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Google Analytics vs PostHog - Comparison 2025

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Google Analytics vs. PostHog

Last updated on

Reviewed by Camin McCluskey

Stackfix Co-Founder & CTO

PostHog and Google Analytics are both popular analytics tools – but they serve different needs.

PostHog is the more powerful and versatile option, built for technical teams and product-focused companies that need comprehensive analytics, greater customization, and strong integration options. It offers deeper insights but requires more setup and technical expertise.

Google Analytics, on the other hand, is simpler to set up and integrates seamlessly with Google’s ecosystem, making it the better choice for marketing teams and non-technical users who need basic web analytics.

Go with PostHog if you need customizable, full-featured product analytics. Choose Google Analytics for easy-to-use web traffic insights and Google Ads integration.

Advantages of Google Analytics

Google Analytics is significantly easier to set up than PostHog

While both tools require initial setup, Google Analytics offers a simpler drop-in tracking code that takes minutes to implement, compared to PostHog's more developer-centric approach. This makes Google Analytics particularly valuable for marketing teams and non-technical users who need quick website analytics implementation.

Google Analytics has superior Google ecosystem integration compared to PostHog

Google Analytics provides seamless integration with Google's ecosystem, especially Google Ads, offering unmatched marketing attribution capabilities that PostHog cannot match. This is particularly valuable for businesses heavily invested in Google's marketing tools.

Advantages of PostHog

PostHog offers vastly superior functionality range compared to Google Analytics

PostHog provides the most comprehensive feature set in the market, significantly outperforming Google Analytics in areas like automatic event capture, heatmaps, and session recordings. This makes it especially valuable for product teams needing deep user behavior insights.

PostHog has much better integration capabilities than Google Analytics

PostHog offers one of the widest arrays of integrations available, surpassing Google Analytics with connections to data warehouses, CRMs, CDPs, and customer support tools, plus a robust API. This makes it ideal for teams needing comprehensive data connectivity.

PostHog provides superior customer support compared to Google Analytics

While Google Analytics offers minimal support for free users, PostHog provides best-in-class documentation and a thriving developer community with quick response times. This makes it particularly valuable for teams needing reliable technical support.

PostHog offers better customization options than Google Analytics

PostHog provides extensive customization capabilities across reports, metrics, and even self-hosting options, surpassing Google Analytics' more limited customization features. This makes it especially valuable for teams needing flexible analytics solutions.

Google Analytics is best for

Businesses with basic web analytics needs who prioritize Google ecosystem integration
Who need comprehensive traffic analysis and acquisition channel tracking
And/or who need industry benchmarking capabilities

PostHog is best for

Businesses with technical teams seeking a comprehensive open-source analytics platform
Who need comprehensive automatic event tracking without manual setup
And/or who need advanced visualization tools like heatmaps and session replays in one platform

Google Analytics is less good for

Businesses with complex product analytics needs who require an intuitive, user-friendly interface
Who need comprehensive user behavior analysis like heatmaps and session replays
And/or who need reliable customer support and clear documentation

PostHog is less good for

Businesses with non-technical teams who need simple, non-developer focused analytics
Who need simplified form analytics and conversion tracking
And/or who need a streamlined, simplified interface without technical complexity

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Google Analytics

PostHog

Pricing, features & ratings

	Google Analytics Starting at $0 Billed monthly Pricing calculator Visit Website	PostHog Starting at $0 event / month Billed monthly Pricing calculator Visit Website

Stackfix Verdict
Functionality	4 Functionality 4/10 <p>Google Analytics excels at website visitor tracking but struggles with product analytics. It offers solid traffic analysis and acquisition data but falls short on user behavior insights. Its real power comes from Google Ads integrations and benchmarking functionality.</p>	10 Functionality 10/10 <p>PostHog's functionality range is the best on the market. It excels in richness in nearly every category from automatic event capture to heatmaps to session replay recordings.</p>
Ease of Use	3 Ease of Use 3/10 <p>GA4 is surprisingly difficult to use despite its popularity. Finding basic metrics often requires hunting through multiple screens. The learning curve is steep, and the recent redesign has only made things worse by disrupting established workflows.</p>	5 Ease of Use 5/10 <p>PostHog’s web app can feel overwhelming due to the sheer number of controls and limited in-product guidance (e.g. tooltips or hints). Less experienced users often end up a bit lost. For example, on the Web Analytics tab, there are ~50 controls - most of which are undefined, and some (e.g. 'Paths' and 'Correlation Analysis') which even confused even fairly experienced users.</p><p>That said, inside specific areas - like session replays - controls and charts are much easier to use.</p>
Look and feel	2 Look and feel 2/10 <p>GA4's interface is cluttered and confusing. Navigation is a labyrinth of menus and submenus that hide basic information. Reports load quickly but finding the right one is a chore. The design prioritizes Google's needs over users', making common tasks unnecessarily difficult.</p>	7 Look and feel 7/10 <p>PostHog's design aesthetic is warm and quirky. Given the sheer breadth of functionality, they do a good job of presenting information clearly, though we would have preferred a touch more simplicity. When tested, pages and charts were extremely fast to load (<1s).</p>
Customisability	6 Customisability 6/10 <p>Google Analytics offers decent customization through custom dimensions and metrics, but implementing these requires technical knowledge. Custom reports are possible but clunky to configure.</p>	8 Customisability 8/10 <p>PostHog is one of the most customizable tools on the market. Everything from reports, to custom metrics to self-hosting is possible with this tool.</p>
Ease of Setup	7 Ease of Setup 7/10 <p>Drop in a tracking code and you're done. Setting up Google Analytics takes minutes, making it very simple to start with like most web analytics products. However, to make full use of the product there is a fair amount of customization that you can action after initial installation.</p>	7 Ease of Setup 7/10 <p>PostHog offers a self-serve product with a very generous free tier. Additionally, it was one of the first products to pioneer automatic event capture, meaning it's pretty simple to get value from the product after installing a simple script. That being said, the onboarding process is very developer centric so is best suited to technical team members.</p>
Customer Support	3 Customer Support 3/10 <p>Support is practically non-existent for free users. Google offers documentation but it's often outdated or unclear. Users mostly rely on community forums for help, creating a significant gap compared to privacy-focused alternatives that provide stronger documentation.</p>	9 Customer Support 9/10 <p>As with the majority of tools in the space, the primary means for support will come from developer documentation. PostHog's docs are best in class. Additionally, thanks to a thriving open-source developer ecosystem, its forums are lively and a great way to get answers to technical questions in less than 24 hours.</p>
Integratability	8 Integratability 8/10 <p>Google Analytics integrates seamlessly with Google's ecosystem (especially Google Ads) and offers connections to major marketing platforms. Its status as the industry standard means most tools support it, though privacy-focused competitors are quickly catching up.</p>	10 Integratability 10/10 <p>PostHog offers one of the widest arrays of integrations we've tested covering everything from data warehouses, to CRMs, to CDPs and even customer support tools. They also offer a great API through which you can interact with the product programatically.</p>
Ease of Migration	5 Ease of Migration 5/10 <p>Data export options are adequate but outdated. Reports can be exported to spreadsheets or accessed via API, but the process feels clunky compared to modern alternatives.</p>	9 Ease of Migration 9/10 <p>PostHog offers self-serve export functionality within its web app. It also offers a very robust and well documented API through which you can interact with data from the product directly.</p>

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