In-depth: PostHog vs LaunchDarkly

Jan 11, 2024

PostHog and LaunchDarkly both help you de-risk releases, increase engineering velocity, configure your app remotely, customize experiences, and more.

But how are they different? If you remember nothing else, remember these two points:

  1. LaunchDarkly only does feature flags and experiments.

  2. PostHog is an all-in-one platform that does flags, experiments and a whole bunch more.

In this post, we'll cover these differences in more detail, comparing features, pricing, reporting, integrations, and frequently asked questions about both.

How is PostHog different?

1. It's an all-in-one platform

Seamless integration between flags, experiments and other tools, such as product analytics, session replays, and surveys, unlocks a deeper layer of analysis and simplifies your data stack. This means you can spend less time engineering your data and more time making better decisions about what you've shipped, and what to build next.

2. We’re transparent and open source

Our code, culture, and strategy are public on GitHub and in our public handbook. We're also self-serve. No need to "talk to sales" or "schedule a demo" unless you want to – we're always happy to chat. Our pricing is transparent, too – no opaque add-ons or surprise extras here.

3. Built for startups and engineers

PostHog is built for high-growth startups. It's simple to implement – we have many SDKs, tutorials, and docs to help you get started quickly with any type of app – and will grow with you as you scale. When you need advanced product analytics a CDP or data warehouse, you can just turn those features on. LaunchDarkly focuses on enterprise users, managers, and DevOps. This means more focus on governance and integrations.

Comparing PostHog and LaunchDarkly

Platform

Both tools offer everything you need to use flags and experiments effectivelym but PostHog offers a wider range of tools with greater transparency in all aspects.

PostHogLaunchDarkly

Open source

Code publicly accessible

Partial

Self-service

No need to talk to sales

All major SDKs

JavaScript, Android, iOS, Python, and more

Proxies

Reverse proxy to avoid blockers

API

Edit and evaluate flags with API

Pro

Local evaluation

Faster flags by not having to rely on the server for evaluation

Bootstrapping

Flags available on frontend application load

SQL

Query flag and product data directly via SQL

Session replay

Real user playback of flag session

User surveys

Collect and analyze feedback, run NPS and PMF surveys

Customer data platform

Sync data with third-party tools

Beta

Data warehouse

A single source for all your important data

Beta

Notebooks

Ad-hoc analysis and collaboration

Dark mode

Choose between light and dark UI

Open source

Build your own apps and contribute code

Feature management

Both PostHog and LaunchDarkly offer all the functionality you expect for feature management using feature flags.

PostHogLaunchDarkly

Boolean flags

Simple flags returning true or flag

Percentage rollouts

Target percentages of a group

Custom targeting

Target users based on user properties, custom contexts

Multivariate flags

Flags with multiple customizable values

JSON payloads

Flags return JSON

Environments

Manage flags for dev, staging, prod

Partial

Scheduling

Schedule flags to turn on or off

Enterprise

Lifecycle management

Display new and old flags

Enterprise

Triggers

Trigger changes based on metrics

Enterprise

Unlimited targeting size

Target contexts of any size

Enterprise

Early access management

Manage betas, test features

LaunchDarkly’s enterprise plan unlocks advanced workflow features like scheduling, lifecycle management, triggers, and more. PostHog’s API enables you to mimic this functionality if needed, but it isn’t built into the UI yet.

Experimentation

PostHog and LaunchDarkly have relatively similar experimentation feature sets, enabling you to run A/B/n tests with custom goals and calculate if they have a statistically significant impact.

PostHogLaunchDarkly

Free usage

How many experiments can you run for free?

1M requests per monthNone, paid add-on

Custom goals

Customize metrics that test tracks

Secondary metrics

Monitor impact on unrelated metrics

Statistical significance calculation

Calculate if changes make a statistically significant impact

Split testing

Split participants into groups

Multivariate (A/B/n) testing

Test multiple variants of a change

Recommended run time

Calculate the recommended run time for your experiments

PostHog automatically calculates a recommended run time based on past data and minimally acceptable improvements. This helps you avoid the peeking problem and end your experiment at the right time.

Run time calculator

Pricing

PostHog and LaunchDarkly take opposing approaches.

PostHogLaunchDarkly

Pricing

Per-request pricingBased on MAU + seats + add-ons

Free plan

Trial only

Free experiments

Free collaboration

PostHog’s feature flag pricing is pay-per-request (and A/B tests use feature flags). There is a generous free tier of 1M requests per month with all features, add-ons, and integrations available.

PostHog pricing

LaunchDarkly’s pricing is more complicated. It charges by seat starting at $10/seat/month. On top of this, it charges based on "monthly context instances" (MCIs) also known as monthly active users. The pro plan only gets 1,000 frontend MCIs per month. You must upgrade to the $20/seat/month to more than 1,000 MCIs, then pay more beyond 10,000.

LaunchDarkly pricing

As mentioned earlier, many of the security, approval, and workflow features that differentiate them are only available at the opaque "Enterprise" level.

