Microsoft Clarity or Hotjar? A comparison by criterion

In short

Both tools look for the answer to the same question: what did the visitor do on the page? The difference lies in two places: where free use ends, and the features beyond recording.

• Clarity is Microsoft’s free tool. It offers recordings, heatmaps, funnels and AI summaries.
• Hotjar’s addresses now redirect to Contentsquare. Existing Hotjar users sign in with the same credentials; new users sign up with Contentsquare.
• Contentsquare’s free plan includes heatmaps, limited recordings and basic surveys. A/B testing is listed in paid plans.

I read the feature and plan details on both companies’ official pages on November 4, 2026. I don’t give prices, because plans change often.

What is Microsoft Clarity?

Microsoft Clarity is a behavioural analytics tool that shows what users do on a website or in an app. Microsoft’s documentation names session recordings, heatmaps, funnels and AI-powered insights.

The price is simple: Microsoft presents Clarity as a service that is “free forever”. According to the FAQ, there is no traffic limit and no obligation to upgrade to a paid version. The pricing page also lists unlimited websites.

A few details in the documentation stood out to me:

• Recordings are kept for 30 days. Recordings marked as favourites and a random sample stay for up to 9 months.
• There is an SDK for mobile apps for Android, iOS, Flutter and React Native.
• The AI feature Copilot summarises recordings and heatmaps and answers questions.
• Microsoft writes that Clarity shouldn’t be used on websites and apps that target users under 18 years of age.

The last point decides the choice for products for schools or children from the start. If you work on UX for EdTech products, don’t skip this line.

What happened to Hotjar?

If you are looking for a “Hotjar alternative”, know this first: you can no longer sign up for Hotjar as a product of its own. Both Hotjar’s home page and its pricing page redirect to the Contentsquare website.

Contentsquare’s Hotjar page says the two platforms have been merged into one. According to the same page, it is no longer possible to create a new Hotjar account. Existing users can sign in with their old credentials.

That is why this page has a “Contentsquare (formerly Hotjar)” column instead of a “Hotjar” column. Anyone who wants to choose Hotjar today is in practice signing up with Contentsquare.

Contentsquare’s pricing page has four Experience Analytics plans: Free, Growth, Pro and Enterprise. According to the page’s FAQ, every new account starts with a 15-day trial of the Growth plan, with no payment details required.

Clarity vs Hotjar: features and plans compared

The table below puts side by side what is listed on the official pages of the two tools. In the cells I only wrote what I read there.

Topic	Microsoft Clarity	Contentsquare (formerly Hotjar)
Free plan	Yes. A single plan, free.	Yes. There are paid plans too.
Traffic limit	None, and no sampling.	Up to 200,000 sessions a month in the free plan.
Session recording	Yes. Recordings are kept for 30 days.	5% of sessions in the free plan, up to 10,000. 1 month of access.
Heatmap	Click, scroll, area and conversion heatmaps.	Included in the free plan. Zone-based heatmaps and heatmap summaries aren’t in the free plan.
Funnel	Yes.	Included in the free plan.
Surveys and feedback	Not in the official feature list.	Basic surveys in the free plan, 100 responses a month, up to 3 surveys or widgets.
A/B test	Not in the official feature list.	In the Pro and Enterprise plans.
Number of projects	Unlimited websites.	1 project in the free plan.

Accessed November 4, 2026. Sources at the end of the page. Plan contents can change.

The table shows where free use ends. Which tool suits you depends on your needs.

Criteria picker: view by your needs

Tick below what you need. The chosen rows are highlighted in the table, and below it you see how the two tools meet those rows.

