PostHog vs Mixpanel (2026): Cost at 1M, 5M and 20M Events a Month

At 1M events a month neither tool costs anything: both free plans include that volume. Above it, PostHog is cheaper for analytics on anonymous events, at $152.90 a month for 5M events against $438 on Mixpanel's annual Growth plan, and $643.40 against $1,635 at 20M. Mixpanel wins back the lead when most of your events are tied to a person profile, which PostHog bills as an add-on. Prices were read on both vendors' pricing pages on October 26, 2026.

The reason the answer flips is that the two vendors price different units. Mixpanel sells event volume in fixed monthly blocks, with everything else bundled. PostHog meters each product separately, with a free allowance and a graduated rate per product, and charges extra for events that carry a person profile. The sections below price the same three volumes on each, then add session replay, feature flags and the platform add-ons.

Product	Best for	Entry price	Catch
PostHog	Teams that want analytics, replay, flags and error tracking on one bill, and mostly anonymous events	Free to 1M events, 5K recordings and 1M flag requests a month, then per-unit rates with no base fee	Identified events cost up to 5 times an anonymous one in the first paid band
Mixpanel	Product and growth teams that want a mature analysis layer, unlimited seats and SAML on a self-serve plan	Free to 1M events a month; Growth starts free with 1M events included, then volume blocks from $100 a month	No billing limit, and overage on the base plan is $0.00028 per event

Toolradar data: on Toolradar, the software directory we run, PostHog was the most compared product analytics tool in the 90 days to October 2026, with 271 side-by-side comparisons by visitors, ahead of Pendo at 249 and Amplitude at 222. Mixpanel is listed as an alternative to 42 other tools in the category, third behind Pendo and Amplitude, as of October 25, 2026, across the 83 product analytics tools the directory tracks. Both records are public: PostHog and Mixpanel.

How each vendor charges for events

Mixpanel prices committed volume in blocks. The Growth plan starts at $0 with the first 1M events a month included, then steps through fixed tiers: 1.5M events is $100 a month on annual billing or $140 on monthly, 2M is $185 or $259, 5M is $438 or $613, 10M is $840 or $1,176, and the last self-serve block, 20M, is $1,635 or $2,289. Past 20M you talk to sales, and each block is a subscription charged at the start of the month or year, per Mixpanel's pricing page.

Events above the block are overage, and overage is where Mixpanel bills get away from people. On a 1M Growth plan, Mixpanel's pricing docs put the additional rate at $0.00028 per event, charged at the start of the next month, and there is no billing limit to stop it. A team on the base plan that sends 2M events pays $280 in overage by our arithmetic, against $185 if it had bought the 2M block on annual billing. Buying the right block is the whole game on Mixpanel.

PostHog prices usage after the fact. There is no plan to pick and no base fee. The first 1M events a month are free, then the rate falls through bands: $0.00005 per event up to 2M, $0.0000343 up to 15M, $0.0000295 up to 50M, down to $0.000009 past 250M, per the tiers PostHog's own billing service publishes for its pricing calculator. Each band applies only to the events inside it, and you can cap any product with a billing limit that drops events rather than charging more.

That base rate covers anonymous events only. An event tied to a person profile, which PostHog calls an identified event, adds a second meter: $0.000198 per event in the 1M to 2M band and $0.0000697 up to 15M, on top of the anonymous rate. PostHog's docs say anonymous events can be up to 4 times cheaper, and the first paid band is close to 5 times once both rates are added.

What 1M, 5M and 20M events cost on each

The scenario is analytics only, a 30-day month, before tax. PostHog rows apply the graduated bands to the stated volume; Mixpanel rows are the printed block prices. Both are our arithmetic on the vendors' published figures.

Monthly events	PostHog, anonymous	PostHog, all identified	Mixpanel Growth, annual billing	Mixpanel Growth, monthly billing
1M	Free	Free	Free	Free
5M	$152.90	$560.00	$438	$613
20M	$643.40	$1,927.50	$1,635	$2,289

On anonymous events PostHog costs about a third of Mixpanel at 5M and 20M. The 5M PostHog bill is $50 for the second million plus $102.90 for the next three; the 20M bill adds $445.90 for the band to 15M and $147.50 for the last five. Over a year on monthly billing that is $1,834.80 against Mixpanel's $5,256 annual charge at 5M, and $7,720.80 against $19,620 at 20M.

On identified events the order reverses at 5M. The identified add-on costs $407.10 at that volume, which takes PostHog to $560 a month, $122 above Mixpanel's annual block and $53 below its monthly one. At 20M the gap is $292.50 a month in Mixpanel's favor on annual billing. A B2B product that identifies every logged-in user on every event is the case where Mixpanel's bundle beats PostHog's meter, and Mixpanel does not charge more for events with a profile attached.