Example scenarios

To give you an idea of what pricing looks like in reality, here are some example situations and their estimated costs for both PostHog and LaunchDarkly.

SeatsMAUsRequestsRequest locationPostHog costLaunchDarkly cost
55,0001,000,000Backend$0$100
1015,0001,000,000Frontend$0$200 + cost of 5000 MAUs
2025,0005,000,000Backend$400$400
3050,00015,000,000Frontend$1,400??? (Enterprise)

Notes:

  • Using backend local evaluation in PostHog lowers the amount of flag usage to depend on the polling duration and active number of servers. If you use flags with one server polling every 30 seconds, this amount is under 1M requests (meaning free).
  • PostHog has volume discounts on flags over 2 million requests per month.

Reporting and analytics

Although LaunchDarkly has basic reporting features, PostHog has a more expansive analytics suite. Visualizations, funnels, retention, SQL querying, and session replays are all integrated with flags and A/B testing data. This enables you to do deeper analysis of their impact and combine them with other product and usage data.

PostHogLaunchDarkly

Analytics

Capture usage and calls related to flags

Trends

Graphs of flag usage

Funnel visualization

Analyze impact of flags on funnels

Retention

User retention related to flags

Breakdowns

Breakdown analytics by properties

Dashboards

Multiple customizable insights for a flag

Non-flag data

Combine flag data with other product data

Integrations

Both PostHog and LaunchDarkly have a range of integrations that enable them to import, export, enhance, and make use of data.

PostHogLaunchDarkly

Free integrations

Use integrations on the free plan

Exports

Export data to other sources

Enterprise

Imports

Import data from source

Slack

Alerts for Slack

Microsoft Teams

Alerts for Microsoft Teams

Zapier

Trigger Zapier automations

Sentry

Connect to Sentry data

Two-wayOne-way

Edge tools

Use edge networks

LaunchDarkly has more pre-built integrations, but some are only available on higher paid plans, and others replicate functionality built-in to PostHog as standard. These include environments as a service, observability tools, workflow management, and more.

PostHog’s event-based structure enables you to import data from anywhere for use with flags and experiments. The free API enables you to connect, edit, and capture from anywhere, too.

PostHog’s data warehouse is in private beta and will soon make outside data available for use in PostHog.

Security and compliance

Both PostHog and LaunchDarkly enable companies to remain secure and compliant with privacy regulations. Companies can customize the levels of user privacy related to these platforms to their needs.

PostHogLaunchDarkly

User privacy options

Anonymize users, drop personal data

History, audit logs

Manage and view flag edits and related users

GDPR-ready

Can be compliant with GDPR

HIPAA-ready

Can be compliant with HIPAA

SOC 2

SOC 2 security certification

2FA

Enforce login with two-factor authentication

SAML/SSO

Use SAML or single sign-on authentication

Enterprise$10/seat/month or Enterprise

Approvals

Require approvals to change flags

Enterprise

Permissioning

Control who can edit and modify flags

Enterprise

Many of LaunchDarkly’s advanced compliance tools are only available on its enterprise plans. PostHog also features SSO and SAML in its enterprise edition.

Frequently asked questions

Who uses PostHog?

PostHog is built for startups and their engineers. It provides all the tools startups need to build successful products. The people who find PostHog most useful are founders, product engineers, and growth engineers. Companies that use PostHog feature flags and experiments include Y Combinator, Vendasta, and AssemblyAI.

How much does PostHog cost?

Feature flags and experiments are free for up to 1M requests per month. Beyond that, it costs $0.0001/request (or $1 per 10,000 requests). There are discounts for high-volume users, non-profits, and startups. Other products, like product analytics and session replay, have separate but similarly structured pricing.

How much does LaunchDarkly cost?

LaunchDarkly starts at $10 per seat per month. This includes unlimited flags, server-side monthly active users, and 1,000 client-side monthly active users. More client-side monthly active users, also known as monthly context instances, cost more.

Their pro plan doubles the cost to $20 per seat per month. It adds API, unlimited projects, and more integrations. Above that, their enterprise plan requires talking to sales. It includes custom roles, SSO, scheduling, workflows, and more.

Can I migrate from LaunchDarkly?

Yes. See our LaunchDarkly to PostHog migration guide for more.

Does LaunchDarkly or PostHog offer free trials?

LaunchDarkly offers a 14-day free trial, but beyond that, all access and features are paid.

PostHog lets you use all its features for free. Once you upgrade to paid, you get 1M flag requests, 1M events, and 5,000 recordings for free each month. This means if you stay below this, PostHog remains free.

How long does it take to implement PostHog?

Feature flags and experiments are simple. They are a few lines of code in all of your favorite languages. They can even be set up on no-code site builders like Framer or Webflow.

The process requires signing up for PostHog, installing the snippet or SDK in your app, creating the flag in PostHog, and implementing the flag evaluation and relevant logic in your app. In many of the SDKs, we handle important aspects like local evaluation and event capture for you.

Much of the PostHog implementation, like user identification, is reused across products. Because PostHog is an all-in-one platform, analytics capture for targeting and A/B testing doesn’t need set up or connection either.


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