Staxly

LangSmith vs PostHog

LLM observability, testing & evaluation — by LangChain
vs. Open source product analytics — all-in-one dev tool

LangSmith websitePostHog website

Pricing tiers

LangSmith

Developer (Free)
Free forever. 5,000 traces/month. 14-day retention. 1 seat. Basic evaluations.
Free
Plus
$39/seat/month. 10k base traces included ($2.50 per 1k overage). Full evaluations, custom dashboards, email support.
$39/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Self-host option, SSO, custom retention, dedicated support.
Custom
LangSmith website

PostHog

Free (generous)
No credit card. Each product has its own free monthly quota. Great for startups + OSS.
Free
Paid (usage-based)
Pay only what you use, after free quotas. Volume discounts at higher tiers. 6 projects, 7-year retention.
$0 base (usage-based)
Self-Hosted (OSS)
MIT-licensed. Run on your own infra via Docker/k8s. Zero vendor lock-in.
$0 base (usage-based)
Enterprise
Custom. SAML SSO, dedicated CSM, custom SLA.
Custom
PostHog website

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing developer on LangSmith vs free on PostHog.

MetricLangSmithPostHog
data warehouse rows1000000 rows/month
error tracking exceptions100000 exceptions/month
feature flags requests1000000 requests/month
llm analytics events100000 events/month
logs gb50 GB/month
product analytics events1000000 events/month
projects1 projects
retention years1 year
session replay recordings5000 recordings/month
surveys responses1500 responses/month
team membersunlimited members

Features

LangSmith · 14 features

  • AlertsThreshold alerts on latency, cost, eval metrics.
  • Annotation QueuesHuman-review workflows for trace quality rating.
  • Custom DashboardsAggregate metrics dashboards per project/tag.
  • DatasetsCollect examples → use as eval sets or training data.
  • EvaluationsLLM-as-judge, embedding similarity, custom Python evaluators, offline batch eval
  • LangChain IntegrationAuto-trace any LangChain/LangGraph run with env var.
  • LangGraph IntegrationFirst-class trace + eval for LangGraph agents.
  • LLM TracingAutomatic trace every LLM call + tool call + chain step.
  • OpenTelemetry ExportExport traces as OTLP to Datadog/Honeycomb/etc.
  • PlaygroundTest prompts + models inline before deploying.
  • Prompt CanvasVisual prompt editor with live test + eval.
  • Prompt HubPublic + private prompt library with versioning.
  • Self-Hosted (Enterprise)Docker + k8s deployment in your infra.
  • Threads + SessionsGroup traces into conversational sessions.

PostHog · 14 features

  • A/B TestingExperiments with significance analysis.
  • Data PipelinesExport events to BigQuery, Snowflake, S3.
  • Data WarehouseQuery external sources (Stripe, Hubspot, S3) alongside events with SQL.
  • Error TrackingSentry-style error tracking in same platform.
  • Feature FlagsRollout flags with targeting, A/B testing, JSON payloads.
  • LLM AnalyticsTracing + cost tracking for OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, etc.
  • LogsCentralized log ingest with free 50 GB/month.
  • Product AnalyticsEvents, funnels, trends, retention, paths. SQL insights available.
  • Revenue TrackingIntegration with Stripe for revenue + churn metrics.
  • Self-HostingDocker/Helm. Full feature parity with cloud.
  • Session ReplayWatch user sessions. Privacy controls, masked inputs, JS errors.
  • SQL Query APIRun ClickHouse SQL over your events via API.
  • SurveysIn-app surveys + feedback widgets.
  • WorkflowsTrigger emails/webhooks on events.

Developer interfaces

KindLangSmithPostHog
CLILangSmith CLI
SDKlangsmith-js, langsmith-pythonposthog-android, posthog-flutter, posthog-go, posthog-ios (Swift), posthog-js, posthog-node, posthog-php, posthog-python, posthog-react-native, posthog-ruby
RESTLangSmith REST APIPostHog REST API
MCPLangSmith MCPPostHog MCP
OTHERLangSmith DashboardWebhooks + Actions
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to LangSmith and PostHog are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

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