The realistic case sits between the two columns. PostHog's cost-cutting guide recommends identifying users only on the events where person-level analysis matters, so a product with a public marketing site and a logged-in app usually lands closer to the anonymous row than the identified one. Measure the split before you choose; the PostHog billing page projects it after a few days of traffic.

Session replay and feature flags change the total

Mixpanel bundles more replay into its plans; PostHog meters it from a lower free line. Mixpanel's Free plan includes 10,000 replays a month and Growth includes 20,000, with an add-on that takes Growth to 500,000, per Mixpanel's session replay docs. PostHog includes 5,000 recordings a month free, then charges $0.005 each to 15,000 and $0.0035 to 50,000. A team watching 20,000 sessions a month pays $67.50 on PostHog by our arithmetic and nothing extra on Mixpanel Growth. Mixpanel does not print the add-on's per-replay price on its pricing page, so a volume above 20,000 means a quote from its plan builder.

Replay retention is 30 days on Mixpanel Free and Growth, with 7 to 360 days available on Enterprise with the paid add-on. PostHog keeps recordings 1 month on the free plan and 90 days on pay-as-you-go, with 12 months on its Boost and Scale add-ons.

Feature flags are capped differently. Mixpanel limits active flags, not requests: 10 on Free, 50 on Growth and 500 once you buy Experiments volume, with API requests unlimited, per Mixpanel's feature flags docs. PostHog gives 1M flag requests a month free and then bills $0.0001 per request to 2M and $0.000045 to 10M, with no cap on the number of flags. A product with 60 flags live and modest traffic is free on PostHog and needs an Experiments purchase on Mixpanel; a product with 10 flags evaluated on every server-side render can pass 1M requests on PostHog and start paying, unless local evaluation resolves them. The feature flag platforms list prices the dedicated tools beside both, and LaunchDarkly pricing shows what a flags-only vendor charges per seat.

Experiments follow the same split: Mixpanel includes 1,000 monthly experiment users on Free and 5,000 on Growth; PostHog bills experiments through the flag meter, so an experiment costs whatever its flag requests cost.

Seats, SSO, HIPAA and the add-ons

Neither vendor charges per seat, since Mixpanel includes unlimited seats on every plan, including Free, and PostHog includes unlimited team members, so the difference is where the governance features sit and what they cost.

Mixpanel puts SAML SSO and SCIM on the self-serve Growth plan. Report-level permissions, sensitive data classification and compartmentalized data access are Growth features too. A HIPAA BAA, a customizable data retention policy, anomaly detection and root cause analysis are Enterprise only, and Enterprise is custom pricing. Mixpanel's docs also mention an MTU-based Enterprise plan that starts at $20,000 a year and is not sold online.

PostHog sells governance as flat add-ons. Boost at $250 a month adds unlimited projects, SSO enforcement, a HIPAA BAA, access control and 7 days of activity logs; Scale at $750 a month adds SAML and OIDC SSO, approval workflows for flag changes and priority support with an 8-hour target response; Enterprise is custom and adds role-based access control and SCIM, per PostHog's platform packages page. So a team that needs SAML pays $750 a month on PostHog before any usage and nothing extra on Mixpanel Growth, while a team that needs a BAA pays $250 a month on PostHog and must go to Mixpanel's sales team.

Add those to the event scenarios and the picture shifts. At 5M anonymous events with SAML, PostHog is $902.90 a month against Mixpanel's annual block, less than half that. At 20M anonymous events with a BAA, PostHog is $893.40 against a Mixpanel Enterprise quote. Our PostHog pricing page walks through every meter and add-on; the PostHog review covers what the product does with them.

Free plans and the limits that end them

Both free plans are permanent and need no card, and both reset monthly with no rollover, so the difference is what happens at the limit.

• Mixpanel Free blocks access to reports once the organization passes 1M events in a month, until you upgrade or the next month starts, and never charges overage. It also caps saved reports at 5 per seat and will not save cohorts, custom properties or lookup tables.
• PostHog Free drops events past the allowance and returns a default response for flags, with 1 project and 1 year of event retention. Adding a card raises that to 6 projects and 7 years of retention, and with billing limits set to the free allowance it still costs nothing.
• Startups get a different deal from Mixpanel: companies under 5 years old with up to $8M raised get a first year free with 1 billion events and 1 million replays. PostHog offers startup and non-profit discounts through its sales team rather than a printed program.
• Data retention on Mixpanel defaults to 2 years on every plan, with a customizable policy on Enterprise. PostHog's 7-year retention on any paid plan is the longer default once a card is on file.

