9 Best Hotjar Alternatives in 2026 (Tested & Compared)

Hotjar is not a separate product any more. As of 17 August 2026, hotjar.com redirects to contentsquare.com/hotjar/ and hotjar.com/pricing redirects to Contentsquare's own pricing page. There is no live Hotjar rate card to read. Any guide still quoting Hotjar Basic, Plus, Business and Scale with daily session limits is describing plans you can no longer buy.

So the question has changed. It is not "what else is like Hotjar," it is "what do I use now that Hotjar is a Contentsquare tier." This guide ranks nine answers, with every price read off the vendor's own live page in August 2026.

The short answer: Microsoft Clarity is the best free Hotjar alternative, and the bar everything else has to clear: session recordings and heatmaps, "free forever," with "no limits on traffic" in Microsoft's own words. Humblytics is the pick if you want to act on behavior rather than watch it, heatmaps plus no-code A/B testing and Stripe-verified revenue attribution in one script at $79/month. Mouseflow is the strongest like-for-like swap for teams that live in session replay and friction scoring, from 25 per month. Contentsquare itself now has a $0 tier and a $39/month self-serve plan, so staying put is cheaper than it used to be.

At a glance: Hotjar alternatives compared

All prices verified against the vendor's own live pricing page on 17 August 2026. Read each section below for the full picture, including which tier a feature actually starts on.

Smartlook is gone from this list, and that is deliberate. Its End of Sale was 31 May 2026, so it cannot be bought. Details in the section below.

What is the best Hotjar alternative in 2026?

It depends on which half of Hotjar you actually used.

If you used it to watch, the answer is Microsoft Clarity and it costs nothing. Free forever, no traffic limits, recordings and heatmaps included. Anything you pay for replay has to beat free, and most of it does not.

If you used it to decide what to change, the answer is Humblytics, because it closes the loop Hotjar leaves open. Hotjar shows you where users click and where they drop. It does not let you test a fix, and it does not tie the result to revenue. Humblytics gives you heatmaps, a no-code A/B testing engine, funnels, and Stripe-verified revenue attribution in one ~16 KB script, so you go from "users abandon here" to "this change earned $1,200" without leaving the tool or stitching three products together.

There is one honest caveat up front. Humblytics does not do session replay, Hotjar's signature feature. If watching individual recordings is your number-one job, pick Clarity, FullStory or Mouseflow instead. The rest of this guide is built so you can match the tool to the job, not just chase the cheapest sticker price.

The shortlist by need:

• Best free alternative: Microsoft Clarity (unlimited, $0).
• Best for taking action on what you find: Humblytics ($79/mo).
• Closest like-for-like replacement: Mouseflow ($39/mo).
• Best for product teams: PostHog (usage-based, generous free tier).
• Best enterprise replay: FullStory (custom).
• Best for ecommerce: Lucky Orange ($39/mo).
• Best heatmaps + A/B in one classic tool: Crazy Egg ($29/mo).

Why look for a Hotjar alternative?

The brand is retired, not just acquired. hotjar.com and hotjar.com/pricing both redirect to Contentsquare as of 17 August 2026. What used to be a focused, marketer-friendly tool with its own rate card is now a tier inside an enterprise experience-analytics platform. That is a real change in who the product is built for.

What Contentsquare charges now. Its pricing page publishes a Free plan at $0 with 200,000 monthly sessions and 1 project, and a self-serve Growth plan at $49/month billed monthly or $39/month billed yearly, which lists "from 7k monthly sessions", 13 months of data access and 3 projects. Pro and Enterprise carry no published price. Worth noting a quirk on their own page: the free tier is described as 200k monthly sessions while the paid tier above it starts "from 7k monthly sessions". Both figures are printed as written, so read the plan detail rather than the headline number.

Session caps force the upgrade. From a mid-market reviewer in 2026: "The session recording limits can be restrictive, and once you hit your quota, visibility drops unless you upgrade." (G2). This is the structural problem with session-metered pricing: a viral post or a paid campaign spends your quota, and the month you most need the data is the month you run out.

