PostHog alternative
Lantern vs PostHog: a lighter PostHog alternative for your marketing site
If PostHog is more than your marketing site needs, Lantern Analytics is the lighter alternative. PostHog is a product analytics suite: product analytics, session replay, feature flags, experiments and surveys. Lantern does one job: it shows where your visitors come from, which channels bring sign-ups and paying customers, and what AI assistants and AI crawlers do with your site. It installs with one script tag and has one dashboard. Many founders run PostHog inside the app and Lantern on the marketing site.
Last updated 10 November 2026.
Lantern vs PostHog, side by side
| Lantern Analytics | PostHog | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Acquisition: which channel brings customers | Product: what users do inside your app |
| Setup | One script tag, or one prompt to your coding agent | An SDK, then events, dashboards and insights to build |
| Revenue by channel | Seven payment providers connect directly | Revenue analytics is in beta, with Stripe as a data warehouse source |
| Razorpay, Cashfree, Paddle, Dodo Payments | Connect directly | Not listed |
| AI assistants as their own channel | Yes | Yes, an AI channel type |
| AI crawlers | Yes, by company, purpose and page | Not reported. Crawlers don't run its script |
| Session replay, feature flags, experiments | No | Yes |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes |
| MCP server | Read-only | Reads and writes across its products |
| Price | $8 a month, by traffic only | Free tier, then by usage per product |
PostHog's details are from its own site on 10 November 2026. Products change, so check before you decide.
Pick Lantern if
- You want to answer "where do my customers come from?" without building dashboards.
- You want revenue from Razorpay, Cashfree, Paddle, Polar, Dodo Payments or Lemon Squeezy joined to traffic sources.
- You want one predictable price that depends only on traffic.
- You want to see AI crawlers next to the visitors AI assistants send.
Pick PostHog if
- You need session replay, feature flags, experiments or surveys.
- You want to analyse behaviour inside a signed-in product: retention, cohorts, paths.
- You want a free tier, or to self-host.
- You have engineers who are happy to write SQL over raw event data.
What Lantern is
Lantern Analytics is web analytics for founders. One dashboard shows where visitors come from, with ChatGPT, Perplexity and other AI assistants as their own channel, which AI crawlers read your pages, where people drop off, and who is on the site right now. Connect a payment provider and every payment, renewal and refund is credited to the channel that first brought that customer.
- Revenue by channel from seven payment providers.
- AI traffic as its own channel, and AI crawlers by company and page.
- An MCP server, so Claude, Cursor and Codex can answer questions from your numbers.
- Plans from $8 a month, priced by traffic, with every feature on every plan.
Switching, or running both
You don't have to choose. Lantern's 1.8 KB script runs next to PostHog. Put Lantern on the marketing site and the app with the same site id, and use the same user id in both tools' identify calls so a customer in PostHog can be traced back to their first channel in Lantern.
Questions
What is a lighter PostHog alternative for a marketing site?
Lantern Analytics. It is one script tag and one dashboard: sources, AI traffic, goals, funnels and revenue by channel, from $8 a month, with no dashboards to build.
Can PostHog show which channel brings paying customers?
It can, with work. PostHog's revenue analytics is in beta and reads Stripe as a data warehouse source, or revenue events you capture yourself. Lantern reads seven payment providers directly and credits each payment to the customer's first channel without setup beyond the checkout tag.
Can I use Lantern and PostHog together?
Yes, and many founders do: PostHog for what users do inside the app, Lantern for where visitors and customers come from.
Does Lantern have session replay or feature flags?
No. Lantern is acquisition analytics. For replay, flags and experiments, PostHog is the better tool.
More comparisons
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