At a glance
Top 10 Events by Volume is an event-health metric tracked from PostHog data. It ranks the ten most frequently captured events, autocapture clicks and pageviews alongside your custom events, by count. It is the fastest way to understand what your instrumentation is actually recording: the composition tells you whether autocapture dominates, whether a noisy event is inflating volume, or whether a critical event has slipped out of the top ranks.
| What it counts | The ten highest-volume events in the period, ranked by count. |
| Sample type | Backend API data from PostHog event counts, refreshed on the standard data refresh. |
| Why it matters | The event mix is the shape of your data. Knowing what dominates helps you spot noise, confirm key events are firing, and manage event volume and cost. |
| Reading the value | Read each bar as an event and its count. Watch for a critical event dropping out of the top ranks or a runaway event swamping the rest. |
| Currency | count |
| Time window | 30D |
| Alert trigger | - |
| Sentiment key | ph_top_events |
| Roles | owner, marketing |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your PostHog data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A representative reading of Top 10 Events by Volume for a typical merchant on PostHog. Suppose the ranking is led by$autocapture and $pageview, then product_viewed, add_to_cart, and purchase further down. After a tracking change on 19 May 26, a new event scroll_depth rockets to the top and inflates total volume without adding business value. The card makes that noise obvious, prompting you to throttle or filter it. Cross-reference Total Event Volume to see the inflation and Core Events Firing to confirm the business-critical events still rank. For deeper investigation, use Vortex Mind to trace upstream causes; for natural-language exploration, ask Ask Viq.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why merchants reach for it |
|---|---|
ph_event_volume | Executive sibling: total event volume. |
ph_core_events_firing | Event Health sibling: are critical events firing. |
ph_alert_tracking_broken | Nerve Centre sibling: a core event went silent. |
ph_alert_event_volume_drop | Nerve Centre sibling: broad volume collapse. |
ph_health_score | Executive sibling: overall tracking health. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in PostHog’s own dashboard: In PostHog, build a trend insight that breaks all events down by name, sorted by count, or browse the Data Management events list. The top events there should match this card. Note that PostHog autocapture events are prefixed and often dominate the ranking. Why the Vortex IQ value may legitimately differ:| Reason | Direction | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Autocapture inclusion. Including or excluding autocapture reshuffles the ranking. | Variable | Match the autocapture filter. |
| Event filtering. Internal or test events may be filtered in one view but not the other. | Variable | Align the event filters. |
| Period boundary. A different date range changes the counts and order. | Variable | Match the period. |