Comparison

Ripples vs PostHog

PostHog is the largest product in this comparison by a wide margin: product analytics, session replay, feature flags, experiments, surveys, a data warehouse, and a free tier of one million events a month that most small companies never exhaust. Ripples does a fraction of that. What Ripples does that PostHog does not is join Google Ads spend to subscription revenue and retention into a payback number per channel, without configuration. Pick PostHog if you want a platform and have the time to shape it. Pick Ripples if you want one question answered on the day you install it.

Checked August 2026 No affiliate links We are biased, and we say where

Choose Ripples if

You want the payback answer without designing an event taxonomy first
Your Google Ads spend and your Stripe revenue need to meet
You are one person, and PostHog is more product than you can staff

Choose PostHog if

You need session replay, feature flags or experiments
You want one platform for everything and will grow into it
One million events a month free is the deciding factor

Side by side

Ripples and PostHog, row by row.

Prices are the published list prices as of August 2026. The last group is the one where PostHog may well beat us, and it is in the same table as the rest on purpose.

Feature and price comparison between Ripples and PostHog
Price
	Ripples	PostHog
Entry price	Free until $1K MRR, then $9/mo	Free, then usage-based
What the price meters	100,000 visits and actions a month	1,000,000 events a month free, then per event and per product
Free tier	Yes, until $1K MRR	Yes, generous, per product
Cost predictability	Flat price, a fuse rather than a quota	Usage-based across several products
Google Ads spend	Included on every plan	Marketing analytics, in beta
Setup before it is useful	One script tag	Install, then define events, insights and dashboards
Money and payback
Revenue from Stripe, Paddle, Polar or Lemon Squeezy	Yes	Revenue analytics, Stripe
Revenue credited to the channel that brought the customer	Yes	Yes
Payback period, per channel	Yes	No
Google Ads spend imported	Yes	Marketing analytics, in beta
ROAS against real paid revenue	Yes	In beta
Retention
Retention curves	Yes	Yes
Retention split by acquisition channel	Yes	Yes, if you define the cohort
Traffic
Real-time traffic, referrers and campaigns	Yes	Yes
AI assistant referrals as their own channel	Yes	Shows as a referrer
Telegram Mini Apps and native apps	Yes	Yes
What Ripples deliberately does not do
Session replay	No	Yes
Heatmaps	No	Yes
Feature flags and A/B tests	No	Yes
Open source	No	Yes
Self-hostable	No	Open source, cloud recommended

Prices and features change. If you find a row here that is out of date, tell us and we will fix it: a comparison page nobody can trust is worth less to us than no page at all.

The real difference

PostHog has both halves. They are not joined yet.

This is the honest version of the comparison, and it is worth stating plainly because it will not stay true forever. PostHog has revenue analytics that reads Stripe. It has marketing analytics that reads ad platform spend. Both exist. What it does not have is those two joined into a payback period per acquisition channel, and the marketing side is still in beta.

You can get most of the way there by hand: define the cohort, build the insight, keep the properties clean. PostHog is powerful enough that a determined founder gets a version of this working in an afternoon and maintains it forever after.

Ripples ships the joined answer as the default screen and has nothing else to configure, because there is nothing else in the product. That is the entire trade: a much smaller tool that needs no work, against a much larger one that needs some.

PostHog pricing calculator listing fourteen separately metered products, from product analytics and session replay through to logs, workflows and data pipelines, each with its own price, under a banner reading that the first 1,000,000 events are free every month. — PostHog pricing calculator, captured 14 August 2026. Not a mock.

“More than 90% of companies use PostHog for free.”

PostHog pricing page

Being straight with you

Pick PostHog instead if any of this is you.

We would rather you found out here than after installing.

You need replay, flags or experiments

Ripples has none of these and is not building them. PostHog does all three properly, and Microsoft Clarity is free if replay is the only one you want.

You want one platform for everything

There is real value in not stitching five tools together. PostHog is the strongest single-platform answer in this space.

One million free events matters more than simplicity

That free tier is unusually generous and most small products never exhaust it.

You have someone whose job is data

PostHog rewards investment. Past roughly $10K MRR with a person on it, that investment is the right call, and we will help you migrate.

There is a longer list of things Ripples deliberately does not do on what we don't do.

Questions

Ripples and PostHog, asked plainly.

Is PostHog free?

PostHog has a large free allowance, around one million events a month, and their own pricing page says more than 90% of companies use it for free. Costs appear as you add products and volume, and being usage-based they are less predictable than a flat monthly price.

Does PostHog track Google Ads spend?

PostHog has a marketing analytics feature that reads ad platform spend, in beta at the time of writing, and a separate revenue analytics feature that reads Stripe. They are not joined into a payback period per channel.

What is a simpler alternative to PostHog?

Ripples if the question is which channels pay back. Plausible or Umami if you want traffic analytics only. Amplitude or Mixpanel if you want serious product analytics without the rest of the platform.

Can I use Ripples and PostHog together?

Yes, and it is a sensible combination. PostHog for product behaviour, replay and flags, Ripples for the acquisition and payback side. They do not conflict.

Sources

Checked August 2026. PostHog is a trademark of its owner and is not affiliated with Ripples. We take no affiliate commission from anyone on this page.