Posthog Session Replay Portable 〈FULL ✪〉

Session replays are bulky. Storing 90 days of replays in PostHog Cloud can get expensive. With portability, you can set up a lifecycle policy: keep recent replays in PostHog for debugging, but export historical replays to Glacier or Deep Archive for 7-year retention at pennies per gigabyte.

Session replay is invaluable for debugging UX issues—but it’s often locked inside vendor silos, making data migration, compliance audits, or custom analysis a nightmare. PostHog’s approach stands out because it’s built portable from the start. posthog session replay portable

Unlike tools that force you to stream replays only to their cloud, PostHog’s open-source core lets you self-host the entire stack. Your session replays (DOM snapshots, console logs, network activity) live on your infrastructure. No vendor lock-in: migrate them to another system, archive them in your data lake, or delete them programmatically—all with full control. Session replays are bulky

| Feature | PostHog Cloud (SaaS) | Portable (Self-Host) | |---------|----------------------|----------------------| | Data residency | EU/US only | Anywhere you deploy | | Export raw replays | Limited (via API) | Full database access | | Maintenance | None | Team handles upgrades | | Cost | Free tier + usage | Infrastructure + support (optional) | Session replay is invaluable for debugging UX issues—but

Imagine training a model to detect user frustration or a bot to automate a checkout flow. You need the raw data. Portable JSON exports allow you to feed thousands of session replays directly into your Jupyter Notebooks or BigQuery for analysis far beyond what PostHog’s UI offers.