Hotjar vs Microsoft Clarity 2026: An Honest Comparison

The short answer: You can no longer buy Hotjar. As of August 2026, hotjar.com redirects to Contentsquare, and Contentsquare's own page says "Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare" and that Contentsquare is where you sign up. So this is really Contentsquare vs Microsoft Clarity. Clarity wins on cost and volume: it is free forever with no traffic limit, and it ships five heatmap types, session replay and a mobile SDK at zero cost. Contentsquare wins on depth and data rights: native surveys, zone based heatmaps, journey analysis, longer replay retention, and a commercial contract instead of terms that let the vendor build advertising profiles from your visitors. If your visitors are consumers and your budget is zero, take Clarity and read its terms of use first. If you need surveys, funnels and an accountable vendor, take Contentsquare. Verified against both vendors' live pages in August 2026.

Two years ago this was a straightforward comparison: a paid SMB tool against a free Microsoft one. It is not that any more. The Hotjar brand has been absorbed, both free tiers have moved, and the most important difference between these two products now lives in a terms of use document rather than a feature table.

At a glance

Sources: contentsquare.com/hotjar, contentsquare.com/pricing, clarity.microsoft.com, clarity.microsoft.com/heatmaps, clarity.microsoft.com/terms and Clarity data retention docs. All checked 17 August 2026.

Quick verdict

Dimension by dimension, with a real winner in each:

• Cost: Clarity. Free forever with no traffic cap beats $49 per month.
• Free tier generosity: Clarity, narrowly. Contentsquare's free 200k sessions per month is genuinely large, but Clarity has no cap at all.
• Heatmap variety: Clarity. Five types free, including attention maps, against click and scroll on Contentsquare's free plan.
• Analysis depth beyond the heatmap: Contentsquare. Zone based heatmaps, journey analysis and impact quantification have no Clarity equivalent.
• Session replay retention: Contentsquare on paid plans. 13 months of data access on Growth against Clarity's 30 day playback window.
• Surveys and voice of customer: Contentsquare. Clarity has no native survey product.
• Error and performance monitoring: Contentsquare, on the free plan.
• Data rights and vendor accountability: Contentsquare, decisively. See the section below before you install Clarity.
• Long term stability: Contentsquare. Clarity's terms let Microsoft change or start charging for anything at any time.
• Running the actual experiment: Neither. Both are observation tools.

What happened to Hotjar

Contentsquare acquired Hotjar in 2021 and ran the two brands in parallel for years. That has ended. As of August 2026, hotjar.com resolves to contentsquare.com/hotjar, and hotjar.com/pricing resolves to contentsquare.com/pricing. There is no Hotjar plan list left to read.

Contentsquare's own FAQ on that page is direct about it: "Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare. The two platforms have merged into a single, more powerful experience intelligence platform. If you were looking to try Hotjar, Contentsquare is where you sign up." Existing Hotjar customers log in at login.contentsquare.com.

The material change for a buyer is the free tier. Contentsquare publishes a side by side table of what the old Hotjar Free gave you against what its own Free plan gives you:

Source: contentsquare.com/hotjar, checked 17 August 2026.

That is a real upgrade, not a rebrand. Hotjar's old free plan capped you at roughly 1,050 sessions a month. Contentsquare's free plan captures 200,000. If you bounced off Hotjar because the free tier was too small to be useful, the reason you left no longer exists.

One oddity worth flagging: the Free plan lists 200k monthly sessions, while the paid Growth plan is described as starting "from 7k monthly sessions." Growth is priced on a volume slider and adds features rather than raw session capacity at the entry point. You are paying for zone heatmaps, journey analysis, three projects and 13 month data access, not for more sessions. Read the slider before you assume upgrading buys you volume.

Pricing

Contentsquare publishes four tiers. Free is $0. Growth is $49 per month billed monthly, or $39 per month billed yearly. Pro and Enterprise are both "let's talk" with no published number; Pro is described as starting from 1 million monthly sessions and adds revenue goals and tracking. Verified on contentsquare.com/pricing, 17 August 2026.

Clarity is $0. There is no paid tier, no seat charge, and no traffic ceiling. Clarity's own homepage states "Free forever. Built to grow with your business. No limits on traffic," and reports 2 million or more sites and apps using it globally.

Winner: Clarity. This is not close and it is not a trick. Microsoft Clarity is a genuinely free, genuinely unlimited product with session replay, five heatmap types, AI summaries, an MCP server and a mobile SDK. Any comparison that buries that fact is not being honest with you. If your only question is "what do I pay," the answer is Clarity, and the paid alternative has to earn its $49 against a zero.

The rest of this post is about what that zero costs you.

Heatmaps

Clarity ships five heatmap types on its free plan: click, scroll, area, attention maps, and conversion heatmaps for Shopify stores. It also does side by side heatmap comparison, so you can put two versions of a page or two audience segments next to each other, plus AI generated summaries of what a heatmap is showing. Source: clarity.microsoft.com/heatmaps.

