Hotjar vs Microsoft Clarity: Differences That Matter in 2026

Hotjar vs Microsoft Clarity comes down to money, surveys and retention. Clarity is free with no traffic cap and covers recordings and heatmaps. Hotjar, now sold under Contentsquare, costs more once you outgrow its free tier but offers a wider toolkit, including separately priced surveys and longer history on paid plans.

The short comparison

	Hotjar (Contentsquare)	Microsoft Clarity
Free tier	Yes: up to 200k sessions a month, 1 month of data, 1 project	Yes, and it is the only tier
Paid plans	Growth from $49/month billed annually, Pro and Enterprise custom	None
Replay retention	1 month free, 2 months on Growth, up to 24 months on Pro	30 days; favourited sessions and heatmap click data 9 months
Surveys	Sold as a separate Voice of Customer product	Not listed
Cookies	Sets its own; consent is yours	First-party cookies; consent is yours
Visitor identification	No	No

Figures come from the summaries on BusinessMCP’s comparison of the two tools and its Hotjar page, which cite Contentsquare pricing verified in September 2026. Confirm current terms with the vendors.

Where Clarity wins

Cost. Free and unlimited beats a tiered plan for a team without budget. You will not hit a session cap or an upgrade prompt.

Simplicity. One product, one price, nothing to configure about plans. For a small site checking whether a checkout button confuses people, that is enough.

Detection features. Per the comparison, Clarity includes rage and dead-click detection and AI summaries. See what rage clicks are for how to use those signals.

Where Hotjar wins

Free-tier room. Hotjar’s free plan is generous in sessions, if tight in retention and projects.

Retention on paid tiers. Growth gives two months of replay access and 13 months of data; Pro goes up to 24 months of replay. If your review cycle is quarterly or longer, 30 days will feel short.

A broader suite. Surveys and feedback are part of the Contentsquare family, though priced separately. If you rely on them, our survey alternatives article explains the options.

What neither does

Neither identifies the company behind a visit or connects replays to a CRM. That is a different class of tool. BusinessMCP, for example, states it resolves the visiting company from IP for roughly 20-35% of B2B visits and links recordings to an identified contact. Its entry price for replay is $79/month, so it is not the budget option. Its Hotjar alternative page is candid that it has no surveys, no native mobile SDK and captures the DOM only, not console or network data.

Key takeaway: Choose Clarity when budget is the constraint. Choose Hotjar when you need surveys or longer retention. Look elsewhere when you need company-level context or cookieless capture.

Privacy and consent

Both tools set cookies, so you own the consent flow. If you serve EU visitors, a banner and a documented legal basis are your responsibility regardless of which you pick. A cookieless, consent-aware script, which BusinessMCP describes for its own recorder, changes the mechanics, but nothing replaces advice from your own counsel. We unpack this in GDPR compliant session replay.

Data location matters too. Clarity data is stored in Microsoft’s cloud under Microsoft’s terms. If your procurement team wants a data processing agreement and a sub-processor register, check what each vendor publishes before you commit.

How to decide in an afternoon

1. List what you actually use today: recordings, heatmaps, surveys, funnels.
2. Mark anything that must exist after the switch, such as surveys or 12 months of replay.
3. Install Clarity free on a staging or low-risk site for a week.
4. Compare the findings with what you see in Hotjar on the same pages.
5. If Clarity covers the must-haves, the price difference is the decision. If not, you have a precise list of what a paid tool must provide.

Our migration checklist covers running two tools in parallel without breaking tracking.

Other things people compare

Teams comparing these two often add a third or fourth name: Mouseflow (from $25/month with 1-12 months retention depending on tier) and Lucky Orange (from $32/month annual, 60-day storage), per BusinessMCP’s pages. Our guide to the best session replay tools puts them side by side. The vendor also publishes a Mouseflow comparison if you want its view.

Verdict

If you want one line: use Clarity if free is non-negotiable and you can live with 30-day playback; use Hotjar if surveys or long history matter; test a third option if you need cookieless capture or company identification. Always verify the pricing pages before acting, because both vendors have changed plans recently.

Three scenarios, three answers

A two-person startup with a marketing site. Clarity. You will not pay for sessions, there is nothing to tune, and 30-day playback is long enough to review a campaign launch. Revisit when someone asks a question the tool cannot answer.

A content site with a newsletter and a feedback form. Probably Hotjar, if you value on-page surveys and plan to pay for the Voice of Customer product. Watch the cost: the vendor’s summary notes that surveys are a separate subscription, and that published teardowns put the Growth plan at up to about $739 a month at 200k sessions. Price your real traffic, not the headline number.

A B2B software company with a sales team. Neither alone. Recordings help the product team, but sales cares who visited. In that case, test a tool that connects behaviour to accounts, and keep Clarity or Hotjar running beside it until you are sure. We discuss the pattern in identifying companies in session recordings.

Questions to ask before you commit

1. How long must I be able to replay a session, and does the plan cover it?
2. Who is my consent flow protecting, and have I tested that recording does not start before consent where I need that?
3. Do I need surveys, and if so, are they priced separately?
4. What happens to my data if I leave? Can I export anything?
5. Does my procurement team need a data processing agreement?

Writing answers down before you open any vendor pricing page keeps the decision about your needs rather than the vendor’s packaging. If every answer points to “free and simple”, you have your answer in Clarity. If two or more point elsewhere, run a parallel test.