PostHog vs Umami

The one question that decides this

Do you need a simple, privacy-focused replacement for Google Analytics, or do you want one platform that also reaches into product analytics, session replay, feature flags, and A/B testing? That is the real split. Umami is explicitly a "Simple, fast, privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics," while PostHog positions itself as "All-in-one product analytics, session replay, feature flags, A/B testing." Both can replace Google Analytics, but they are aiming at very different levels of operational appetite.

What each one is actually trying to be

PostHog: A broad product toolkit that happens to replace Google Analytics

PostHog is optimizing for teams that see analytics as part of building and operating a product, not merely checking whether last week's blog post got traffic. Its GitHub description calls it "the leading platform for building self-driving products" and lists AI observability, analytics, session replay, flags, experiments, error tracking, and logs. The supplied tagline is less grandiose and more useful: "All-in-one product analytics, session replay, feature flags, A/B testing."

That breadth is the appeal and the warning label. If your team wants product analytics alongside other developer-facing tools, PostHog is clearly trying to consolidate that work. Its replacement list includes Mixpanel, Amplitude, and Google Analytics, which is a stronger clue about its intended scope than any landing-page slogan. This is not the pick for someone who simply wants to stop feeding Google another stream of visitor data and move on with their day.

PostHog's framing also makes it a more consequential choice. A platform that covers several categories can become a central part of how a product team measures, tests, and observes work. That may be exactly what you want. It may also be several layers of machinery when all you needed was a traffic dashboard. "All-in-one" is useful when those things actually belong together; otherwise it is just a shopping cart with a very persuasive homepage.

Umami: A focused Google Analytics alternative

Umami is optimizing for a narrower job: web analytics with a privacy-focused pitch. Its GitHub description is direct: "Umami is a modern, privacy-focused analytics platform. An open-source alternative to Google Analytics, Mixpanel and Amplitude." The project tagline makes the intended use even clearer: "Simple, fast, privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics."

Unlike PostHog's replacement list, Umami's supplied replaces data names only Google Analytics. That matters. The GitHub description may mention Mixpanel and Amplitude, but the product data here describes Umami primarily as a Google Analytics replacement. It is the cleaner fit when your goal is straightforward: move away from Google Analytics without adopting an all-purpose product platform in the process.

This focus is not a deficiency unless your requirements exceed it. A narrow tool has fewer reasons to become an internal program, fewer reasons to turn every analytics question into a platform decision, and fewer reasons to invite feature sprawl. Umami's pitch is refreshingly unambitious in the best sense: it is trying to be an alternative to Google Analytics, not a replacement for half your engineering stack.

Head-to-head: the metrics

The GitHub popularity numbers are nearly tied, which is unusual enough to be worth stating plainly. PostHog's PostHog/posthog has 37,326 stars and 3,097 forks. Umami's umami-software/umami has 37,889 stars and 7,634 forks. Umami is ahead by 563 stars and has substantially more forks, but stars and forks are weak evidence for choosing between projects with such different scopes. They show that both repositories have broad visibility; they do not tell you whether either tool fits your analytics workflow.

The license data is more consequential. Umami is licensed under MIT. PostHog's supplied GitHub license field is NOASSERTION. That is not a minor metadata wrinkle to wave away, especially for a self-hosted adoption decision. NOASSERTION means this dataset does not assert a license for the repository; it does not establish what licensing terms apply. Anyone evaluating PostHog for company use should verify the current licensing terms from the project itself before treating it as equivalent to an MIT-licensed project.

Both repositories have very recent supplied push dates: PostHog was last pushed on 2026-07-26, while Umami was last pushed on 2026-07-25. Taken at face value, that is a one-day difference and effectively tells us nothing useful about relative maintenance. It does indicate that neither repository looks dormant based on this snapshot. It does not tell us release quality, response time, security posture, upgrade pain, or whether the recent changes affect the parts you plan to use.

The issue counts show a much larger difference: PostHog has 4,828 open issues, and Umami has 109. That may reflect PostHog's considerably wider stated scope, its project scale, or how each project uses GitHub issues. It is not proof that PostHog is poorly maintained or that Umami is painless. Open issue totals are a queue size, not a customer-satisfaction score, and pretending otherwise is dashboard astrology.

Self-hosting

PostHog offers both self-hosting and official cloud hosting. Its supplied deployment difficulty is 4 out of 5, which matches the basic implication of choosing a broad platform with analytics, replay, flags, experiments, and more in its stated scope. A team should treat self-hosting PostHog as a real operational commitment, not a quick container deployment to forget about after lunch. The official SaaS price supplied here is $0 per month, although that figure alone does not describe usage limits or any broader pricing terms.

Umami also offers self-hosting and official cloud hosting, but its supplied deployment difficulty is 1 out of 5. Based on the provided data, it is the clearly lower-friction self-hosted option. Its official SaaS price is $9 per month. That makes Umami especially compelling for a small site, an independent publisher, or a team whose goal is privacy-focused analytics without assigning someone a second job as analytics-platform custodian.

Community signals

PostHog has two Hacker News mentions in the last 90 days in the supplied data. Its listed top HN story, "Posthog is closing their Slack community in favor of forum," received 396 points and 216 comments on 2024-01-14. That is a community-governance story, not evidence that PostHog's analytics are better or worse than Umami's.

Umami has one Hacker News mention in the last 90 days in the supplied data. Its listed top HN story, "Umami: Self-hosted open-source alternative to Google Analytics," received 820 points and 227 comments on 2020-08-18. It is strong historical attention for the project's core proposition, but old HN points are not an operations report. The supplied Reddit posts are unrelated to either project, so they are not meaningful community signals and are not being treated as such.

What we'd do

Pick PostHog when Google Analytics replacement is only the starting point and your product team genuinely wants analytics alongside session replay, feature flags, and A/B testing. Pick Umami when you want a focused, privacy-oriented Google Analytics alternative with the easier supplied self-hosting profile and a clearly stated MIT license. For most people escaping Google Analytics rather than shopping for a product platform, Umami is the less complicated answer.