Hotjar vs Clarity 2026: Free Tiers, Retention and Price

Hotjar vs Clarity used to be a simple choice: pay for Hotjar or take Microsoft Clarity for free. In 2026 it is a different comparison, because Hotjar merged into the Contentsquare group on 1 July 2025 and hotjar.com/pricing now redirects to contentsquare.com/pricing. This guide compares what each one gives you today, on free tiers, replay caps, retention, surveys, funnels, advertising data and who can use your visitors' data, all checked on the vendors' own pages on 24 September 2026.

The short answer: Clarity for free, Contentsquare for research, Arktis for stores

If you want heatmaps and session replay for nothing, Microsoft Clarity is the better choice: it is free with no paid tier, records up to 100,000 sessions per project per day and keeps recordings for 30 days. If you need on-site surveys, longer analytics history and a research workflow, the product formerly known as Hotjar, now Contentsquare, is the better choice, with a free tier of 200,000 monthly sessions and paid plans from 49 a month.

For an online store that needs to know which source and campaign its orders came from, Arktis is the clear winner. Neither tool matches an order to the ad click that produced it; Arktis captures the click identifiers on landing, matches orders back to the visit and the ad click or campaign that brought the visitor, where it can, counts conversions per UTM campaign and per ad platform, and lets you watch the session recordings of visitors who converted, filtered by source, for visitors who consented. It costs $49, $149 or $349 a month, published, with a 7-day free trial on Growth, where recordings start.

Key takeaways

Clarity wins on price and on raw recording volume, and since 2025 it can show Google Ads and Microsoft Ads campaign data next to recordings. Contentsquare wins on surveys, analytics history, per-account billing across sites and a processor relationship in which you remain the controller of your visitors' data. Its free replay allowance is smaller than the headline suggests, because only 5 percent of free-tier sessions are captured for replay, up to 10,000. Neither matches an individual order to the ad click that produced it, which is the gap a store feels first.

What happened to Hotjar

Contentsquare's help centre states that Hotjar merged into the Contentsquare group as of 1 July 2025, and that the heatmaps, recordings and surveys Hotjar users knew now live in Contentsquare. Contentsquare now sells heatmaps and replay as Experience Analytics and surveys as Voice of Customer, each priced as its own product with Free, Growth, Pro and Enterprise plans.

So when people search for Hotjar vs Clarity today, the Hotjar side of the comparison is Contentsquare Experience Analytics for heatmaps and replay, plus Voice of Customer if you want surveys. Our Hotjar pricing guide covers the full band table.

Free tiers compared

Clarity's free tier is the entire product. Microsoft's own FAQ describes it as a free service forever with no paid version to upgrade to, no sampling, and no limit on the number of sites. The practical ceiling is the one Microsoft documents: Clarity records up to 100,000 sessions per project per day, and it notes that while all sessions are tracked, recordings might not be available for every one.

Contentsquare's free Experience Analytics plan covers up to 200,000 monthly sessions, one project, heatmaps, replays, funnels, error monitoring and basic surveys. Analytics collection runs at 100 percent, but replay capture does not. The pricing page states that the free plan captures 5 percent of sessions for replay, with a maximum of 10,000. A store with 60,000 sessions a month therefore gets about 3,000 replays on the free tier, not 60,000.

Paid prices, and why the currency changes

Clarity has nothing to pay for. Contentsquare's Growth plan for Experience Analytics is sold in session bands. It starts at 49 a month on monthly billing for 7,000 sessions and 7,000 replays, which is 39 a month on annual billing. At 100,000 sessions it is 409 a month with 20,000 replays, and at 200,000 sessions it is 739 a month with 30,000 replays. On Growth, replays are captured for every session up to 20,000 a month; above that, 15 percent are captured with a floor of 20,000. Pro and Enterprise start at one million sessions and are quoted.

The numerals are the same for everyone, but the currency is not. Contentsquare's billing FAQ says Growth plans for European customers are billed in euros, including the UK, and everyone else is billed in US dollars. Browsing from Sweden, the plan cards show euros. The 20 percent annual discount only applies when you pay by card or PayPal in the product, not by invoice, and a second Growth product such as Voice of Customer takes a further 10 percent off the cheaper plan.

Contentsquare also prices per account per geographic region rather than per site, so several storefronts in one region share one allowance. Growth comes with a 15-day trial that asks for no payment details, and new Growth accounts have a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Retention: how long you can look back

This is where the two differ most, and where most comparisons are imprecise. Microsoft's documentation says Clarity keeps recordings for 30 days from the time of recording, while favourite recordings and a randomly selected sample are kept for up to 9 months. Heatmaps can be accessed for up to 9 months.

Contentsquare separates analytics data from replays. The free plan keeps one month of analytics data and one month of replay access. Growth extends analytics data access to 13 months but replay access to 2 months, a distinction the Growth plan's own tooltip spells out. If you want to rewatch a Black Friday session in March, favourite it in Clarity or plan for replays expiring on Growth.

