Hotjar vs Microsoft Clarity: Which Should You Use? – Top Tool Guides

Quick Verdict

Hotjar gives you polished, buttery-smooth session replays and heatmaps. Clarity gives you 80% of that for exactly zero dollars. If you’re bootstrapped and just want to see what users are doing, Clarity is the obvious choice. If you’ve got budget and need sales integrations, Hotjar might win. But honestly? I use both because I can’t commit.
Hotjar ★★★★ (4/5) – premium but pricey
Microsoft Clarity ★★★★½ (4.5/5) – free and nearly as good

It was 2am, and I was eating cold pizza straight from the box. The cheese had that weird rubbery texture. My current heatmap tool (some ancient trial I’d been abusing) had just expired, and I needed to figure out why users kept clicking a non-existent button on our pricing page. You know the one – the "buy now" that isn’t actually a link. People are dumb. I needed heatmaps, I needed session recordings, and I was tired of my own incompetence.

So I started with Hotjar. Everyone talks about it. I expected some kind of magic wand. You know, sign up, paste a snippet, instantly know why my conversion rate looks like a flatline. What I actually got: a very clean dashboard. The onboarding was smooth, I’ll give them that. But then I saw the pricing – $39 per month for the basic plan? For a startup with 3 users? I choked on my pizza. The heatmap generation was fast though. And the session replay? Actually smooth. Not janky like I’d feared. But the privacy controls? Oh god. I had to manually mask every damn input field. Miss one, and you’ve got a recording of someone typing their password. That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.

…And then there was Microsoft Clarity. I only tried it because someone on Reddit said "it’s free, you idiot." And it is. Completely free. No credit card. No "start your 14-day trial." Just – plug it in, wait a few minutes, and boom: heatmaps, recordings, session info. The interface, however, feels like it was designed by a committee of angry accountants. Nothing is where I expect it. The filters are buried. But the rage clicks metric? Genius. It shows exactly where people get pissed. I found out that 40% of users were trying to click a non-interactive logo. That was surprisingly easy to spot.

Here’s the part nobody talks about. First: Hotjar’s support. I emailed them about a bug where recordings wouldn’t play on Firefox. Three days for a reply. Then they said "clear your cache." It worked, but still. Clarity’s support? There is none. It’s Microsoft. You get forums and hope. Second: hidden fees. Hotjar says "up to 100 daily sessions" but if you go over, they throttle or charge extra. Clarity says "unlimited" but they sample the data – you don’t get every single session. Also, cookie consent is a mess with Clarity. It sets like 15 cookies by default, and good luck explaining that to a GDPR lawyer.

Oh, and I accidentally set up a recording that captured my own face for three hours. Because I forgot to exclude my own IP. I was picking my nose on camera. That was fun. Nobody saw it. I hope.

What I Actually Use Now

I use both. Yes, I’m that person. Clarity for daily monitoring – it’s free, so I have it running on our main site and two client sites. No brainer. But when I need to dig into a specific funnel or share a recording with the sales team? Hotjar. Their filtering is better, and the ability to tag sessions is actually useful. Clarity’s tagging feels like an afterthought. So: Clarity for the 80% use case, Hotjar for the deep dives when I’m desperate. If I had to pick only one, I’d pick Clarity. Not because it’s better – because it’s free and good enough. And "good enough" wins when you’re broke at 2am eating cold pizza.

Pros & Cons

Hotjar

Session replay is smooth, no buffering
Heatmaps render quickly, support click/scroll/move modes
Integrates with Zapier, Slack, etc.

Costs money – $39/mo for basic, scales fast
Privacy controls are manual and tedious
Customer support is slow unless you pay more

Microsoft Clarity

Completely free – no hidden costs, no session limits
Rage clicks and dead clicks metrics are genuinely useful
Integrates with Google Analytics easily

UI is dated and confusing – buried menus everywhere
Data is sampled, not 100% of sessions
Zero support – you’re on your own

Pricing at a Glance

FAQ

Q: Is Microsoft Clarity really free?
A: Yes. No paid plans. No upsells. Microsoft uses it to sell you Azure stuff later, but the tool itself costs zero.

Q: Which has better heatmaps?
A: Hotjar’s heatmaps are prettier and load faster. But Clarity’s are good enough. If you’re comparing fractions of a second, Hotjar wins. If you’re not, Clarity.

Q: Does Hotjar or Clarity handle GDPR better?
A: Hotjar gives you more control (if you manually set it). Clarity sets a ton of cookies by default – you’ll need a consent management platform to stay legal.

Q: Which tool is best for session recordings?
A: Hotjar if you need to share recordings with non-technical teammates. Clarity if you just want to watch them yourself and don’t mind a clunky player.