Contentsquare covers click and scroll on the free plan and adds attention maps and zone based heatmaps as you move up. Zone based heatmapping is the meaningful difference: instead of colouring pixels, it attributes engagement and conversion to defined page zones, so you can say what a specific module contributed rather than eyeballing a blob. That is the part of Contentsquare's heritage that Hotjar never had.

Winner: split, and be honest about which half you need. For heatmap variety at zero cost, Clarity. For quantifying what a page element is worth, Contentsquare on a paid tier.

Session replay and how long your data lives

This is where free stops being free in a way people notice six months in.

Clarity's retention is documented and short. Playback data, meaning the recordings themselves, is kept for 30 days. Sessions you label or favourite are kept for 9 months. Aggregated click data is kept for 9 months. After the retention period the data is deleted from Clarity servers including backups and cannot be recovered. Source: Clarity data retention documentation, page last updated 30 June 2026.

In practice that means you cannot go back and watch what users did during a launch that happened last quarter unless you thought to favourite those sessions at the time.

Contentsquare's Growth plan gives 13 months of data access, with 2 months of retention on session replays specifically. Contentsquare does not publish a retention figure for its Free plan, so treat free tier retention there as unknown until you ask them.

Winner: Contentsquare on paid plans. Thirteen months of queryable history against thirty days is a real operational difference for anyone doing seasonal or quarterly analysis.

Surveys and qualitative feedback

Hotjar's surveys and feedback widgets were, for many teams, the actual reason they installed it. Those survived the merge. Contentsquare's Free plan includes 100 survey responses per month, and surveys are listed as included in every plan.

Clarity has no native survey product. Microsoft's own Clarity blog documents survey collection through a third party integration with UserFeedback rather than a first party tool.

Winner: Contentsquare. If you want to ask visitors why, and you want it in the same tool as the replay of what they did, Clarity does not do that on its own.

What each vendor may do with your visitors' data

This is the single most important paragraph in this comparison, and it is the one nobody reads because it lives in a terms of use page rather than a feature grid.

Clarity's Terms of Use, section 4.4(c), states that you and Microsoft are independent controllers of the personal data processed through Clarity, and that neither party is a processor or service provider for the other. It then states that Microsoft may use the personal data it collects through Clarity "for any purpose in accordance with the Microsoft Privacy Statement, including to provide the Offering; improve Microsoft's products and services, including reporting and performance analysis; and create user profiles for purposes that include advertising." Non personal data may additionally be used for training, fine tuning and evaluating machine learning models. Source: clarity.microsoft.com/terms, checked 17 August 2026.

Read that again with your compliance hat on. Clarity assigns a unique user ID to each visitor, the terms confirm that information associated with that ID is personal data, and Microsoft reserves the right to build advertising profiles from it. Section 1(b) separately forbids you from using Clarity to create user profiles, and forbids using it on sites carrying healthcare, financial services or government related content.

Three more clauses from the same document that a buyer should price in:

• Section 7: Microsoft is not obligated to provide any support for Clarity, and any support given is provided as is with all faults.
• Section 9: Microsoft may change the offering at any time, including by removing features or "charging additional fees for features previously provided free," and your only recourse if you object is to stop using it.
• Section 17: Microsoft's total liability to you is capped at US $5.00.

None of this makes Clarity a bad product. It makes Clarity a free product, with the trade written down plainly. Contentsquare, by contrast, sells you software under a commercial contract with support obligations and, on Enterprise, dedicated success management and SLAs.

Winner: Contentsquare, decisively. If you run a site where the data protection posture of your analytics vendor is a question anyone will ever ask you, this dimension outweighs the price one.

Agent and MCP access

Both ship an MCP server, so this is closer to a tie than either vendor's marketing suggests. Contentsquare lists "Connect with LLMs (MCP)" on its Free plan with a limit of 300 tool calls per month, and supports querying in natural language from ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot. Clarity links its own MCP server from its homepage.

Winner: tie. Both surface behaviour data to an agent. Neither lets the agent change the page or resolve what the change was worth.

Contentsquare (formerly Hotjar) advantages

• Native surveys and feedback widgets, 100 responses per month on the free plan.
• Funnels, error monitoring and performance monitoring included at zero cost.
• 13 months of data access on Growth, against Clarity's 30 day replay window.
• Zone based heatmaps and journey analysis that attribute engagement to specific page modules.
• A commercial relationship: support obligations, SLAs on Enterprise, and no clause allowing the vendor to profile your visitors for advertising.
• A path upward. Pro adds revenue goals and tracking; Enterprise adds data feeds and dedicated support.