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Where each one is weaker

PostHog's weakness is bill predictability. Four or more meters, two event rates and flat add-ons mean the monthly figure depends on an identify call in your SDK and a flag check in your backend. Billing limits stop the overrun, but a limit that triggers mid-month means lost data, and the identified-events meter is the one most teams discover on the first invoice. PostHog's logs, error tracking and warehouse products also compete with dedicated tools; the error tracking roundup the observability tools for startups list and the Datadog alternatives page show where a specialist still wins.

Mixpanel's weakness is the block model. You commit to a volume, pay for it whether you use it or not, and pay $0.00028 per event above it on the base plan with no cap. The Free plan locks you out of reports at the limit instead of dropping events, which is the wrong failure mode during a launch. Replay volume above 20,000 and experiment users above 5,000 are quotes rather than printed prices, and HIPAA requires the Enterprise plan. Error tracking and logs are not in the product at all, so a Mixpanel shop still buys those elsewhere; the Sentry pricing page and the Sentry review cover the usual choice.

Who should pick which

Pick PostHog if most of your events are anonymous, you want replay, flags and error tracking on the same bill, or you need a BAA at $250 a month rather than an Enterprise contract. At 5M and 20M anonymous events it costs about a third of Mixpanel, and the free tier covers more products.

Pick Mixpanel if your events are mostly identified, your team needs SAML SSO without a $750 add-on, or you want 20,000 replays a month included and a fixed invoice. A B2B app identifying every event at 5M a month pays $122 a month less on Mixpanel's annual block than on PostHog, by our arithmetic.

If neither fits, the best dev tools for startups list covers the broader stack, and the feature flag platforms list separates the flag decision from the analytics one.

How we priced it

We read Mixpanel's pricing page, its pricing docs, session replay docs and feature flags docs, and PostHog's pricing page, platform packages page and anonymous versus identified events doc, on October 26, 2026. PostHog per-unit bands come from the billing service that feeds its pricing calculator. Mixpanel figures are its printed Growth blocks; PostHog figures are our arithmetic on the graduated bands for a 30-day month. The Toolradar figures come from its product analytics ranking. Prices change; confirm both pages before you commit.

Cite this: Devshot, "PostHog vs Mixpanel (2026): Cost at 1M, 5M and 20M Events a Month", November 2026.

FAQ

Is PostHog or Mixpanel cheaper at 1M events a month?

Neither charges for the first 1M events a month. Mixpanel's Free plan and its Growth plan both include that volume, and PostHog's free allowance is 1M events on every plan. The cost difference starts above 1M, where PostHog charges $0.00005 per anonymous event and Mixpanel's next block, 1.5M events, costs $100 a month on annual billing.

How much do 5M events a month cost on each?

By our arithmetic on prices read on October 26, 2026, 5M anonymous events cost $152.90 a month on PostHog. Mixpanel's 5M Growth block costs $438 a month on annual billing or $613 on monthly billing. If every PostHog event is identified, the add-on takes PostHog to $560, above Mixpanel's annual price.

Does PostHog charge more for identified events?

Yes. An event tied to a person profile is billed on a second meter, $0.000198 per event in the 1M to 2M band on top of the $0.00005 anonymous rate. PostHog's docs say anonymous events can be up to 4 times cheaper and recommend identifying users only where person-level analysis is needed. Mixpanel charges one rate per event regardless of profile.

Which one includes more session replay?

Mixpanel. Its Free plan includes 10,000 replays a month and Growth includes 20,000, both kept for 30 days. PostHog includes 5,000 recordings a month and charges $0.005 each above that, kept 90 days on pay-as-you-go. Mixpanel's add-on above 20,000 replays is priced through its plan builder rather than printed.

Does either one charge per seat?

No. Mixpanel includes unlimited seats on Free, Growth and Enterprise. PostHog includes unlimited team members on every plan. Governance is where they diverge: SAML SSO is on Mixpanel's Growth plan but needs PostHog's Scale add-on at $750 a month, while a HIPAA BAA is on PostHog's Boost add-on at $250 a month but Enterprise only on Mixpanel.

Can I cap my bill on both?

Only on PostHog, which lets you set a billing limit per product that drops usage instead of charging. Mixpanel's docs say a billing limit is not possible: Growth plan overage is charged at the start of the next month, with alert emails at 85%, 100%, 110% and higher of plan volume, and the Free plan blocks report access at 1M events rather than billing.

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