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Hotjar vs Microsoft Clarity: Which Tool Is Better?

The Microsoft Clarity vs Hotjar comparison changed in 2026, and most articles still have it wrong. Hotjar no longer sells its own plans — hotjar.com/pricing now redirects to Contentsquare, where the free tier covers 200,000 sessions per month instead of the old 35 sessions per day. Microsoft Clarity stayed free forever with no traffic limits, but it also grew into an AI product with AI visibility tracking, a mobile SDK, and an MCP server. So the real question is no longer "which one is cheaper". Both are free at the entry level. The question is what each one refuses to do — and that is where Plerdy matters, because it covers heatmaps, session recordings, pop-up forms, SEO audits, conversion funnels, and A/B testing in one platform instead of two.

Quick Verdict: Microsoft Clarity Vs Hotjar

Choose Microsoft Clarity if you want zero cost with zero traffic ceiling. It is the only tool of the three that never meters your sessions, which makes it the default for high-traffic content sites where a session-based plan would get expensive fast. In 2026 it also added AI visibility — a report showing which of your pages get cited by AI assistants and which bots crawl them. No other tool in this comparison has that. The trade-off: Clarity gives you observation, not workflow. There is no A/B testing, no pop-ups, no SEO audit, and data is aggregated with a delay rather than shown live.


Choose Hotjar if you need to ask users questions, not only watch them. Surveys, feedback widgets, and interviews are still its strongest side, and they now sit inside Contentsquare's Voice of Customer product with a free tier of 100 responses per month. The Experience Analytics free plan covers 200,000 sessions monthly, which is far more generous than the limits most comparison articles still quote. The trade-off is the ceiling: once you outgrow free, the entry paid plan is $49 per month billed annually, and the product roadmap now follows Contentsquare's enterprise direction rather than the small-team tool Hotjar used to be.


Choose Plerdy if the goal is to fix the problem, not just to see it. Clarity shows you that users drop off at checkout; Hotjar lets you ask them why; Plerdy also gives you the A/B test to try a fix, the pop-up form to catch the exiting visitor, and the SEO audit to find why the page had low-intent traffic in the first place. Its free plan includes unlimited A/B testing — something neither Clarity nor Hotjar offers at any price on the free tier.

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Heatmaps

Hotjar

Microsoft Clarity

Plerdy

Real-time tracking
Dynamic elements
Custom user groups
Testing first clicks
Accurate mobile analytics
Deeper segmentation
Segmentation by traffic channels
Adaptive layout and show data
Correct data after website design changes
Hide Empty clicks
Sequence of clicks
Users did not go to another page
Detect what website elements are the least effective
Find out which part of the page is making users leave

Pop-up Forms

Hotjar

Microsoft Clarity

Plerdy

Ready to use templates
Reports about leads
Statistics about how people interact with a form
Display a popup to specific trigger
API integrations with (Mailchimp, Zapier, ClickUp, Intercom, HubSpot and etc.)
Video popup
Integrations virtual pageviews Microsoft Clarity UA & events GA 4
Decrease eCommerce cart abandonment
Over 20 display rules

Feedback & Surveys

Hotjar

Microsoft Clarity

Plerdy

Surveys
Visual feedback (Emoji)
Net Promoter Score

Session Recording

Hotjar

Microsoft Clarity

Plerdy

Replay video about user behavior
Custom events and advanced targeting
Timeline recording with pages and time
Filter by traffic channels
Analyze individual user groups
Analyze mobile and desktop website versions separately
Easily share video links
Automatically delete old videos
Rage clicks

Conversion Funnels

Hotjar

Microsoft Clarity

Plerdy

Analyze funnels by devices and traffic channels
Track unique pageviews and drop-offs on every stage

SEO Checker

Hotjar

Microsoft Clarity

Plerdy

Automatic SEO Audits
SEO mistakes in semantics
Comparison of duplicates of the main meta tags
Data about mobile-first index
SEO Health Score
HTML page source
Historical data for 30 days
Semrush backlink analysis
Export your data to Google Sheets

Google Search Console integration

Hotjar

Microsoft Clarity

Plerdy

Tips on missed keywords
Segmentation of URL data, automatically added to the search
Analysis of keywords in the title
Search for insights (impressions, clicks, positions and CTR)
Adding tags

Event / Goals Tracking

Hotjar

Microsoft Clarity

Plerdy

Configure events using a class or item ID
Automatically add up different events from a specific website page
Transfer to Google Analytics