Microsoft Clarity advantages

• Free forever with no traffic limit. Not a trial, not a session cap, not a seat charge.
• Five heatmap types including attention maps and Shopify conversion heatmaps, all free.
• Side by side heatmap comparison across page versions, segments and time frames.
• Mobile SDK for Android, iOS, Flutter and React Native at no cost.
• AI summaries and chat over your own data, plus an MCP server, on the free plan.
• Scale is not a billing event. Traffic spikes cost nothing and trigger nothing.
• Documented, published retention periods you can plan around.

Choose Contentsquare if you...

• Want to ask visitors questions, not just watch them.
• Need to look back further than 30 days at recorded behaviour.
• Work at a company where legal or procurement will review the analytics vendor's data rights.
• Handle regulated content. Clarity's terms explicitly tell you not to use it with healthcare, financial services or government related material.
• Want funnels, error monitoring and performance data in the same tool as your replays, including on a free plan.
• Are already a Hotjar customer. Your account moved; you have the upgrade whether you use it or not.

Choose Microsoft Clarity if you...

• Have no budget and want real session replay and heatmaps today.
• Run high traffic where session based pricing gets punishing fast.
• Need mobile app behaviour analytics without a per platform bill.
• Are doing exploratory work where 30 days of replay is enough, and you will favourite anything you want to keep.
• Run a consumer site with no regulated content and no procurement gate on vendor data rights.
• Want to layer behaviour insight onto an existing analytics stack rather than replace it.

Conclusion

The honest answer in 2026 is that this is no longer a fair fight between similar products. Clarity is free and unlimited, and that is a genuine, structural advantage nobody else can match. Contentsquare is a paid platform that gives you surveys, longer memory, deeper attribution and a vendor who is contractually accountable to you. Pick on which of those two things your situation actually punishes you for lacking.

But notice what neither one does. Both tell you where people clicked and where they stopped. Neither ships the change, and neither tells you whether shipping it made you any money. That is the second half of the job, and it is a different category of tool: if your actual task is "test the change and confirm revenue moved," Humblytics puts heatmaps, no code A/B testing and Stripe verified revenue attribution behind one script from $79 per month, so the verdict on a test resolves to a charge rather than a click.

Run Clarity or Contentsquare to find the problem. Run something that closes the loop to prove you fixed it.

Frequently asked questions

Is Hotjar still available in 2026?

Not as a standalone product you can buy. As of August 2026, hotjar.com redirects to contentsquare.com/hotjar and hotjar.com/pricing redirects to Contentsquare's pricing page. Contentsquare's FAQ states that Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare and that Contentsquare is where new users sign up. Existing Hotjar customers log in through login.contentsquare.com and keep access to heatmaps, recordings and surveys.

Is Microsoft Clarity really free, or is there a catch?

It is really free, with no traffic limit, and Microsoft states so on clarity.microsoft.com. The catch is not billing, it is data rights. Clarity's Terms of Use section 4.4(c) makes Microsoft an independent controller of the personal data collected through Clarity and permits Microsoft to use it to create user profiles for purposes that include advertising. Section 9 also allows Microsoft to start charging for features previously provided free at any time, and section 17 caps Microsoft's liability to you at US $5.00.

How long does Microsoft Clarity keep session recordings?

Playback data is retained for 30 days. Sessions you label or favourite are retained for 9 months, as is aggregated click data used for heatmaps. After the retention window, data is deleted from Clarity servers including backups and cannot be recovered. This is documented on Microsoft Learn and was last updated 30 June 2026.

What does Contentsquare cost after the Hotjar merge?

The Free plan is $0 and includes 200,000 sessions per month, one project, heatmaps, session replay, funnels, error and performance monitoring, 100 survey responses per month and 10 or more integrations. Growth is $49 per month billed monthly or $39 per month billed yearly. Pro and Enterprise are quoted by sales with no published price. Verified on contentsquare.com/pricing, 17 August 2026.

Which tool has better heatmaps, Clarity or Contentsquare?

Clarity offers more heatmap types free: click, scroll, area, attention and Shopify conversion heatmaps, plus side by side comparison of two page versions or segments. Contentsquare offers fewer types on its free plan but adds zone based heatmaps on paid tiers, which attribute engagement and conversion to specific page modules rather than raw pixel density. Choose Clarity for variety at zero cost and Contentsquare for quantifying what an element is worth.

Can Hotjar or Clarity run A/B tests?

Neither runs A/B tests. Both are observation tools. Clarity's own Terms of Use even describe permitted use as "analytics purposes such as experimenting on Your website and A/B testing," but the experimenting happens in another tool; Clarity only lets you compare heatmaps across page versions after the fact. To run and score a test you need a separate testing platform.

Do Clarity and Contentsquare work with AI agents?

Both ship an MCP server. Contentsquare lists MCP access on its free plan with a cap of 300 tool calls per month and supports ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot. Clarity links its MCP server from its homepage. In both cases the agent reads your behaviour data; it does not change your pages or run tests for you.