You buy features one at a time. A small-business reviewer's stated dislike: "that there is no holistic pricing there, you have to pay for each feature." (G2)

It observes, and observing does not scale. From an enterprise reviewer, 30 April 2026: "It doesn't go very deep analytically... the lack of detailed metrics, segmentation, and advanced reporting can feel limiting. The recordings and heatmaps are helpful, but they can also get overwhelming or take a lot of time to review, especially on high-traffic sites." (G2)

And the free competitor is genuinely good. A marketer with two years on the product, 23 June 2024: "Hotjar is amazing but way overpriced. I rather use screen recordings and heatmaps from Microsoft Clarity (which is free) and only use Hotjar for on-site surveys etc." (Capterra)

Cookies and consent. Hotjar sets cookies and processes behavioral data that triggers consent requirements under GDPR and similar laws. That means a cookie banner, lost data from visitors who decline, and a compliance review. The Humblytics analytics layer does not itself require a cookie-consent banner, but a site may still need consent for other tools or uses.

No A/B testing, no revenue attribution. This is the big one. Hotjar tells you what happened. It does not let you test a change or prove that a change made money. You end up buying a separate testing tool and a separate attribution setup. One tool that does both is cheaper and faster.

What is the best free Hotjar alternative?

Microsoft Clarity is the best free Hotjar alternative, full stop. Its own site says it plainly: "Free forever. No limits on traffic." (clarity.microsoft.com, verified 17 August 2026). No paid tiers, no feature gates, on more than 2 million sites and apps. You get session recordings, click, scroll and area heatmaps, frustration signals (rage clicks, dead clicks, quick backs), a Copilot for natural-language queries, and a GA4 integration, all at $0. Microsoft funds it through aggregate data, not a paywall.

If your only need is to watch sessions and read heatmaps, there is no reason not to install Clarity. It is the baseline every paid tool gets measured against. Its limits are 30-day dashboard retention on recordings (90 days for heatmap data), a restrictive export API, and no A/B testing or revenue attribution, it observes, it does not act.

Many teams run Clarity for free replay alongside Humblytics for testing and revenue, which covers the full loop without paying for replay at all. We wrote about that pairing in Microsoft Clarity vs Humblytics.

The 9 best Hotjar alternatives in 2026

1. Humblytics

Humblytics is an analytics and conversion platform that combines heatmaps, no-code A/B testing, funnels, and Stripe-verified revenue attribution in a single ~16 KB script. It is the alternative for teams that are tired of tools that only observe.

The difference is the verb. Hotjar, Clarity, and most tools on this list show you behavior. Humblytics lets you change it and prove the result. You see a leak in a heatmap or funnel, ship an A/B test from the same dashboard with no code, and Humblytics ties the winning variant back to actual Stripe revenue, not a click, not a soft goal, the dollar. Its analytics layer does not itself require a cookie-consent banner, so the analytics script loses no data to declined cookies.

It also ships a REST API and a native MCP server so Claude or Codex can read your funnel, propose a test, and launch it. PostHog ships an official MCP server too. The difference is what the agent's verdict resolves to: Humblytics scores the test in Stripe-verified revenue rather than in events.

• Best for: Marketers, agencies, and founders who want to act on behavior data, test fixes and attribute revenue, without a three-tool stack.
• Pricing (2026): Business $79/mo, Scale $279/mo, Enterprise custom. 14-day free trial.
• Pros: Analytics layer does not itself require a cookie-consent banner; heatmaps, A/B testing, funnels, and revenue attribution in one script; Stripe-verified revenue, not just clicks; agent/MCP access for Claude or Codex; lightweight script; transparent flat pricing.
• Cons / limits: No session replay, if watching individual recordings is critical, pair it with Clarity or pick a replay-first tool below. Heatmaps cover click and scroll, not movement or attention maps.
• Who should use it: Conversion-focused teams that want to fix and prove, not just look. If your workflow ends at "interesting, now what?" with Hotjar, this is the upgrade. See Humblytics vs Hotjar for the full comparison, or the A/B testing engine on its own.

2. Microsoft Clarity

Microsoft Clarity is a completely free behavior analytics tool offering unlimited session recordings, heatmaps, and AI-powered insights. It is the strongest free option on this list and used on more than 2 million sites.

• Best for: Anyone who wants free replay and heatmaps with no traffic ceiling.
• Pricing (2026): Free forever. No paid tier exists.
• Pros: Unlimited recordings and heatmaps; no traffic limits; no sampling; AI Copilot; frustration signals; GDPR and CCPA ready; native GA4 integration; mobile app analytics.
• Cons / limits: No A/B testing; no revenue attribution; 30-day recording retention; export API is heavily limited; observes only, never acts. It also sets cookies and shares aggregate data with Microsoft.
• Who should use it: Every site should run Clarity for free replay. Teams that need to test changes or prove revenue add a tool like Humblytics on top.

3. Mouseflow

Mouseflow is an all-in-one behavior analytics platform built around session replay and a proprietary Friction Score. It is the closest like-for-like Hotjar replacement for teams that live in recordings.

