Hotjar alternatives: 9 options, including free ones

The short answer

The reason this search exists has changed. Contentsquare's Hotjar page states that it is no longer possible to create a new account on Hotjar. So anyone looking for Hotjar today is choosing between its successor and everything else. Many "Hotjar alternatives" lists were written before that happened, and several still recommend a tool that is being shut down.

Which Hotjar alternatives are free?

Five of the nine Hotjar alternatives below have a free plan: Microsoft Clarity, Contentsquare Free, PostHog, Fullstory and Mouseflow. Google Analytics 4 is also free but does not record sessions. Microsoft Clarity is the only one with no traffic limit and no paid tier at all.

Three notes on reading the table. Units differ: Crazy Egg counts pageviews, Matomo counts hits, PostHog counts recordings and events, and the rest count sessions, so compare against your own traffic, not against each other. Mouseflow's page showed prices without a currency symbol when we read it. Lucky Orange and Crazy Egg show dollar prices without naming the currency; both are US companies, so we have assumed US dollars.

1. Microsoft Clarity: the best free Hotjar alternative

Microsoft Clarity is a free heatmap and session recording tool with no traffic limits and no paid version. It flags dead clicks, rage clicks, quick backs and JavaScript errors automatically, links recordings to GA4, and allows unlimited projects. Its main limits are 30-day recording retention and no surveys.

Microsoft says Clarity runs on more than 2 million sites and apps, and W3Techs detects it on 4.1% of all websites. It records up to 100,000 sessions per project per day and keeps recordings for 30 days, with favourites and a sample kept for up to nine months (Clarity FAQ).

• Choose it if you want heatmaps and recordings for a marketing site and have no budget line for them.
• Skip it if you need surveys, or a year of recording history.

Our Microsoft Clarity guide for marketers covers setup, GA4 and privacy for Australian businesses.

2. Contentsquare Free: Hotjar's own successor

Contentsquare is the platform Hotjar has merged into. Its free plan captures up to 200,000 sessions a month, with 10,000 replays, heatmaps, attention maps, funnels, error monitoring and 100 survey responses a month. It includes one project and one month of data access.

Paid Growth plans start at USD 49 a month on monthly billing or USD 39 billed yearly, for 7,000 sessions, and add 13 months of data access and three projects. Customers outside Europe are billed in US dollars (Contentsquare pricing).

• Choose it if you liked Hotjar's surveys and want them with your recordings.
• Skip it if you manage many sites on a free plan: Free allows one project.

The head-to-head is in Microsoft Clarity vs Hotjar.

3. PostHog: for product teams with developers

PostHog is an all-in-one product analytics suite with session replay, heatmaps, feature flags, experiments and surveys. Its free tier resets monthly and includes 5,000 session recordings, 1 million analytics events and 1,500 survey responses, with one project and one year of data retention.

PostHog says 97% of companies use it for free and that usage stops at the free limits unless you add a card (PostHog pricing). Its heatmaps, scrollmaps and clickmaps run through a toolbar, and its heatmap view includes dead clicks and rage clicks (PostHog docs).

• Choose it if your team ships product and has a developer to set up events.
• Skip it if you want a marketer-friendly tool you can install and read the same afternoon.

4. Fullstory: the enterprise route

Fullstory is a digital experience analytics platform with session replay, heatmaps, funnels and journey analysis. Its free plan includes 30,000 monthly sessions and 12 months of analytics retention. Paid plans (Business, Advanced and Enterprise) are priced on request.

• Choose it if you expect to grow into enterprise analytics and want to start on the same platform.
• Skip it if you need a published price to get budget sign-off.

5. Mouseflow: heatmaps plus form analytics

Mouseflow offers session replay, heatmaps, funnels, friction detection and form analytics. Its Free Forever plan covers 500 sessions a month. Paid plans start with Essential at 25 a month for 5,000 sessions and three months of retention, rising to Premium at 319 a month for 100,000 sessions.

Form analytics is among the features Mouseflow lists, which matters for lead generation sites: it shows which field people abandon, not just that they left.

• Choose it if you have modest traffic and forms are your main conversion point.
• Skip it if 500 free sessions a month is less than a week of your traffic.

6. Lucky Orange: recordings and live chat together

Lucky Orange combines heatmaps, session recordings, surveys, live chat, conversion funnels and form analytics. There is no free plan, only a 7-day free trial. The Build plan costs USD 32 a month paid annually for 3,500 sessions, and every feature is available on every plan.

Base data storage starts at 60 days, with upgrades to 90, 180 or 365 days (Lucky Orange pricing).

• Choose it if you want live chat and recordings from one vendor.
• Skip it if you already have a chat tool.

7. Crazy Egg: heatmaps with A/B testing

Crazy Egg offers heatmaps, recordings, surveys, web analytics and A/B testing. There is no free plan, only a 30-day free trial. The Starter plan costs USD 29 a month billed annually for 5,000 tracked pageviews, five heatmap reports and 50 recordings a month. A/B testing starts on the Plus plan at USD 99 a month.

• Choose it if you want simple testing and heatmaps in one tool.
• Skip it if you need many recordings: 50 a month on Starter is thin.

