Best offer on record: PostHog Free Tier — monthly free allowances on every product. 6 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
PostHog Free Tier — monthly free allowances on every product high confidence
Free tier, no credit card required, not a trial: Analytics 1M events/mo; Session replay 5,000 recordings/mo (PostHog's Feb 2026 comparison page breaks this as 5,000 web + 2,500 mobile); Feature flags 1M requests/mo (experiments billed with flags); Error tracking 100K exceptions/mo; Surveys 1,500 responses/mo; Data warehouse Sources 1M rows + free historical syncs, Destinations 10K events + 1M rows; AI Observability 100K events/mo; PostHog AI 500 credits (worth $5); Inbox (beta) 3 PRs; Workflows 10K messages/channel; Logs 10 GB ingested/mo; Replay Vision 2,500 credits (worth $25); PostHog Desktop (beta) 2,000 credits (worth $20). Free plan: unlimited team members, 1 project, 1-year data retention, community support. Posting on the page: 'No credit card required... Same allowance whether or not you have a card on file... Your free allowance renews every month. Yes, for everything. Yes, forever.' Usage stops at the free limits so no surprise bills.
Eligibility
Anyone/any company (no .edu requirement, no age/funding cap, no region limit stated). No credit card required. 1 project max on the free plan; add a card to create more projects.
How to claim
1) Sign up free at app.posthog.com/signup (or posthog.com/pricing 'Get started – free'). 2) Install the PostHog snippet/SDK (JS, Python, Node, mobile). 3) Use — free allowances apply automatically; set billing limits; no card on file needed.
Expiry
Free allowance resets every month indefinitely ('forever'). Data retention is 1 year on the free plan (7 years once paid).
Gotchas
Experiments and Evaluations have no standalone free allowance — they bill against their parent product (flags / AI observability). Free plan = 1 project; a second project requires adding a card (Pay-as-you-go plan keeps the same free tier, then charges overage). 5,000 replays is the stated cap; the web/mobile split appears only in comparison copy. Paid add-ons (platform packages, onboarding calls) are not covered by the free tier.
PostHog for Startups — $50,000 in platform credits for 12 months high confidence
$50,000 in PostHog credits valid for 12 months, usable across nearly all products (analytics, replays, flags, error tracking, surveys, warehouse; page says ~950M events or 6M+ replays if spent on one product). Plus ~$12,000 in partner perks: $1,500 off Incident.io teams plan, 50% off Speakeasy for 6 months, $5,000 Depot credit, and 50% off Mintlify for 6 months (Stripe Atlas variant of the deal), plus exclusive founder merch (one welcome pack) and a founder newsletter.
Eligibility
Company <2 years old AND <$5M raised; company email domain required (applications from free/disposable domains like gmail.com/outlook.com are auto-rejected; if you lack a company domain you stay on the monthly free allowance and apply once you get one); PostHog signup on/after Jan 1, 2023 (earlier signups can join the program perks but not the credits); apply from a PostHog account using the company domain. Applications are auto-approved then manually reviewed. YC teams are excluded from this track (separate YC deal; programs don't stack).
How to claim
1) Create a PostHog account with the company email. 2) Sign up to a paid plan (usage-based; free tier still applies; no minimum spend). 3) Fill the application form at posthog.com/startups; the credit is applied automatically if eligible and you get an email when accepted.
Expiry
Credits expire 12 months after grant. After expiry you move to a normal plan and keep program perks (events/newsletter). Small open-source projects without corporate backing and <$200k annual revenue can contact support to have the 12-month expiry waived.
Gotchas
From September 14, 2026, credits can NO LONGER be used on AI tools (PostHog Desktop, PostHog Slack app, Replay Vision, PostHog AI, Inbox); teams who joined before that date can still use credits for usage incurred before the cut-off. Credits cannot cover a BAA under the Boost plan, nor onboarding calls/service packages. Going over $50k means moving to another plan. No refunds.
PostHog for Y Combinator — $50,000 per year, auto-renewing medium confidence
Similar to the startups program but for YC teams: $50,000 in credits per year — register once and it renews automatically while eligible; up to 4 founder merch packs (different pack than the startups program); access to Hogpatch (PostHog's YC-founder space) for the duration of the batch; partner benefits with Speakeasy and Incident.io; priority support. YC credits can be used for BAA in the Boost package (unlike the standard startups credits).
Eligibility
Must be a YC company (any batch, proven with a YC verification link via Bookface), <$25M raised in total, company email domain. Not available to YC alumni who started a new company (those can use PostHog for Startups instead) nor to YC companies acquired by a non-YC parent.
How to claim
Register once on the YC Bookface page (the internal YC deal listing; PostHog team manages the copy there). Auto-renews while the team stays eligible (<$25m raised). Teams whose earlier deal expired must re-register.
Expiry
Renews annually while eligible (<$25M raised); no one-time 12-month expiry like the startups program.
