Hotjar Alternatives: 10 Heatmap and Replay Tools (2026)

Hotjar made heatmaps and session recordings easy for everyone, but it is no longer a separate product you can sign up for. Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare: hotjar.com redirects to Contentsquare, new accounts can’t be created, and existing users log in to Contentsquare with the same details. That has sent many teams looking for a Hotjar alternative, either because they need a new account, because they don’t want to move to Contentsquare’s plans, or because they want a free or privacy-first tool. This guide explains what happened to Hotjar and compares ten alternatives for heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys, with pricing checked on each vendor’s own site in November 2026.

TL;DR

• Best free alternative: Microsoft Clarity. Heatmaps, session recordings, and funnels, free with no traffic limits.
• The official successor: Contentsquare, which now runs Hotjar’s product. Its free plan covers up to 200K sessions a month and records 5% of them.
• Best all-in-one: PostHog, with heatmaps, 5K free recordings a month, surveys, and product analytics.
• Closest to classic Hotjar: Mouseflow, with heatmaps on every plan and feedback surveys, from $25 a month.
• Best privacy-first option: Swetrix, cookieless analytics with session replays on its Plus plan, for teams that don’t need heatmaps.

What happened to Hotjar?

Contentsquare bought Hotjar in 2021 and has now merged the two products. Today:

• hotjar.com redirects to Contentsquare, and the Hotjar pricing page redirects to Contentsquare’s.
• You can’t create a new Hotjar account. New users are sent to Contentsquare’s free plan.
• Existing Hotjar users sign in to Contentsquare with the same email and password.

Contentsquare’s own plans replace Hotjar’s. The free plan is larger on sessions than Hotjar’s old free plan, but it records only a share of them, and the most useful AI and heatmap features are on paid plans. If you liked Hotjar for its simplicity and price, it’s a good moment to compare.

Hotjar alternatives at a glance

Tool	Free plan	Paid from	Heatmaps	Recordings	Surveys	Best for
Microsoft Clarity	Free, no limits	No paid plan	Yes	Yes	No	Free heatmaps and replays
Contentsquare	200K sessions, 5% recorded	$39/mo yearly	Yes	Yes	Separate plan	Hotjar’s official successor
PostHog	1M events, 5K recordings	Usage-based	Yes	Yes	Yes	All-in-one product analytics
Mouseflow	500 sessions	$25/mo yearly	Yes	Yes	From Advanced	Closest to classic Hotjar
Lucky Orange	7-day trial	$32/mo yearly	Yes	Yes	Yes	Heatmaps plus live chat
Crazy Egg	Free trial	$29/mo yearly	Yes	Yes	Yes	Heatmaps plus A/B tests
FullStory	30K sessions	By quote	Yes	Yes	Add-on	Large free session volume
LogRocket	1,000 sessions	$83/mo yearly	Yes	Yes	Yes	Replays for debugging
Swetrix	Self-host free, 14-day trial	€35/mo for replays	No	Plus plan	No	Privacy-first analytics
Matomo	Self-host free	Plugin bundles	Yes	Yes	No	Self-hosted heatmaps

Prices are from each vendor’s pricing page in November 2026. Yearly prices are per month when billed annually.

The best Hotjar alternatives, reviewed

1. Microsoft Clarity: best free Hotjar alternative

What it is. Microsoft’s free behavior analytics tool: click and scroll heatmaps, session recordings, funnels, dashboards, and Copilot summaries of sessions and heatmaps.

Why it replaces Hotjar. It does the two things most people used Hotjar for, heatmaps and recordings, for free, with no traffic limits, no sampling, and unlimited sites and team members. Setup is one script tag.

Pricing. Free. There is no paid plan.

The catch. There are no surveys or feedback widgets. Data is kept for 30 days, apart from recordings you mark as favorites, and each heatmap covers up to 100,000 pageviews. Clarity uses cookies, and Microsoft now requires a consent signal before it tracks visitors from the EU, UK, and Switzerland, so pair it with a cookie banner there.

2. Contentsquare: Hotjar’s official successor

What it is. The experience analytics platform that now runs Hotjar: heatmaps, session replay, funnels, surveys, and error and performance monitoring.

Why it replaces Hotjar. It’s the least work if you’re already a Hotjar customer, since your login carries over. The free plan covers up to 200K sessions a month with heatmaps, funnels, basic surveys, and one month of data.

Pricing. Growth costs $39 a month billed yearly or $49 monthly, and records 15% of sessions with 13 months of data, zone heatmaps, and AI summaries. Pro and Enterprise are by quote. Surveys (Voice of Customer) are a separate product, free for 100 responses a month or from $79 a month.

The catch. The free plan records only 5% of sessions, up to 10K, so you won’t see every visit, and replays are kept for two months on Growth.

3. PostHog: best all-in-one alternative

What it is. An open-source product platform with heatmaps and clickmaps, session replay, surveys, product analytics, feature flags, A/B tests, and error tracking.

Why it replaces Hotjar. It covers heatmaps, recordings, and surveys, Hotjar’s three pillars, and adds analytics that tell you how many people did something, not only how they did it. Each month the free tier includes 5K recordings, 1,500 survey responses, and 1M events.

Pricing. Pay-as-you-go after the free tier, with every feature on every plan. Recordings are kept for a month on the free plan and 90 days on paid plans.

The catch. It’s built for product and engineering teams, so marketers may find it more than they need. Our PostHog alternatives guide covers the trade-offs.

4. Mouseflow: closest to classic Hotjar

What it is. A dedicated heatmap and session recording tool with click, scroll, movement, and geo heatmaps, funnels, feedback surveys, and form analytics.

Why it replaces Hotjar. It is the most similar product to Hotjar before the merger: focused, simple to set up, and priced for small and mid-sized sites, with heatmaps on every plan and an AI assistant from the entry plan.