8. Matomo Cloud: privacy-first, hosted in Europe

Matomo is web analytics built around data ownership, with heatmaps and session recordings included in its Cloud plans. The entry Cloud plan is EUR 22 a month (excluding tax) for 50,000 hits, with data stored in Europe, 1,500 heatmap pageviews and 150 session recordings a month. An on-premise version is also available.

• Choose it if you want to replace Google Analytics and add light recording in one privacy-first tool.
• Skip it if recordings are the main reason you are looking: 150 a month is a sample, not a picture.

9. Google Analytics 4: free, but a different job

Google Analytics 4 is free web analytics from Google. It is not a like-for-like Hotjar alternative, because it does not record sessions or draw heatmaps. It is included because it answers the question a recording tool cannot: how many visitors arrived, from where, and how many enquired.

Google Analytics runs on 47.2% of all websites, according to W3Techs. Pair it with Clarity and you have the "how many" and the "what happened" for nothing. Before you rely on it, check that every enquiry actually fires a key event, using the GA4 audit checklist.

Where does PostCliq fit?

PostCliq is not a Hotjar alternative in the usual sense, and we will not pretend it is. It does not record sessions or draw heatmaps. It is a free website audit that diagnoses what stops visitors becoming enquiries, and it can read Microsoft Clarity's signals beside its own findings.

Every tool above answers "what did visitors do?". None of them answers "what should we fix first, and why?". That is a different job, and it is the one PostCliq does. PostCliq, from WP Creative, an Australian website growth agency, reads up to 50 of your public pages across speed and page experience, forms and calls to action, content clarity, search access, accessibility, trust signals and AI readiness. You get a private report with evidence and three quick wins, and a weekly re-audit checks whether your fixes held. It never logs in, submits forms or changes your site.

The two work best together. Use the audit to find the likely problems, then watch a handful of Clarity recordings on those pages to confirm them. The Clarity connection is read-only; see the Microsoft Clarity integration.

How to choose in five minutes

Worked example: a B2B services site with 12,000 sessions a month, one marketer, no developer. Clarity costs nothing and has no cap. Contentsquare Free covers the traffic (200,000 a month) but only one project. Mouseflow's 500 free sessions last about a day and a quarter at 400 sessions a day (12,000 divided by 30). Lucky Orange at 3,500 sessions and Crazy Egg at 5,000 pageviews would need higher plans. For this site, Clarity plus GA4 is the free answer, and Contentsquare Free is the choice only if surveys matter.

What to do next

1. Check your real monthly sessions in GA4 before comparing any plan, because every cap in the table is a traffic number.
2. Install Microsoft Clarity first, since it is free with no cap, and run it for two weeks.
3. Add a survey tool only if you need the visitor's own words, such as Contentsquare Free on your main enquiry page.
4. Look at frustration signals weekly, starting with dead clicks and rage clicks on your contact and landing pages.
5. Get the diagnosis the recorders cannot give you. Run a free PostCliq audit and use your recordings to confirm what it finds.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free alternative to Hotjar?

Yes. Microsoft Clarity is free with no traffic limits and no paid tier, and it offers heatmaps, session recordings and dead and rage click detection. Contentsquare Free, Hotjar's successor, captures up to 200,000 sessions a month. PostHog, Fullstory and Mouseflow also have free plans, with smaller or different allowances. All figures were checked on the vendors' sites on 30 September 2026.

What replaced Hotjar?

Contentsquare. Hotjar has merged into Contentsquare, the Hotjar website redirects there, and Contentsquare says new Hotjar accounts can no longer be created. New users sign up to Contentsquare Free, which includes heatmaps, session replay, surveys, funnels and error monitoring. Existing Hotjar customers should check Contentsquare's pages for how their accounts are handled.

Is Microsoft Clarity better than Hotjar?

For most marketing teams, yes, on value: Clarity is free with no traffic cap and flags frustration signals automatically. Contentsquare, which replaced Hotjar, is better if you need surveys and feedback, longer data history on paid plans, or enterprise analysis. The detailed comparison is in our Microsoft Clarity vs Hotjar article, with every cell checked against the vendors' pages.

What is the cheapest Hotjar alternative?

Microsoft Clarity, because it is free with every feature included and no traffic limit. Among paid tools with published prices, Mouseflow's Essential plan starts at 25 a month for 5,000 sessions, Crazy Egg at USD 29 a month billed annually and Lucky Orange at USD 32 a month billed annually. Matomo Cloud starts at EUR 22 a month. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Is Smartlook still a good Hotjar alternative?

No, not for a new project. Smartlook's own site says it stopped selling new subscriptions on 31 May 2026 and will decommission the platform on 30 September 2027, after which remaining customer data will be deleted. Its capabilities are moving into Cisco's Splunk Observability Cloud. If you are choosing a tool now, pick one with a future.

Do I need a heatmap tool if I have Google Analytics?

Probably, and the free one is enough. GA4 tells you how many visitors reached a page and whether they enquired, but not what they did on it. A heatmap and recording tool such as Microsoft Clarity shows where they clicked, stopped and gave up. Connected together, a GA4 session links straight to its Clarity recording.