Criteria picker

Microsoft Clarity and Contentsquare (formerly Hotjar) by criterion, official pages, accessed November 4, 2026

Criterion	Microsoft Clarity	Contentsquare (formerly Hotjar)
Heatmap	YesClick, scroll, area and conversion heatmaps.	YesIncluded in the free plan. Zone-based heatmaps aren’t in the free plan.
Session recording	YesNo sampling. Recordings are kept for 30 days.	LimitedThe free plan captures 5% of sessions, up to 10,000.
Survey	Not listedNo survey in the official feature list.	LimitedBasic surveys in the free plan, 100 responses a month.
A/B test	Not listedNo A/B testing in the official feature list.	Paid planListed in the Pro and Enterprise plans.
Free use	YesFree, with no traffic limit.	LimitedFree plan up to 200,000 sessions a month, 1 project, 1 month of data access.

You decide. The table isn’t a recommendation. Read these rows together with your own traffic and your users.

The cells only contain features that were listed on the official pages of the two tools on November 4, 2026. Not listed means I didn’t find the feature on the official page. Plans can change; open the pages again before you decide.

The picker is deliberately short. Criteria such as mobile apps, the age limit and retention are in the sections above.

Which tool suits whom?

I don’t crown a winner here. I write down the questions that change the decision, and which tool each question points to.

Do you only want to see behaviour?

If you need heatmaps and session recordings, both tools do that. The difference lies in how much is recorded. The Clarity documentation says there is no sampling. Contentsquare’s free plan records a share of sessions.

How to read a heatmap is in the heatmap guide. I won’t repeat it here.

Do you also want to ask users questions?

A recording shows what happened, not why. An on-page survey is one way to fill that gap. In the official lists, Contentsquare has surveys and Clarity doesn’t.

Should A/B tests run in the same tool?

At Contentsquare, A/B testing is listed in paid plans. It is missing from Clarity’s official list. If you test with a separate tool, this criterion doesn’t matter to you. How many visitors a test needs is shown by the A/B test calculator.

How big are your traffic and budget?

For a website with hundreds of thousands of sessions a month, the free plan’s session limit and capture rate become decisive. A small website may never reach these limits.

Who are your users, and where are they?

For a product aimed at people under 18, Microsoft’s documentation rules out Clarity. For visitors from the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland, Clarity requires explicit cookie consent. Without consent, Clarity’s cookies can’t be used; according to the FAQ, this can affect funnels and session recordings.

Privacy and masking personal data

A session recording tries to record what is on the screen. If a name, phone number, address or card details are there, masking decides whether this data reaches the tool.

The Clarity documentation describes masking like this. The default mode is called “Balanced”, and in this mode numbers and email addresses are masked. In “Strict” mode all content is masked, and in “Relaxed” mode only input fields and dropdowns.

According to the documentation, the content of input fields is masked in every mode, and that can’t be changed. Masked data isn’t uploaded to Clarity at all. Changes to the setting don’t apply retroactively, only to new recordings.

I couldn’t read Contentsquare’s masking from official documentation in this research. So I write nothing about it. Read the documentation before you set up the tool.

My view: if you add a recording tool to a product that handles personal data, start with the strictest masking. Then unmask only the areas you really need to see. Also bear in mind that in Clarity you have to delete the entire project to delete a single user’s data.

Note: this section isn’t legal advice. Clarify your data protection obligations with a specialist.

My note

What I see most often in audits: the tool is installed, but nobody watches the recordings. Which tool you choose makes less difference than the habit of watching recordings regularly.

When I watch recordings, I look at the abandoned step first. In checkout or sign-up forms, I look for the moment the person hesitates, goes back or closes the page. For a flow with a low conversion rate, the answer is often right there.

I don’t count a single recording as evidence. If I see the same behaviour in several sessions, I write it up as a finding. To understand the reason for a behaviour, I run a usability test.

The first week after setup

On the day you set it up, write down a question, such as “Where do users hesitate in the checkout step?”. Recordings without a question only cost time. Even a few recordings watched with a question give you a direction.

At the end of the first week, check the masking too. Open a few recordings and see whether readable personal data still shows on the screen. I do this by hand with every setup.

Whichever tool you choose, turning findings from recordings into priorities is a job of its own. If you want that done for your product, the UX Audit checks your flow from start to finish.