Pricing. Free for 500 sessions a month on one site. Essential is $25 a month billed yearly for 5K sessions, Advanced $109 for 25K with surveys, and Premium $319 for 100K with form analytics, with a 14-day trial.

The catch. Surveys start on Advanced, and the free plan keeps only a month of history.

5. Lucky Orange: heatmaps plus live chat

What it is. Heatmaps, session recordings, funnels, unlimited surveys, and live chat in one tool, popular with online stores.

Why it replaces Hotjar. Every plan includes recordings, heatmaps, and surveys, and live chat lets you talk to visitors while you watch them struggle.

Pricing. Build is $32 a month billed yearly or $39 monthly for 3,500 sessions, and Grow is $72 a month yearly for 10K sessions, with a 7-day trial.

The catch. No free plan, and data is kept for 60 days unless you pay for longer.

6. Crazy Egg: heatmaps plus A/B testing

What it is. One of the original heatmap tools, with snapshots, recordings, surveys, funnels, and A/B testing.

Why it replaces Hotjar. If you used heatmaps to decide what to change, Crazy Egg lets you test the change in the same tool, with A/B testing from the Plus plan.

Pricing. Starter is $29 a month billed yearly for 5K pageviews, 50 recordings, and 5 heatmap reports. Plus is $99 and Pro $249.

The catch. The entry plan is small, especially for recordings, and there is no free plan.

7. FullStory: largest free session volume

What it is. A digital experience platform with session replay, heatmaps, funnels, and AI insights, used by large companies.

Why it replaces Hotjar. Its free plan is generous: 30K sessions a month with 12 months of analytics retention, for up to 10 users.

Pricing. Paid plans are by quote, and surveys are an add-on.

The catch. Pricing isn’t published, and the paid plans are aimed at enterprises.

8. LogRocket: best for debugging

What it is. Session replay joined to error tracking, console logs, and network data, with heatmaps, funnels, and surveys.

Why it replaces Hotjar. When a recording shows a user stuck, LogRocket shows the JavaScript error behind it, which Hotjar never did.

Pricing. Free for 1,000 sessions a month. Core starts at $83 a month billed yearly for 10K sessions, and Pro, with AI session summaries, at $292.

The catch. It’s built for developers more than marketers.

9. Swetrix: best privacy-first option

What it is. Open-source, cookieless web and product analytics with funnels, sessions, error tracking, and performance data, plus session replays, feature flags, and A/B tests on Plus.

Why it replaces Hotjar. If you want recordings and funnels without a cookie banner, Swetrix is EU-hosted and cookieless, and its self-hosted Community Edition records replays to your own storage for free.

Pricing. Plus, with replays, is €35 a month, with 17% off yearly. Standard, without replays, is €17.

The catch. It has no heatmaps or surveys, so it replaces Hotjar’s recordings, not its heatmaps.

10. Matomo: self-hosted heatmaps and recordings

What it is. The open-source analytics platform, with a Heatmaps and Session Recording plugin and form analytics.

Why it replaces Hotjar. It’s the way to get heatmaps and recordings with every byte on your own server.

Pricing. The core is free to self-host. Heatmaps and recordings come in the Team bundle, from about €230 a month billed yearly, or with Matomo Cloud.

The catch. The plugins are paid, and self-hosting needs server skills.

Which Hotjar alternative should you choose?

• You want heatmaps and recordings for free: Microsoft Clarity.
• You’re a Hotjar customer and want the least change: Contentsquare.
• You also want product analytics and surveys: PostHog.
• You want a focused tool like Hotjar used to be: Mouseflow.
• You run an online store and want live chat: Lucky Orange.
• You want to test changes, not only watch: Crazy Egg.
• You need privacy-first recordings without a cookie banner: Swetrix.
• Everything must stay on your servers: Matomo.

Heatmaps, recordings and privacy

Session recording tools capture what visitors type and click, so configure them carefully:

• Mask inputs. All the tools above mask password fields. Check that they also mask email, address, and payment fields, and add a mask class to anything sensitive.
• Ask for consent where needed. Most recording tools use cookies or identify returning visitors, which needs consent in the EU and UK. Cookieless tools such as Swetrix avoid the banner.
• Keep the script light. Recording scripts are heavier than simple analytics. Load them with defer and check your Core Web Vitals afterwards.

For traffic analytics alongside heatmaps, see our best web analytics tools comparison.

FAQ

Is Hotjar shutting down?

Hotjar’s product is now part of Contentsquare. hotjar.com redirects to Contentsquare, new Hotjar accounts can’t be created, and existing users sign in to Contentsquare with the same details. Hotjar’s heatmaps, recordings, and surveys continue inside Contentsquare’s plans.

What is the best free alternative to Hotjar?

Microsoft Clarity is the best free alternative: it offers heatmaps, session recordings, and funnels with no traffic limits and no paid plan. PostHog is free for 5K recordings and 1,500 survey responses a month, and FullStory’s free plan covers 30K sessions.

Is Microsoft Clarity better than Hotjar?

For heatmaps and recordings on a budget, yes: Clarity is free with no limits, while Hotjar’s successor, Contentsquare, records only 5% of sessions on its free plan. Clarity has no surveys or feedback widgets, though, and keeps data for 30 days.

Which Hotjar alternative has surveys?

PostHog, Lucky Orange, Crazy Egg, and LogRocket include surveys, and Mouseflow adds them from its Advanced plan. Contentsquare sells surveys as a separate Voice of Customer product.

Is there a cookieless alternative to Hotjar?

Swetrix is cookieless and records session replays on its Plus plan or when self-hosted, so it needs no consent banner. It doesn’t offer heatmaps. Most heatmap tools, including Clarity, use cookies.