• Best for: Teams that want deep replay, friction scoring, and the widest range of heatmap types.
• Pricing (verified 17 Aug 2026): Free plan at 0/month with 500 sessions/mo, 1 project and 1 month of retention. Essential 25/month (5,000 sessions), Advanced 109/month (25,000 sessions), Premium 319/month (100,000 sessions). The pricing page advertises up to 35% off on annual billing. All features on all plans; Enterprise custom. mouseflow.com/pricing
• Pros: Seven automatic heatmap types (click, scroll, movement, attention, geo, interactive, friction); 100% session recording with no sampling; Friction Score on every session; form analytics, funnels, journeys, and surveys; unlimited users on every plan; privacy controls standard.
• Cons / limits: Session-based caps mean costs climb with traffic; no built-in revenue attribution to Stripe; A/B testing is not a core feature.
• Who should use it: Teams replacing Hotjar feature-for-feature who want richer heatmaps and friction detection, and don't need an A/B engine.

4. PostHog

PostHog is an open-source product analytics platform that bundles session replay, funnels, feature flags, and experiments. It targets product engineers more than marketers.

• Best for: Product and engineering teams that want analytics, replay, and A/B testing (via feature flags) in one developer-first tool.
• Pricing (2026): Usage-based with a generous free tier, 1M events and 5,000 session recordings per month free. Beyond that, session replay runs about $0.005 per recording (stepping down with volume).
• Pros: Replay, product analytics, feature flags, and experiments in one platform; very generous free tier (90%+ of companies stay free); transparent usage-based pricing; open source and self-hostable; A/B testing via feature flags.
• Cons / limits: Steeper learning curve; heatmaps are limited compared to dedicated tools; usage-based billing can be hard to forecast; built for engineers, not marketers; no Stripe-verified revenue attribution out of the box.
• Who should use it: SaaS product teams that want one developer-grade tool for analytics, replay, and experimentation.

5. FullStory

FullStory is an enterprise digital experience analytics platform known for high-fidelity session replay and deep product analytics. It is the premium replay option.

• Best for: Mid-market and enterprise teams that need rich replay plus product analytics at scale.
• Pricing (verified 17 Aug 2026): FullstoryFree at $0 with 30,000 sessions/mo, 12 months of retention and up to 10 users. Business, Advanced and Enterprise publish no price at all, every tier routes to "Request pricing and demo". Figures circulating elsewhere for FullStory's paid tiers are not on its own page, so treat them as unverified. fullstory.com/pricing
• Pros: Best-in-class session replay with full interaction capture; the most generous free tier among replay tools (30k sessions); product analytics, funnels, journeys, and StoryAI summaries; heatmaps on paid tiers.
• Cons / limits: Paid pricing is opaque and expensive; session-based and negotiated; mobile, AI opportunities, and other features are paid add-ons; overkill for small teams; no native Stripe revenue attribution.
• Who should use it: Larger product and UX teams with budget that need enterprise-grade replay and analytics.

6. Zoho PageSense

Zoho PageSense bundles heatmaps, session recordings, funnel analysis, form analytics, A/B testing and personalization into one low-cost account. It replaces Smartlook on this list, for reasons covered in the section below.

• Best for: Small teams who want heatmaps and recordings at the lowest credible price, with a testing engine available later.
• Pricing (verified 17 Aug 2026): Forever Free at US$0 with 5,000 monthly tracked users, 1 project and 1 month of retention. Professional US$12/month billed annually (10,000 MTU, 3 projects). Enterprise US$29.42/month billed annually (10,000 MTU, 10 projects). zoho.com/pagesense/pricing
• Pros: Heatmaps including attention maps and scrollmaps, session recordings, funnels and form analytics in one place; genuinely cheap; part of the wider Zoho suite if you already use it.
• Cons / limits: Neither the free plan nor the $12 Professional plan includes A/B testing. Enterprise at $29.42/month is the first tier that does, so read the tier table before you buy on the headline price. Monthly-tracked-user caps are low, retention is short on the entry tiers, and there is no revenue attribution.
• Who should use it: Budget-constrained teams on small sites. It is not a platform you grow into.

Smartlook is no longer purchasable

Smartlook used to sit on this list and has been removed. Per Smartlook's own announcement, it is winding down as a standalone product and folding into Digital Experience Analytics inside Splunk Observability Cloud. The published dates:

• 31 May 2026: End of Sale. No new Smartlook subscriptions are sold. This date has passed.
• 31 August 2026: End of Contract Renewals. No further renewals or expansions.
• 31 August 2027: Last Day of Support. All remaining paid subscriptions terminate.
• 30 September 2027: Platform Decommissioned. The platform is deactivated and remaining customer data is securely deleted.

