At a glance
Total Event Volume is an executive-overview metric tracked from PostHog data. It is the total count of all events captured, autocaptured clicks and pageviews plus your custom events, across the period. It is the single best proxy for whether your instrumentation is healthy: a stable, traffic-shaped volume means data is flowing, while a sudden fall almost always means tracking broke before it means traffic did.
| What it counts | The total number of events captured by PostHog in the period, across autocapture and custom events. |
| Sample type | Backend API data from PostHog event counts, refreshed on the standard data refresh. |
| Why it matters | Every other PostHog card is built on events. Volume is the heartbeat that tells you the data layer is alive. A drop of more than 25% is treated as tracking broken. |
| Reading the value | Compare today, 7-day, and 30-day reads against the prior period. Expect it to roughly track traffic. |
| Currency | count |
| Time window | T/7D/30D vsP |
| Alert trigger | drop >25% vsP (= tracking broken) |
| Sentiment key | ph_event_volume |
| 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 Total Event Volume for a typical merchant on PostHog. Suppose your store captures about 3.1 million events over 7 days. The card shows that figure tracking flat against the prior week, which means instrumentation is stable. If a CSP change on 11 May 26 blocks the PostHog snippet on mobile and 7-day volume falls to 2.0m, that 35% drop crosses the tracking-broken threshold. Cross-reference Core Events Firing and the Event Volume Drop alert to confirm whether traffic fell or capture broke. 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_alert_event_volume_drop | Nerve Centre sibling: alert when volume drops past baseline. |
ph_top_events | Event Health sibling: what makes up the volume. |
ph_core_events_firing | Event Health sibling: are the critical events landing. |
ph_dau | Executive sibling: Daily Active Users. |
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, a trend insight on “All events” with daily granularity gives you the volume curve. The total for the period should align with this card. Break it down by event name to understand the composition, and check whether autocapture is on, since it contributes a large share. Why the Vortex IQ value may legitimately differ:| Reason | Direction | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Autocapture toggle. Turning autocapture on or off changes volume dramatically. | Variable | Confirm autocapture configuration. |
| Event filtering. PostHog may exclude internal or test events from a given view. | Variable | Align the event filters. |
| Sampling. High-volume projects may sample in PostHog views; Vortex IQ counts the captured total. | Variable | Check for sampling in the PostHog view. |