LangSmith vs PostHog
LLM observability, testing & evaluation — by LangChain
vs. Open source product analytics — all-in-one dev tool
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
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
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing developer on LangSmith vs free on PostHog.
| Metric | LangSmith | PostHog |
|---|---|---|
| data warehouse rows | — | 1000000 rows/month |
| error tracking exceptions | — | 100000 exceptions/month |
| feature flags requests | — | 1000000 requests/month |
| llm analytics events | — | 100000 events/month |
| logs gb | — | 50 GB/month |
| product analytics events | — | 1000000 events/month |
| projects | — | 1 projects |
| retention years | — | 1 year |
| session replay recordings | — | 5000 recordings/month |
| surveys responses | — | 1500 responses/month |
| team members | — | unlimited members |
Features
LangSmith · 14 features
- Alerts — Threshold alerts on latency, cost, eval metrics.
- Annotation Queues — Human-review workflows for trace quality rating.
- Custom Dashboards — Aggregate metrics dashboards per project/tag.
- Datasets — Collect examples → use as eval sets or training data.
- Evaluations — LLM-as-judge, embedding similarity, custom Python evaluators, offline batch eval…
- LangChain Integration — Auto-trace any LangChain/LangGraph run with env var.
- LangGraph Integration — First-class trace + eval for LangGraph agents.
- LLM Tracing — Automatic trace every LLM call + tool call + chain step.
- OpenTelemetry Export — Export traces as OTLP to Datadog/Honeycomb/etc.
- Playground — Test prompts + models inline before deploying.
- Prompt Canvas — Visual prompt editor with live test + eval.
- Prompt Hub — Public + private prompt library with versioning.
- Self-Hosted (Enterprise) — Docker + k8s deployment in your infra.
- Threads + Sessions — Group traces into conversational sessions.
PostHog · 14 features
- A/B Testing — Experiments with significance analysis.
- Data Pipelines — Export events to BigQuery, Snowflake, S3.
- Data Warehouse — Query external sources (Stripe, Hubspot, S3) alongside events with SQL.
- Error Tracking — Sentry-style error tracking in same platform.
- Feature Flags — Rollout flags with targeting, A/B testing, JSON payloads.
- LLM Analytics — Tracing + cost tracking for OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, etc.
- Logs — Centralized log ingest with free 50 GB/month.
- Product Analytics — Events, funnels, trends, retention, paths. SQL insights available.
- Revenue Tracking — Integration with Stripe for revenue + churn metrics.
- Self-Hosting — Docker/Helm. Full feature parity with cloud.
- Session Replay — Watch user sessions. Privacy controls, masked inputs, JS errors.
- SQL Query API — Run ClickHouse SQL over your events via API.
- Surveys — In-app surveys + feedback widgets.
- Workflows — Trigger emails/webhooks on events.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | LangSmith | PostHog |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | LangSmith CLI | — |
| SDK | langsmith-js, langsmith-python | posthog-android, posthog-flutter, posthog-go, posthog-ios (Swift), posthog-js, posthog-node, posthog-php, posthog-python, posthog-react-native, posthog-ruby |
| REST | LangSmith REST API | PostHog REST API |
| MCP | LangSmith MCP | PostHog MCP |
| OTHER | LangSmith Dashboard | Webhooks + 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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