Two details matter if you are still on it. Splunk states it will not migrate any historical data from Smartlook, so export through the Smartlook APIs before the end-of-life date. And current subscriptions will not transition automatically to the new Splunk product.

7. Lucky Orange

Lucky Orange is a behavior analytics tool popular with ecommerce stores that bundles heatmaps, recordings, live chat, surveys, and funnels, with every feature on every plan.

• Best for: Ecommerce and small business sites that want everything included without feature gates.
• Pricing (verified 17 Aug 2026): There is no free plan, only a 7-day free trial with every feature included. Build $32/month paid annually or $39/month billed monthly (3,500 monthly sessions, 60-day storage). Grow $72/month annually (10,000 sessions), Expand $199/month annually or $249 monthly (50,000 sessions), Scale $839/month annually or $1,049 monthly (300,000 sessions). Discovery AI is included. luckyorange.com/pricing
• Pros: Dynamic heatmaps, recordings, surveys, funnels, and live chat all included; unlimited team members; live visitor view; strong Shopify integration; affordable entry tier.
• Cons / limits: Session-based caps; A/B testing is not a core strength; no Stripe-verified revenue attribution; Discovery AI costs extra; data retention starts at 60 days.
• Who should use it: Shopify and small ecommerce stores that want behavior insight plus live chat in one affordable tool.

8. Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is one of the original heatmap tools and one of the few classic options with built-in A/B testing. It is built around Snapshots (heatmap reports), recordings, and experiments.

• Best for: Marketers who want heatmaps and no-code A/B testing in one established tool.
• Pricing (verified 17 Aug 2026): A free plan exists with no credit card, covering web analytics, instant heatmaps, conversion analytics and surveys, but no recordings and no A/B testing. Starter $29/mo (5,000 tracked pageviews, 5 heatmap reports, 50 recordings/mo). Plus $99/mo is the first tier with A/B testing (150,000 pageviews, 75 heatmaps, 1,000 recordings/mo). Pro $249/mo (500,000 pageviews), Enterprise $599/mo (1,000,000 pageviews). Crazy Egg prints "All plans are billed annually" and publishes no monthly-billed rate. crazyegg.com/pricing
• Pros: Click, scroll, Confetti, and overlay heatmaps; built-in no-code A/B testing (from the Plus tier); session recordings; AI heatmap analysis; unlimited sites and team seats on every plan; no surprise overages.
• Cons / limits: Annual billing only; A/B testing requires the $99/mo Plus tier; pageview-based limits; no Stripe revenue attribution; sets cookies and needs consent.
• Who should use it: Marketers who want heatmaps plus a built-in visual A/B editor and prefer an established brand. Note that Crazy Egg's testing tracks conversions, not verified Stripe revenue.

9. Plerdy

Plerdy is a CRO and SEO platform that bundles heatmaps, session replay, popups, event tracking, and SEO auditing into one account. Its angle is consolidation.

• Best for: Small teams that want CRO and SEO tooling together at a low price.
• Pricing (verified 17 Aug 2026): Free forever, covering 100 heatmaps on a daily limit, 500 video sessions, a 5,000-page SEO audit, unlimited A/B testing and 1 month of storage. Startup $32/month billed monthly or $21/month billed annually (500 heatmaps/day, 5,000 video sessions, 3-month storage). Higher tiers scale from there. plerdy.com/pricing
• Pros: Heatmaps, session replay, popups, funnels, and an SEO checker in one tool; unlimited A/B testing on every plan including free; AI UX assistant; low entry price.
• Cons / limits: Daily pageview limits rather than monthly sessions; smaller vendor; the SEO and CRO breadth can feel thin per feature; no Stripe-verified revenue attribution.
• Who should use it: Budget-conscious small teams that want behavior analytics and basic SEO auditing under one subscription.

How to choose a Hotjar alternative

Pick based on the job you actually need done, not the longest feature list.

If you need free session replay: Microsoft Clarity. Unlimited, $0, no catch.

If you need to act on what you find, test changes and prove revenue: Humblytics. It is the one tool here that turns a heatmap finding into a shipped A/B test and a verified dollar.

If you need rich replay and friction analysis: Mouseflow for value, FullStory for enterprise scale.

If you are a product/engineering team: PostHog, for analytics, replay, and flags in one developer tool.

