Is Microsoft Clarity really free?

Yes, genuinely: there is no paid tier hiding behind a cap. The cost is structural rather than billed. Your recordings are processed in Microsoft’s multi-tenant cloud under Microsoft’s terms, and the tool stops at replay and heatmaps, so you still need analytics beside it.

What is the most private Hotjar alternative?

By architecture, juuna: recordings are masked by default, capped in length, pruned on schedule, and stored on a dedicated instance no other customer shares. Ours, so check the claims. The rivals here process recordings in multi-tenant clouds by default (PostHog’s hobby self-host aside); how much is masked, by default or by configuration, varies by tool.

Does session replay break privacy laws?

Replay is personal-data processing whichever vendor you pick, and the defensible position is the same everywhere: mask aggressively, keep retention short, and disclose the recording in your privacy policy. What your jurisdiction requires beyond that is a question for your counsel.

What happened to Hotjar?

Contentsquare, the enterprise experience-analytics company, acquired Hotjar in 2021 and has been folding it into its own platform since. The product continues; its direction is set in that context, which is one reason people land on pages like this one.

Hotjar alternatives, honestly ranked

Alternatives toHotjar.

The right Hotjar alternative follows from the budget and the job: Microsoft Clarity does session replay and heatmaps free of charge, juuna and PostHog fold both into a full analytics suite, and FullStory and LogRocket serve enterprise depth.

One disclosure before the ranking: juuna is ours. The list is written to be useful anyway. Every claim about a rival is true and checkable, and the free tool gets the first plain word rather than a footnote.

Last updated · 2026-08-31

juuna

Ours · disclosed

juuna treats replay and heatmaps as part of analytics rather than a separate tool. Recordings are masked by default, heatmaps come as click, scroll and attention maps over captures of the real page, and both sit beside traffic, funnels, retention and Core Web Vitals in one dashboard. Each customer runs on a dedicated instance: your own server, your own Postgres, nobody else’s sessions on the machine.

Pick it if: You want to watch sessions and read heatmaps in the same tool that counts your traffic, with recordings on hardware nobody else rents.
Pricing model: Flat: $29 / $79 / $199 per month, replay and heatmaps included on every plan.
The catch: Replay is built for safely watching real usage, not deep debugging: there is no console or network capture, and recordings are capped in length and pruned on schedule. Not open source.

juuna vs Hotjar

Microsoft Clarity

Clarity does the two things Hotjar is famous for, session recordings and heatmaps, free of charge and without usage caps that matter in practice. For a tool that costs nothing it is remarkably good, and any list that buries that fact is not being straight with you. It is free because Microsoft can afford for it to be.

Pick it if: The budget is zero and replay plus heatmaps is the whole requirement.
Pricing model: Free. Your recordings are processed in Microsoft’s cloud.
The catch: It is not an analytics suite: traffic reporting is thin and there are no funnels or retention cohorts, so it runs beside your analytics rather than instead of it, on Microsoft’s terms.

PostHog

PostHog’s replay carries the most debugging depth outside the enterprise tier, console logs and network capture included, with a whole product platform around it: analytics, feature flags, experiments and surveys. Open source at the core.

Pick it if: You want replay wired into a full product platform, and the team will use the breadth.
Pricing model: Usage-based per product, with a free tier.
The catch: Heatmaps are lighter than the dedicated tools, click maps via its toolbar, and the platform is a lot to take on if replay was all you came for.

juuna vs PostHog

The enterprise tier, in a line each

FullStory: FullStory is digital experience analytics for enterprises: exhaustive interaction capture, journey analysis and deep replay, sold by annual contract through a sales team.
LogRocket: LogRocket points replay at engineers: recordings arrive with console logs, network requests and error tracking, so a session doubles as a bug report. Priced by usage, with the deeper capture on the paid tiers.

Tool	Hosting	Pricing model	Session replay	Heatmaps	Funnels	Open source
juuna	A dedicated instance per customer	Flat: $29 / $79 / $199 per month	Included, masked by default	Click, scroll and attention	Included	No
Hotjar	Multi-tenant cloud	Free tier, then tiered by session volume	Included	Included	Included	No
Microsoft Clarity	Microsoft’s cloud	Free	Included	Included	Not offered	No
PostHog	Multi-tenant cloud; hobby self-host	Usage-based, free tier	Included, deeper debugging	Click maps via toolbar	Included	Yes at the core
FullStory	Multi-tenant cloud	By annual contract	Included, deep capture	Included	In its analytics	No
LogRocket	Multi-tenant cloud	Usage-based by sessions	Included, console and network	Included	In its analytics	No

Tool

Hosting

Pricing model

Session replay

Heatmaps

Funnels

Open source

juuna

A dedicated instance per customer

Flat: $29 / $79 / $199 per month

Included, masked by default

Click, scroll and attention

Included

Hotjar

Multi-tenant cloud

Free tier, then tiered by session volume

Included

Microsoft Clarity

Microsoft’s cloud

Free

Included

Not offered

PostHog

Multi-tenant cloud; hobby self-host

Usage-based, free tier

Included, deeper debugging

Click maps via toolbar

Included

Yes at the core

FullStory

Multi-tenant cloud

By annual contract

Included, deep capture

Included

In its analytics

LogRocket

Multi-tenant cloud

Usage-based by sessions

Included, console and network

Included

In its analytics

Do replay and heatmaps need a separate tool at all?

They used to. Hotjar existed because analytics tools counted pages and could not show you a session, so teams bolted a second script onto the site. That gap has largely closed: juuna and PostHog ship replay and heatmaps inside the analytics, and the incumbents grew analytics around their replay.

A separate tool still makes sense at the edges: Clarity when the budget is zero, FullStory and LogRocket when enterprise depth is the point. In the middle, one tool means one script, one bill and one privacy conversation instead of two.

Alternatives toHotjar.

juuna

Microsoft Clarity

PostHog

The enterprise tier, in a line each

Do replay and heatmaps need a separate tool at all?

Decide with your own data.