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Metrics type: Supporting MetricsCategory: Analytics

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.

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

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: Cross-connector reconciliation: complement with sibling cards in the same category for the full diagnostic picture. For divergence investigations, use Vortex Mind.

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Q: How often does Top 10 Events by Volume update? The card refreshes on the standard data refresh (typically every 30-60 minutes for live integrations). For real-time signals, force a manual refresh from the dashboard. Q: Why do autocapture events dominate the list? PostHog autocapture records every click, change, and pageview automatically, so those events vastly outnumber your handful of custom events. That is expected. Focus on where your business-critical events rank. Q: A new event suddenly tops the list. Is that a problem? It can be. A noisy or accidentally high-frequency event inflates volume and can raise cost without adding insight. Investigate any unfamiliar event that jumps to the top and consider filtering it. Q: Can I customise the alert threshold? Yes, alert thresholds are configurable per profile in the Alert Rules tab. Adjust to match your business baseline rather than relying on the generic default.

Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Top 10 Events by Volume is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across PostHog and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.