Gotchas
Same September 14, 2026 AI-tools credit exclusion applies to YC credits. Programs don't stack with PostHog for Startups. Details come from PostHog's company handbook (official but internal-marketing doc); I could not re-fetch the full page body today (page fetch truncated), so treat specifics (4 merch packs, Hogpatch access) as reported, not re-verified against the live YC Bookface listing.
PostHog for Students — campus events + $2,000 in hosting perks (NOT credits or an education license) high confidence
PostHog for Students is an in-person campus events program, explicitly 'about events, not credits': free in-person mixers each semester with a PostHog team member (food, drinks, merch covered), AMAs/talks and 1:1 mentorship. Students or student orgs who host an event get a $1,000 cash grant (food/drinks) + $1,000 in PostHog merch = $2,000 total, plus a PostHog speaker. A few times a year, students are invited to 'Startup School' in SF at Hogpatch (apply via the page). There is no student discount, no student credit grant, and no course/certificate (explicitly 'no coursework, no grades, no certificate').
Eligibility
Open to Bay Area universities and UC campuses across California; schools outside that list can apply but the program 'can't commit to extending further'. A school-issued email (a .edu or other university-associated domain) IS required to apply — personal emails are not accepted. No company or finished idea required; no region limit beyond the .edu-style email check and current campus focus.
How to claim
1) You (or your student org/club) apply via the form at posthog.com/students (name, school email, school, optional LinkedIn, event description). 2) PostHog pairs you with a team member and schedules the event each semester. 3) Free attendance; hosting grants are per event.
Expiry
Semester-based events; the $1,000+$1,000 hosting grant is a one-time per-hosted-event award, not a recurring credit. No credits to expire.
Gotchas
If a student is building a company <2 years old with <$5M raised, the page routes them to PostHog for Startups ($50k credits) instead — the student program gives no platform credits. The broader student program is still an open RFC internally (GitHub RFC #503, Mar 2026), so it may expand; a third-party tracker (Modelverse) describes a '365-day student grant' for the free tier, but that's just the standard monthly free tier, not a student-specific offer.
Non-profit discount (adjacent offer, not student/startup) medium confidence
PostHog offers discount options for non-profits: after signing up, contact the sales team to discuss a discount. No public fixed amounts are listed. Also mentioned on the pricing page: 'We also offer discounts for startups and non-profits.'
Eligibility
Registered non-profits; no .edu or funding caps — case-by-case via sales.
How to claim
Sign up for PostHog, then contact PostHog sales/support to arrange the non-profit discount.
Gotchas
Not a self-serve offer and not quantified publicly; treat as a discount negotiation, not a free tier.
Self-hosted PostHog open source (MIT) — free for anyone who can run infrastructure high confidence
PostHog is open source, MIT licensed; you can self-host the full stack in your own organization at no per-event license cost. The pricing page positions it for 'a big organization that isn't ready to move to PostHog Web yet'. This is a separate free path from the cloud free tier and available to students/startups who have the infra budget.
Eligibility
Anyone; no account, no card, no .edu. You must host and maintain it yourself (k8s/Docker, Postgres, ClickHouse).
How to claim
Deploy from github.com/PostHog/posthog (MIT) following the self-host docs; no signup or billing.
Gotchas
Self-hosted does not include PostHog cloud services (e.g., hosted context warehouse/cloud-only products); you pay your own infra and maintenance costs. Cloud free-tier allowances (1M events etc.) are a cloud-only concept and don't apply to a self-hosted install.
Verified against live official pages today (posthog.com/pricing, /startups, /students fetched and read in full; handbook/startups content from the official handbook via search snippet): (1) From September 14, 2026, both the PostHog for Startups and Y Combinator programs' credits can NO LONGER be applied to AI tools (PostHog Desktop, PostHog Slack app, Replay Vision, PostHog AI, Inbox); pre-cutoff teams can still burn credits for usage incurred before that date. (2) The free-tier allowances listed in the task baseline (1M events, 5,000 session recordings, 1M flag requests, 100K exceptions, 10GB logs) are confirmed unchanged and current on the pricing page; PostHog states no loss-leader products that will later be retired, and 'No credit card, not a trial' — there is no separate trial program (docs: 'no trial needed'). (3) PostHog notes price cuts in 2024 (session replay, analytics events) and 2025 (data pipelines, surveys) per its Feb 2026 comparison page — these were paid-rate cuts, not free-tier changes. (4) No student/education license or student credit program exists: the student offer is events-only; the YC deal is the more generous credits variant ($50k/yr auto-renewing vs $50k one-time). Sources: https://posthog.com/pricing · https://posthog.com/startups · https://posthog.com/students · https://posthog.com/handbook/marketing/startups · https://posthog.com/docs/billing/common-questions · https://github.com/PostHog/requests-for-comments-public/issues/503 · https://posthog.com/startups/stripe-atlas · https://posthog.com/compare/posthog-vs-pendo