If you run an ecommerce store: Lucky Orange, for everything-included behavior insight plus live chat.

If you want classic heatmaps with built-in A/B testing: Crazy Egg.

If budget is tight and you want CRO plus SEO: Plerdy, or Zoho PageSense if you want a testing engine on the same account later.

Two practical filters. First, watch the pricing model. Session-based tools (Contentsquare, Mouseflow, FullStory, Lucky Orange) get more expensive as you grow; flat plans (Humblytics) and usage-based (PostHog) behave differently under traffic spikes. Second, decide whether you need to observe or to act. Replay tools end at insight. If your real goal is more conversions and more revenue, the tool that lets you test and attribute will pay for itself faster than another recording library.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best free Hotjar alternative?

Microsoft Clarity is the best free Hotjar alternative. Its site states "Free forever" and "No limits on traffic," covering session recordings, heatmaps, frustration signals and a Copilot with no paid tier at all. PostHog and FullStory also offer strong free tiers (1M events plus 5,000 replays per month, and 30,000 sessions per month respectively), and Contentsquare's own free plan covers 200,000 monthly sessions on 1 project. Clarity is the only one with no volume ceiling.

Is there a cookie-free Hotjar alternative?

Yes. Humblytics captures heatmaps, funnels, A/B tests, and revenue attribution, and its analytics script uses no cookies or local-storage identifiers, anonymizes visitors with a one-way hash and discards raw IPs immediately. The Humblytics analytics layer does not itself require a cookie-consent banner, but a site may still need consent for other tools or uses. Hotjar, Crazy Egg, Lucky Orange, and most replay tools set cookies and trigger GDPR consent requirements.

Which Hotjar alternative has A/B testing?

Humblytics and Crazy Egg both include A/B testing, which Hotjar does not. Humblytics offers no-code A/B testing tied to Stripe-verified revenue, so you can prove a variant made money. Crazy Egg includes a visual A/B editor on its $99/mo Plus tier and above. PostHog also supports experiments through feature flags, aimed at product teams.

Hotjar vs Microsoft Clarity, which is better?

Microsoft Clarity is better for most teams that just need replay and heatmaps, because it is free forever with no traffic limits and no paid tier to be pushed onto. Hotjar is now Contentsquare, whose free plan covers 200,000 monthly sessions on 1 project and whose paid tiers start at $39/month billed yearly. Contentsquare adds surveys, deeper experience analytics and an enterprise platform. If you only need recordings and heatmaps, Clarity wins on price and capacity.

Is Hotjar still free in 2026?

Hotjar no longer has its own pricing page. As of 17 August 2026, hotjar.com/pricing redirects to Contentsquare's pricing page, which publishes a Free plan at $0 with 200,000 monthly sessions and 1 project, and a Growth plan at $49/month billed monthly or $39/month billed yearly. Pro and Enterprise are quote-only. So a free tier still exists, but it is a Contentsquare plan, not a Hotjar one.

What happened to Smartlook?

Smartlook is being wound down as a standalone product and folded into Digital Experience Analytics inside Splunk Observability Cloud. Its End of Sale was 31 May 2026, so no new subscriptions are being sold. End of Contract Renewals is 31 August 2026, Last Day of Support is 31 August 2027, and the platform is decommissioned on 30 September 2027 with remaining customer data deleted. Splunk has stated it will not migrate historical data, so existing customers should export through the Smartlook APIs before the end-of-life date.

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Hotjar was a good observation tool, Contentsquare is now its home, and Clarity makes observation free. The uncomfortable question that leaves is whether you should be paying anything at all for recordings. If your goal is more revenue rather than more recordings to watch, the tool that lets you test a fix and prove the dollar is the one worth the budget. See how Humblytics compares to Hotjar, browse every comparison on the alternatives hub, or explore the no-code A/B testing engine.

Sources

All prices and page statements verified 17 August 2026 against the vendor's own live page.

• Contentsquare pricing (where hotjar.com/pricing now redirects): contentsquare.com/pricing
• Microsoft Clarity: clarity.microsoft.com
• Mouseflow pricing: mouseflow.com/pricing
• PostHog pricing: posthog.com/pricing
• FullStory pricing: fullstory.com/pricing
• Lucky Orange pricing: luckyorange.com/pricing
• Crazy Egg pricing: crazyegg.com/pricing
• Zoho PageSense pricing: zoho.com/pagesense/pricing
• Plerdy pricing: plerdy.com/pricing
• Smartlook wind-down notice: smartlook.com
• Reviews cited: G2, Capterra