PostHog bundles product analytics, session replay, feature flags, and A/B testing into one platform aimed at product teams. Orbit does one thing — website analytics — and keeps the dashboard simple because it doesn't try to be everything else too.
| Feature | Orbit | PostHog |
|---|---|---|
| Cookies required | No cookies | Yes, by default |
| Feature scope | Website analytics only | Analytics + flags + experiments + replay |
| Self-hosting | Not available | Yes, open source |
| Learning curve | Minutes | Hours, given the feature surface |
| Session recording | Included | Included |
PostHog is genuinely powerful if you need feature flags and experimentation alongside analytics. If that's not on your roadmap, Orbit gets you the traffic and session-replay insight without the rest of the platform to configure around it.
No, PostHog uses cookies/local storage by default to identify users across sessions, which is necessary for its funnel and cohort features. Orbit never sets cookies.
Yes — PostHog's session replay is one of its flagship features, similar in concept to Orbit's built-in recordings, but bundled with a much larger product analytics suite around it.
Yes, PostHog offers a self-hosted open-source option alongside its cloud plans. Orbit is hosted only.
PostHog's generous free tier is real, but it comes with a much bigger, more complex product to learn — feature flags, experiments, and cohort analysis you may never touch. If you only want traffic numbers, Orbit's dashboard has less to wade through.