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Hotjar vs Mouseflow is one of the most common choices for teams that want heatmaps, session recordings, funnels, and feedback in one place. Both tools show where visitors click, scroll, hesitate, rage click, or leave. One thing has changed, though: Hotjar is no longer a standalone product. It is now part of Contentsquare, and hotjar.com pricing now redirects to Contentsquare plans.
This comparison uses the official pricing and feature pages of both vendors, checked in September 2026. We also added Plerdy, because many teams that compare Hotjar and Mouseflow need more than behavior data: they also need to fix SEO issues, launch pop-ups, and A/B test the changes the heatmaps point to.
Choose Hotjar if your team wants a familiar UX research tool with heatmaps, recordings, surveys, and feedback widgets, and you are comfortable buying it as part of the Contentsquare platform. It gives fast visual answers about clicks, scrolls, mouse movement, rage clicks, and drop-offs.
Choose Mouseflow if you need deeper behavior analytics around session replay, friction detection, journey analytics, form analytics, and conversion funnels. Mouseflow is often stronger when your team wants to filter recordings by source, device, behavior, and user friction signals.
Choose Plerdy if you want behavior analytics plus CRO and SEO tools in one place. Plerdy adds heatmaps, session recordings, pop-ups, event tracking, funnel analysis, A/B testing, eCommerce tracking, SEO Checker, Google Search Console insights, and browser-based UX/SEO extensions.
Heatmaps
Hotjar
Mouseflow
Plerdy
PopUps forms
Hotjar
Mouseflow
Plerdy
Feedbacks & NPS
Hotjar
Mouseflow
Plerdy
Session recording
Hotjar
Mouseflow
Plerdy
Conversion Funnels
Hotjar
Mouseflow
Plerdy
SEO-checker
Hotjar
Mouseflow
Plerdy
Google Search Console integration
Hotjar
Mouseflow
Plerdy
Event / Goals Tracking
Hotjar
Mouseflow
Plerdy
Sales perfomance
Hotjar
Mouseflow
Plerdy
A/B Testing tool
Hotjar
Mouseflow
Plerdy
Macro conversion
Hotjar
Mouseflow
Plerdy
Other settings
Hotjar
Mouseflow
Plerdy
Pricing
Hotjar
Mouseflow
Plerdy
Contentsquare acquired Hotjar in 2021 and has since folded it into its own platform. Today, hotjar.com/pricing opens the Contentsquare pricing page with four plans: Free, Growth (from $49/mo), Pro, and Enterprise. The old Hotjar Observe Plus, Business, and Scale plans are no longer sold as separate products.
For a buyer, this changes three things:
Mouseflow is still an independent product with public pricing: Essential $25/mo, Advanced $109/mo, Premium $319/mo, and a custom Enterprise plan (Mouseflow pricing). If you want a simple, predictable price per session volume, that difference matters more than any single feature.
Hotjar is a behavior analytics and user feedback tool, now sold as part of Contentsquare. It covers heatmaps, session recordings, funnels, surveys, feedback widgets, and frustration signals such as rage clicks and dead clicks. For a small UX or marketing team, this is often enough to see what users click, where they scroll, and which page areas create friction.
Hotjar mouse tracking works through move heatmaps and session recordings. Move maps show where visitors hover the cursor, which on desktop often follows where they read. Recordings show the full cursor path, clicks, and scrolls of a single visit. Together they help you see why a CTA gets attention but no clicks, or why users stop halfway through a form.
The weak side is that Hotjar shows the problem but does not fix it. You still need separate tools for SEO checks, A/B testing, pop-up campaigns, and eCommerce revenue tracking. And since the move to Contentsquare, the deeper features sit on higher plans, so the price can grow faster than your traffic.
Mouseflow is a behavior analytics platform with session replay, website heatmaps, journey analytics, friction detection, conversion funnels, form analytics, and feedback surveys. It is a strong option when you want to go deeper than basic heatmaps and understand full user journeys.
Mouseflow is especially useful when the team needs to filter session recordings by page, traffic source, device, location, behavior, rage clicks, or other signals. This matters when you have many recordings and do not want to watch random sessions for hours. You can focus only on users who abandoned checkout, came from paid ads, or struggled with a form.
Plans are priced by session volume: Essential gives 5,000 sessions a month with 3 months of data, Advanced 25,000 with 6 months, and Premium 100,000 with 12 months. Form analytics, data export, and the REST API start on Advanced; journey analytics starts on Premium. Mouseflow also adds Mina AI and an MCP connector for asking questions about your data in plain language.
The weak side is that Mouseflow is still mainly a behavior analytics product. It does not replace an SEO checker, a pop-up builder, a native A/B testing tool, or an eCommerce sales performance report. For CRO-only teams it can be enough. SEO and growth teams will usually need extra tools around it.