Sales Performance

Hotjar

Microsoft Clarity

Plerdy

Elements do customers interact with before making a purchase
Find out what does not affect sales at all
E-commerce conversion analysis
Each element is assigned a price
Analyze the impact of website elements on sales by traffic channel and device

A/B Testing tool

Hotjar

Microsoft Clarity

Plerdy

A/B testing of element changes
A/B testing of page redirect (split test)
Variants: this can be a page, event, or ecommerce
A/B testing reports

Macro conversion

Hotjar

Microsoft Clarity

Plerdy

Items that customers interact with before ordering

Other settings

Hotjar

Microsoft Clarity

Plerdy

Cross-domain tracking
Sub-domain tracking
Email and Slack reports
Support SPA sites
GDPR & CCPA compliance
Session volume limit on free plan
200k/month Unlimited Metered by feature
Mobile app SDK (iOS / Android)
MCP server for AI tools
AI visibility / brand citation tracking

Pricing

Hotjar

Microsoft Clarity

Plerdy

Entry Level Price
Free — 200,000 sessions/month Free forever Free forever
Free Trial / Free Plan
Free plan + 100 survey responses/month Free forever, no paid trial needed Free plan + 14-day trial for paid plans
Paid Plans
Growth from $39/month billed annually ($49 monthly) No paid plan Startup from $21/month yearly
Business / Growth Plan
Growth $49/month — from 7k sessions, 13 months data No paid plan Scale from $42/month yearly; Thrive from $70/month yearly
Enterprise
Pro and Enterprise — quote only No paid enterprise plan Enterprise from $97/month yearly

Microsoft Clarity Vs Hotjar Pricing: What Is The Real Difference?

Pricing used to be the whole argument in the Microsoft Clarity vs Hotjar debate, and in 2026 it mostly is not. Microsoft Clarity is free forever with no traffic limits and no paid tier at all — Microsoft funds it as part of its advertising and AI ecosystem, which is why there is nothing to upgrade to. That is genuinely unusual, and for a site doing millions of pageviews it is still the cheapest way to get heatmaps and replays. But since Contentsquare raised Hotjar's free tier to 200,000 sessions per month, "free" alone no longer decides this comparison for most sites.


Hotjar's pricing page no longer exists on its own domain — it returns a permanent redirect to Contentsquare pricing, where the products are now called Experience Analytics, Voice of Customer, and Product Analytics. This is the single most outdated fact in most Microsoft Clarity vs Hotjar articles, which still quote a limit of 35 daily sessions. The current free plan covers 200,000 sessions per month with replays, heatmaps, funnels, error monitoring, and basic surveys. Paid access starts at Growth for $49 per month billed annually, from 7,000 monthly sessions with 13 months of data retention and Contentsquare's Sense AI summaries. Pro and Enterprise are quote-only.


Verified on contentsquare.com/pricing, 2026. Vendor pricing changes often — check the live page before making a decision.


Plerdy has a free forever plan and paid plans starting from $21/month yearly or $32/monthly for the Startup package. Unlike Clarity and Hotjar, Plerdy also includes SEO audit limits, pop-up forms, conversions, A/B testing, e-commerce tracking, and AI UX Assistant limits in its pricing structure. Unlike both, Plerdy meters what you actually use — heatmaps, video sessions, SEO audit pages, and pop-up impressions have separate limits, so a small site is not paying for enterprise session volume it will never reach.

When To Choose Microsoft Clarity, Hotjar, Or Plerdy

Choose Microsoft Clarity if you need a free tool for heatmaps, session recordings, AI summaries, rage clicks, dead clicks, scroll behavior, and quick UX checks. It is a good first step when the budget is limited.


Choose Hotjar if you need surveys, feedback widgets, user interviews, funnels, team collaboration, and stronger qualitative research. Hotjar is better when you want to hear from users, not only watch their behavior.


Choose Plerdy if your goal is conversion optimization and website growth. Plerdy is better when you need heatmaps, session recordings, SEO analysis, pop-ups, event tracking, funnel analysis, e-commerce sales performance, A/B testing, and Google Search Console insights in one place.

Comparison

Hotjar Pros & Cons

Alice Wang, Lead UX Researcher at HelloFresh:

My verdict is that Hotjar is a great tool with its drawbacks. Hotjar removes assumptions by providing contextual insights. racks user sentiment over time. It is even possible to link up Hotjar recordings to a particular a/b experiment or event trigger for specific feedback.