Surveys and funnels

Contentsquare includes surveys and feedback widgets. The free Voice of Customer plan allows 100 responses a month with three surveys or widgets at a time and one month of response access, and Growth starts at 99 a month for 500 responses, or 79 on annual billing. When you hit the response limit, surveys stop showing until the next month.

Clarity's documentation lists session recordings, heatmaps, event and funnel tracking, and Copilot chat and summaries as its features. Surveys are not among them, so if you want to ask visitors why they hesitated, Clarity alone will not do it. Both tools offer funnels, and Contentsquare includes them on the free tier.

Ad dashboards: what Clarity added

Clarity connected Google Ads in January 2025 and Microsoft Ads in May 2025. Once an ad account is linked, an advertising dashboard shows campaign data next to recordings and heatmaps. Microsoft's documentation says the integration works at campaign level and relies on each campaign having a unique UTM campaign value. Both integrations now report spend, clicks, conversions and conversion value, and the Google Ads one adds impressions, click-through rate, cost per click and target ROAS.

That is genuinely useful, and Contentsquare's pricing page lists no equivalent. It is also campaign-level reporting of the ad platform's own figures, filtered by UTM, rather than a match between a specific order and the click that produced it. Meta is not supported.

Data ownership and privacy

The two vendors take opposite positions. Contentsquare's privacy FAQ says the customer is the data controller and Contentsquare is the data processor, and that data for customers based in the EU is stored in the EU by default.

Clarity's terms allow Microsoft to use the personal data it collects through Clarity for any purpose in line with the Microsoft Privacy Statement, including improving Microsoft products and creating user profiles for purposes that include advertising, and to use non-personal data for purposes that include training machine learning models. Clarity says it does not sell data. For visitors in the EEA, UK and Switzerland, Clarity requires you to pass a consent signal, and without consent its cookies cannot be used. Clarity's terms make you and Microsoft independent controllers, where Contentsquare acts only as your processor. None of that makes Clarity unusable, but it belongs in your privacy review. Session recording and GDPR covers the obligations that apply to both.

What reviewers say

Capterra rates Microsoft Clarity 4.8 out of 5 from 57 reviews and Hotjar 4.6 out of 5 from 545 reviews. Capterra shows one decimal only, so the gap is small, and Hotjar's reviews span its years as a standalone product.

Where Arktis fits, and where it does not

Arktis is the product we build, so weigh this accordingly. It is not a heatmap or survey tool: it has no heatmap editor and no on-site surveys, and it is not free. If your question is where visitors hesitate on a page, Clarity answers it for nothing, and Contentsquare adds surveys to ask them why.

There is also a real overlap to be honest about. If most of your spend is on Google or Microsoft Ads and campaign-level numbers are enough, Clarity's ad dashboard gives you spend and cost per click next to recordings for free. Arktis captures Google click identifiers, and Google spend can be entered by hand per platform and period, while Meta Ads spend syncs per campaign through a direct connection.

What Arktis does is join the ad click to the revenue. It captures gclid, fbclid, msclkid, ttclid and other click identifiers plus UTM parameters on landing, holds them against the visitor across sessions, matches Shopify orders to the visitor on email or on the landing URL's UTM tags against a recent session, and counts conversions per UTM campaign and per ad platform from matched orders, next to the Meta spend it syncs per campaign, and compares first-touch, last-touch, linear, time-decay and position-based credit per ad platform. It also lets you watch the session recordings of visitors who converted, filtered by source. Recordings on Growth and Scale are buffered in the browser and discarded unless the visitor consents, and data is hosted in the EU by default.

A common setup is Clarity for page-level diagnosis and Arktis for the money. To try it on your own traffic, start the 7-day Growth trial, or see the pricing page. Microsoft Clarity alternatives and session replay tools cover the wider field.

Sources

Contentsquare pricing page, free and Growth allowances, replay capture rates, replay and analytics access, billing currency, discounts, trial and refund terms, accessed 24 September 2026; hotjar.com/pricing redirects here

Contentsquare help centre: Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare, the 1 July 2025 merger, accessed 24 September 2026

Contentsquare help centre: Free and Growth plans, over-limit behaviour and euro billing, accessed 24 September 2026

Contentsquare privacy FAQ, controller and processor roles and EU hosting, accessed 24 September 2026

Microsoft Learn: Clarity FAQ, pricing, the 100,000 daily session limit, recording and heatmap retention, consent and data access, accessed 24 September 2026

Microsoft Learn: Clarity overview, supported features, accessed 24 September 2026

Microsoft Learn: Clarity advertising dashboard, Google and Microsoft ad accounts at campaign level via UTM, accessed 24 September 2026

Clarity blog: Google Ads integration, published 13 January 2025

Clarity blog: Microsoft Ads in Clarity, published 7 May 2025

Clarity blog: new Google Ads metrics, cost, clicks, conversions, conversion value and target ROAS, published 6 March 2025

Microsoft Clarity terms of use, Microsoft's use of data collected through Clarity, accessed 24 September 2026