Hotjar is better if you need a familiar and simple tool for heatmaps, recordings, surveys, and feedback. It is good for fast UX checks, product feedback, and basic conversion research. The learning curve is not scary, which matters when several people on the team need to use the same dashboard.
The biggest practical difference in 2026 is how you buy. Mouseflow has public, per-session pricing and keeps its plans simple. Hotjar is now one module of Contentsquare, which suits teams that plan to grow into a larger experience analytics suite, but is less transparent for smaller budgets.
Mouseflow is better if your team wants deeper analytics around friction, forms, funnels, and user journeys. In a Mouseflow vs Hotjar comparison, Mouseflow looks stronger for people who care about filtering and prioritizing sessions, not just watching recordings one by one.
Plerdy is better if the goal is not only to compare Hotjar vs Mouseflow, but to find a broader CRO platform. Plerdy connects behavior analytics with SEO, A/B testing, pop-ups, event tracking, funnels, eCommerce tracking, and browser-based UX/SEO analysis. That is why a separate Hotjar vs Plerdy or Plerdy vs Hotjar block is useful on this page.
Hotjar makes sense when your team mainly needs visual user behavior data. Heatmaps, recordings, surveys, feedback, rage clicks, dead clicks, and basic drop-off research are the main reasons to choose it.
Mouseflow makes sense when your website has many sessions and you need to find the most important ones quickly. Its value is stronger when you use filters, friction signals, form analytics, and funnels every week.
Many teams compare Hotjar vs Mouseflow and then realize they still need more tools. A heatmap can show that users ignore a CTA. A session replay can show confusion. But after that, someone still has to test a better layout, check SEO issues, build a lead form, review eCommerce conversion data, and measure whether the change helped.
Plerdy fits this gap. It combines dynamic heatmaps, session recordings, conversion funnels, event tracking, smart pop-ups and forms, SEO Checker, Google Search Console insights, eCommerce tracking, and A/B testing. So instead of using one tool for Hotjar-style heatmaps, another for SEO, another for pop-ups, and another for tests, Plerdy keeps more CRO work inside one platform. Plerdy keeps more CRO work inside one platform. You can start on the free plan, see Plerdy heatmaps and session recordings on your own pages, and upgrade only when you need higher limits.
“Plerdy software is a great substitute of Hotjar for me. Thanks for the brilliant support and product.”
“I learned about Plerdy while investigating Hotjar. This tool is amazingly simple to use and gives me all the necessary functionality.”
The main difference is focus. Hotjar is strong for heatmaps, recordings, surveys, and feedback. Mouseflow is stronger for deeper behavior analytics, including friction detection, journey analytics, form analytics, and funnel analysis.
Not anymore. Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare, and hotjar.com pricing redirects to Contentsquare plans: Free, Growth, Pro, and Enterprise. Heatmaps, recordings, funnels, and surveys are still available, but you buy them as a Contentsquare plan.
Yes. Hotjar tracks mouse movement through move heatmaps, which show where visitors hover, and through session recordings, which replay the full cursor path of a visit. Mouseflow offers the same with its movement and attention heatmaps. Plerdy also shows clicks, scroll depth, and mouse movement on its heatmaps, and keeps click data correct after the page design changes.
Both Hotjar and Mouseflow offer heatmaps. Hotjar is easier for quick click, scroll, and behavior checks. Mouseflow is better when heatmaps need to work together with friction detection, journey analytics, form analytics, and session replay filters.
Yes, Hotjar helps teams analyze frustration signals such as rage clicks and related behavior patterns. These signals are useful when a button, link, form field, or page element looks clickable but does not help users move forward.
Yes, Mouseflow includes conversion funnel analytics and form analytics. This makes it useful for checkout pages, lead forms, sign-up flows, SaaS onboarding, and other steps where users often drop off.
Microsoft Clarity is free and covers heatmaps and recordings, but has no funnels in the Mouseflow sense, no form analytics, and no surveys. It is a good starting point; Hotjar and Mouseflow are for teams that need deeper analysis. See our Microsoft Clarity vs Hotjar and Mouseflow vs Microsoft Clarity comparisons.
Mouseflow compares well when you need more than simple heatmaps. It adds session replay, friction detection, journey analytics, funnels, form analytics, and filtering by traffic source, device, behavior, and other user signals.
Yes, Hotjar offers sharing and export options for collected data. For example, teams can export recording lists with metadata and use API options for survey response export, depending on the product and plan.
Yes, Plerdy can be used as an alternative when you need heatmaps, session recordings, funnels, events, pop-ups, SEO Checker, A/B testing, eCommerce tracking, and conversion analysis in one platform.
Choose Hotjar for simple UX research and feedback. Choose Mouseflow for deeper behavior analytics, friction detection, funnels, and form analytics. Choose Plerdy if you also need SEO, pop-ups, A/B testing, eCommerce tracking, and CRO tools.