Rachel Harrison, UX & CRO Analyst at Epiphany Search:

Hotjar is great because there are a lot of filtering capabilities within session recordings, allowing you to find videos/users who meet your needs. But the cons of Hotjar upset me. Hotjar should provide capabilities to do numerous session recordings on different site areas at once.

Alex Richards, Chief Information Officer & Co-Founder at EvaluAgent:

I recommend Hotjar to all my colleagues. But I don`t like that Hotjar doesn't provide the opportunity to customize the dashboard view. I also don't like that Hotjar doesn't have integrations with JIRA, Github, and Bugherd.

Microsoft Clarity Pros & Cons

Ahmed Samy Elbasiouny, Founder and Digital Marketing Consultant at Capsulera:

Microsoft Clarity is easy to use. I incredibly like that with Microsoft Clarity, I can track website visitors' behaviors, including session video recording, heat maps, and scroll maps. I recommend Microsoft Clarity to anyone who wants to find an alternative to Google Analytics.

Rahul Ahuja, Senior Software Engineer at Globant:

Microsoft Clarity is a good attempt by Microsoft, but Google Analytics is better. Microsoft Clarity provides basic data. Microsoft Clarity lacks A/B testing tools for UX testing and design improvements.

Emile Mostert, Cloud Based Software Specialist at iVvy Pty Ltd:

The heatmap function in Microsoft Clarity is the best. All other functions of Microsoft Clarity are basic. I expect a few extra features to the Microsoft Clarity repertoire in the near future.

About Hotjar

Hotjar is now fully absorbed into Contentsquare, and in 2026 that is more than a change of owner. The old three-product structure of Observe, Ask, and Engage is gone. What used to be Hotjar is now split across Experience Analytics (replays, heatmaps, funnels, error monitoring) and Voice of Customer (surveys, feedback widgets, AI survey generator). Contentsquare's AI layer, called Sense, adds chat over your data and multi-session replay summaries on paid tiers, and every plan can connect to an LLM through MCP.

The practical consequence for anyone comparing Hotjar vs Clarity: you are no longer buying a small-team tool. Free is unusually generous at 200,000 monthly sessions, but the product is now built to grow into an enterprise platform, and the roadmap follows enterprise needs. Teams that liked Hotjar for being simple should test the current interface before committing, because the surface it presents in 2026 is noticeably heavier than the one most reviews describe.

About Microsoft Clarity

Microsoft Clarity is a free behavior analytics tool now running on more than 2 million sites and apps worldwide. Beyond the familiar heatmaps and session recordings, the 2026 version is built around AI: Highlights pulls the key moments out of every session, AI summaries explain behavior trends on a page, and AI chat answers questions about your data directly. The mobile SDK covers Android, iOS, Flutter, and React Native, and an MCP server lets you query Clarity from whichever AI tool you already work in.

The newest addition is AI visibility, which tracks how AI assistants surface your brand — which queries trigger citations, which pages get cited, and which AI crawlers are hitting your content. For anyone worried about losing search traffic to AI answers, that report alone is a reason to install Clarity, and no paid competitor in this comparison offers it. The limits are unchanged, though: no surveys, no pop-ups, no SEO audit, no A/B testing. Clarity tells you what happened and increasingly why, but it never gives you the tool to change it.

Comparison of Hotjar and Microsoft Clarity

The honest answer to "is Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity better" is that they stopped competing directly. Clarity is funded by Microsoft as an ecosystem play, so it has no revenue target and no reason to gate features behind a plan — it will keep being free at any traffic volume. Contentsquare has to sell software, so Hotjar's free tier is a funnel into paid products. That difference in business model predicts almost everything else: where each tool invests, what it will never build, and how each behaves when your site grows.

In practice most teams that seriously evaluate MS Clarity vs Hotjar end up running Clarity permanently as the always-on layer, because it costs nothing and covers all traffic, and adding a second tool for the work Clarity refuses to do. That is a reasonable setup, and it is worth saying plainly rather than pretending one tool wins outright.

That second tool is where Plerdy makes sense. If the gap you are filling is surveys only, Contentsquare's Voice of Customer covers it. If the gap is the whole loop from finding the leak to fixing it, Plerdy is the shorter path: the same platform gives you heatmaps to spot the problem, session recordings to confirm it, an A/B test to try the fix, and an SEO audit to check whether the traffic was ever right for that page. For a marketing team, one login beats stitching Clarity, a survey tool, a testing tool, and an SEO crawler together.

