persistence mode that avoids cookies at the cost of cross-page identity. Visitant sets 0 cookies by design.
Does PostHog track ChatGPT traffic?
Yes, as an "AI" channel type based on the referrer or utm_source. It does not record crawler fetches, which happen on your server; Visitant does with a server snippet.
What does 100,000 events cost?
PostHog: $0, inside the free allowance. Visitant: Pro at $12/mo, which also adds funnels, revenue, Web Vitals and alerts, with AI crawler hits not counted.
Can I import PostHog data into Visitant?
No. Visitant has no importer. Run both for a few weeks and switch when the numbers make sense to you.