Web analytics · cost comparison

Google Analytics 4 vs self-hosted PostHog: what each actually costs

Google Analytics 4 on the Free tier against PostHog running on the smallest server that fits it. Every figure below is computed from the sizing model and the dated prices at the foot of this page, and includes the part most comparisons leave out: your own time.

There is no bill to beat here. Google Analytics 4 costs nothing at 10 people, so running PostHog yourself costs you $247 a month more, not less. The reason to do it is who holds the data, not what it costs.

Google Analytics 4: $0.00per month, Free
Self-hosted: $247server, backups and your time
Server and backups: $22.15CX43 (cost-optimized), 16 GB RAM
36-month difference: $10,097 extra to self-host
Break-even: neverafter $1,200 of setup time

The same comparison at every team size

Self-hosting has a floor and almost no slope, while per-seat software has no floor and a steep slope. That is the whole story, and it is why the answer flips somewhere in this table rather than being the same for everyone.

Google Analytics 4 Free against PostHog self-hosted, per month, over 36 months. Self-hosted includes server, backups and maintenance time at $75 an hour.
Team size	Google Analytics 4	Self-hosted	Without valuing your time	Server needed	36-month difference
solo	$0.00	$247	$22.15	CX43 (cost-optimized) (16 GB)	-$10,097
5 people	$0.00	$247	$22.15	CX43 (cost-optimized) (16 GB)	-$10,097
10 people	$0.00	$247	$22.15	CX43 (cost-optimized) (16 GB)	-$10,097
25 people	$0.00	$247	$22.15	CX43 (cost-optimized) (16 GB)	-$10,097
50 people	$0.00	$247	$22.15	CX43 (cost-optimized) (16 GB)	-$10,097
100 people	$0.00	$247	$22.15	CX43 (cost-optimized) (16 GB)	-$10,097
250 people	$0.00	$247	$22.15	CX43 (cost-optimized) (16 GB)	-$10,097

Self-hosting never comes out ahead at any team size on this page, once your time is priced in.

Where the self-hosted money actually goes at 10 people

Line item	Per month	What it is
Server	$18.46	CX43 (cost-optimized) at Hetzner Cloud: 8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM, 160 GB disk
Backups	$3.69	Provider snapshots at 20% of the server price. Skipping this is not a saving, it is a bet.
Your time	$225	3 hours a month of updates, upgrades and the occasional broken thing, at $75 an hour
Total	$247	Plus $1,200 once, for roughly 16 hours of first-time setup

Google Analytics 4 at this size costs $0.00 a month. No licence cost at the standard tier.

What PostHog needs to run at 10 people

Kafka, ClickHouse, PostgreSQL, Redis and several workers. PostHog itself now discourages self-hosting below a substantial scale, and the sizing here reflects that honestly.

Resource	Required	How it is derived
Memory	10.2 GB	8 GB for the stack at rest, plus 15 MB per active user, plus 25% headroom
Disk	62 GB	60 GB base, plus 0.2 GB per user
vCPU	4	The project's own baseline. For this workload memory runs out before the processor does.

What you give up, stated plainly

Uptime is now yours. Google Analytics 4 has an operations team on call. Self-hosted, a failed upgrade at 18:00 on a Friday is your evening.
Backups only exist if you test restoring them. The $3.69 line above buys snapshots, not a rehearsed recovery.
PostHog is operationally heavy: several stateful services and an upgrade path that can lose data if you rush it. That is why the maintenance line is 3 hours a month rather than zero.
Feature parity is never exact. PostHog covers the core of what teams use Google Analytics 4 for; the long tail of integrations and enterprise controls is where the gap shows.

Where to put PostHog

10.2 GB of memory and 62 GB of disk is what this needs at 10 people. The cheapest plan that fits, among the providers whose prices we have read ourselves, is the CX43 (cost-optimized) at Hetzner Cloud for $18.46 a month.

Go to Hetzner Cloud Compare hosts

We are not claiming this is the cheapest server on the internet. It is the cheapest one we can honestly quote. Vultr and PikaPods publish prices we could not read programmatically, and may well undercut it. Price them yourself before you commit.

PostHog at a glance

Licence	Other not a standard open-source licence
Written in	Python
GitHub stars	39,757, checked 2026-09-12
Latest release	desktop-v0.61.377
Last commit	2026-09-12
Ships Docker images	Yes
Project	posthog.com · PostHog/posthog

Get the migration checklist for this tool

A one-page pre-flight list: data export path, sizing, backup plan, and the rollback step most people skip.

Questions people actually ask

How much does Google Analytics 4 cost?

Google Analytics 4 Free costs $0.00 a month at 10 people: free at the standard tier. That figure was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-12.

What does it cost to self-host PostHog?

$247 a month at 10 people: $18.46 for the CX43 (cost-optimized) at Hetzner Cloud, $3.69 of backups, and $225 for the 3 hours a month it takes to look after.

Is PostHog cheaper than Google Analytics 4?

No. At every team size on this page, Google Analytics 4 costs less than running PostHog yourself once your time is priced in; over 36 months self-hosting costs $10,097 more. Self-hosting it buys control over the data, not savings.

What server does PostHog need?

At 10 people, 10.2 GB of memory and 62 GB of disk. The cheapest plan that fits, among the providers whose prices we have read, is the CX43 (cost-optimized) at Hetzner Cloud for $18.46 a month.

How much work is PostHog to run?

It is rated hard: about 16 hours to set up and 3 hours a month afterwards, priced at $75.00 an hour in the figures above.

Every figure on this page, and where it came from

Input	Value used	Source	Read on
Google Analytics 4 Free	free at the standard tier	vendor pricing page	2026-09-12
Hetzner Cloud CX43 (cost-optimized)	$18.46 per month	provider pricing page	2026-10-25
Engineer time	$75 per hour	our published assumption	—
PostHog sizing	8 GB base, 15 MB per user	project documentation	—

Prices move. If the vendor has changed theirs since 2026-09-12, the figures above are stale and the source links are the authority, not us. How we handle that.