Microsoft Clarity Vs. Hotjar FAQ

What Is The Main Difference Between Microsoft Clarity And Hotjar?

The main difference between Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar is the product focus. Microsoft Clarity is a free behavior analytics tool with heatmaps, session recordings, rage clicks, dead clicks, and AI insights. Hotjar is stronger for UX research because it also includes surveys, feedback widgets, funnels, interviews, and team collaboration features.

Is Microsoft Clarity Better Than Hotjar?

Microsoft Clarity can be better than Hotjar if you need a free tool for heatmaps, session recordings, scroll maps, rage clicks, dead clicks, and quick behavior analysis. Hotjar is usually better if your team also needs surveys, feedback, interviews, funnels, and more qualitative user research.

Is Hotjar Better Than Microsoft Clarity?

Hotjar is better than Microsoft Clarity when a team needs more than behavior analytics. Hotjar helps collect direct user feedback through surveys, feedback widgets, and interviews. Microsoft Clarity is stronger as a free tool for watching user behavior through heatmaps and session recordings.

Is Microsoft Clarity Really Free?

Yes, and there is no paid tier to upgrade to — that is the unusual part. Microsoft runs Clarity as part of its advertising and AI ecosystem rather than as a product that has to earn revenue, so there are no traffic limits and no premium features held back. The cost is paid in scope, not money: no surveys, no pop-ups, no A/B testing, no SEO audit.

Does Hotjar Have A Free Plan?

Yes, and it is much larger than most articles claim. Through Contentsquare, the free Experience Analytics plan covers 200,000 sessions per month with session replays, heatmaps, funnels, and error monitoring, plus 100 monthly survey responses on the free Voice of Customer tier. The old figure of 35 daily sessions is long out of date. Paid access starts at $49 per month billed annually.

Which Tool Is Better For Heatmaps: Microsoft Clarity Or Hotjar?

Both Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar offer heatmaps. Microsoft Clarity is a strong option for free heatmaps, click maps, scroll maps, and behavior signals. Hotjar is better if heatmaps need to be combined with feedback, surveys, funnels, and deeper UX research workflows.

Which Tool Is Better For Session Recordings?

Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar both offer session recordings. Microsoft Clarity is useful for free session replay and quick behavior checks. Hotjar is more suitable when session recordings need to be connected with feedback, surveys, user interviews, funnels, and team collaboration.

Does Microsoft Clarity Have Surveys Or Feedback Widgets?

Microsoft Clarity does not focus on surveys or feedback widgets. Its main value is behavior analytics, including heatmaps, session recordings, rage clicks, dead clicks, scroll data, and AI insights. If surveys and feedback are important, Hotjar or Plerdy may be a better fit.

Does Hotjar Have Better Feedback Features Than Microsoft Clarity?

Yes, Hotjar has stronger feedback features than Microsoft Clarity. Hotjar includes surveys, feedback widgets, and user research tools that help teams understand why users behave in a certain way. Microsoft Clarity is stronger for free behavior tracking, not direct user feedback.

What Is The Best Microsoft Clarity Alternative?

A good Microsoft Clarity alternative depends on the goal. Hotjar is a strong alternative for surveys, feedback, user interviews, and UX research. Plerdy is a better alternative when a team needs heatmaps, session recordings, SEO analysis, pop-up forms, event tracking, conversion funnels, e-commerce analytics, and A/B testing in one platform.

What Is The Best Hotjar Alternative?

Microsoft Clarity is a good Hotjar alternative if you mainly need a free heatmap and session recording tool. Plerdy is a better Hotjar alternative if you need a wider CRO and SEO platform with heatmaps, session recordings, pop-ups, event tracking, funnel analysis, sales performance analysis, and A/B testing.

Which Tool Should Ecommerce Websites Choose?

Ecommerce websites can use Microsoft Clarity for free behavior analysis and Hotjar for feedback and UX research. Plerdy is often more practical for ecommerce teams that need to connect user behavior with conversion funnels, pop-up forms, product page analysis, event tracking, A/B testing, and sales performance data.

 
Here’s what users think about these tools:

“We used Plerdy to figure out how to improve e-commerce UX. Videos session recordings helped us make many changes that improved conversion”

Cristian T Executive Art Director

“Hotjar has less powerful filters than other tools”

Gabriele M UX Designer

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