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Hotjar alternatives in 2026, by what you need
Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare: hotjar.com redirects to contentsquare.com, and new users sign up for Contentsquare's free plan instead (checked 17 October 2026). For free heatmaps and recordings use Contentsquare Free or Microsoft Clarity; pick PostHog for product analytics, Mouseflow for forms and funnels, Lucky Orange for live chat, Fullstory for enterprise, and Kwop (kwop.io) if you sell online and need to see which visitor paid. Below: what changed, a table by job with prices read on each vendor's site, Hotjar vs Clarity, and how to switch without losing data.
What happened to Hotjar?
Contentsquare bought Hotjar in 2021 and has now merged the two products into one platform. Hotjar no longer takes new accounts, and existing Hotjar accounts are being moved to Contentsquare in phases.
| What changed | Status on 17 October 2026 | Source |
|---|---|---|
| hotjar.com | Redirects (301) to contentsquare.com/hotjar/. The pricing page redirects (308) to contentsquare.com/pricing, and the blog (301) to contentsquare.com/blog. | HTTP check of each URL, 17 Oct 2026 |
| New accounts | "It's no longer possible to create a new account on Hotjar." New users sign up for Contentsquare. | contentsquare.com/hotjar |
| Free plan | Contentsquare Free, $0: up to 200,000 sessions a month, replays of 5% of them (10,000 at most), 1 month of data, heatmaps, funnels, basic surveys and an MCP connection (300 tool calls a month). Contentsquare compares this with 35 sessions a day on Hotjar's free plan. | contentsquare.com/pricing |
| Paid plan | Growth from $39/month billed yearly, or $49 billed monthly: 13 months of data and the Sense AI chat. Pro and Enterprise are priced on request. | contentsquare.com/pricing |
| Existing Hotjar accounts | Contacted in phases from 26 August 2026. Both platforms run side by side for 30 days, then the account moves to a Contentsquare Growth plan unless its Account Owner opts out to stay on Hotjar. Contentsquare says the price "may change". | Contentsquare Help Center, updated 12 Oct 2026 |
| Your old data | Hotjar recordings, heatmaps, funnels and dashboards do not move to Contentsquare. Hotjar stays read-only for 12 months, then the account and its data are deleted. Surveys and feedback do move. | Same Contentsquare FAQ |
So an account not yet contacted, or whose Account Owner opted out, may still show its old Hotjar plan. Anyone starting today lands on Contentsquare's plans.
Which Hotjar alternative fits which job?
Start from the job, not from a ranking: most of these tools record visits, but each is built around a different question. Prices were read on each vendor's pricing page on 17 October 2026; open the link before you buy.
| If you need | Pick | Why | Free plan and price | Source (checked 17 Oct 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free heatmaps and recordings, with no traffic cap | Microsoft Clarity | Free forever, no sampling. Heatmaps, recordings, funnels and a Copilot chat. Recordings kept 30 days. See Kwop vs Microsoft Clarity. | Free, no paid plan | Clarity FAQ |
| The closest thing to Hotjar itself | Contentsquare Free or Growth | The company that owns Hotjar. Heatmaps, replays, surveys, funnels; AI chat from Growth. | Free: 200,000 sessions a month, 5% replayed. Growth from $39/month billed yearly | contentsquare.com/pricing |
| Product analytics, feature flags and replays in one place | PostHog | Built for software teams: events, funnels, experiments, error tracking, replays and heatmaps. See Kwop vs PostHog. | Free every month: 5,000 recordings and 1M events, no card. Recordings kept 1 month on the free plan | posthog.com/pricing |
| Form analytics and funnels | Mouseflow | Form analytics, funnels, heatmaps, feedback surveys and replays. See Kwop vs Mouseflow. | Free: 500 sessions a month, 1 month of data. Paid from €25/month billed yearly (€39 monthly), as shown from Europe | mouseflow.com/pricing |
| Live chat next to your replays | Lucky Orange | Live chat, live visitor view, heatmaps, recordings, surveys and form analytics on every plan, plus an official Shopify app. See Kwop vs Lucky Orange. | No free plan, 7-day trial. Build: $32/month billed yearly ($39 monthly), 3,500 sessions | luckyorange.com/pricing |
| Analytics for a large team or enterprise | Fullstory | Enterprise behavioral analytics with a permanent free tier for small teams. See Kwop vs Fullstory. | FullstoryFree: 30,000 sessions a month, 12 months of data, up to 10 users. Paid plans priced on request | fullstory.com/pricing |
| Heatmaps plus A/B tests | Crazy Egg | Heatmaps, recordings and surveys on every plan; A/B testing from the Plus plan. | No free plan, 30-day trial. Starter $29/month, Plus $99/month, both billed yearly | crazyegg.com/pricing |
| A new home after Smartlook | Any row above | Smartlook is winding down: no new subscriptions since 31 May 2026, platform off and data deleted on 30 September 2027. See what to move to after Smartlook. | Its free plan stays usable until 30 Sep 2027 | smartlook.com |
| Replays tied to Stripe, Whop or Shopify payments, and who to follow up | Kwop | Matches each payment to the visit behind it (Pro), scores buying intent and writes follow-ups. No heatmaps, no surveys. See replays that show who paid. | From $47/month (no free plan; free test). Payments and revenue on Pro, $119/month | kwop.io/plans |
If Contentsquare's price is the problem: Clarity costs nothing at any traffic level. PostHog, Mouseflow and Fullstory have free plans with lower caps, and Contentsquare Free still covers heatmaps on a small site. Lucky Orange and Crazy Egg offer trials, not free plans. If you mostly need to debug JavaScript errors, look at PostHog, Fullstory or Contentsquare (error monitoring is in its Free plan): Kwop does not capture errors.
Hotjar (Contentsquare) or Microsoft Clarity?
Clarity gives you more for free: every session, no sampling and no paid tier to upgrade to. Contentsquare gives you surveys, a longer history and more AI features once you pay for Growth.
| Checked 17 Oct 2026 | Contentsquare (now runs Hotjar) | Microsoft Clarity |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free $0; Growth from $39/month billed yearly ($49 monthly) | Free forever, no paid plan |
| Sessions | Up to 200,000 a month on Free | No traffic limits; up to 100,000 sessions per project per day |
| Replays | 5% of sessions on Free (10,000 at most); 15% on Growth (at least 20,000) | No sampling |
| History | 1 month on Free; 13 months on Growth, with replays kept 2 months | Recordings 30 days; favorites and a random sample up to 9 months |
| Heatmaps | Yes | Yes, up to 100,000 page views per heatmap |
| Surveys | Free Voice of Customer plan: 3 surveys or feedback widgets, 100 responses a month | Not in Clarity's feature list |
| AI | Sense AI chat and replay summaries from Growth | Copilot chat and heatmap insights |
| MCP (for Claude and other AI tools) | MCP connection, 300 tool calls a month on Free | Open-source MCP server you run on your computer with a Data Export API token |
Pick Clarity if you want every session for free and can live with 30 days of recordings. Pick Contentsquare if you need surveys, a year of history or a paid vendor with support. Clarity's FAQ says visitors in the EEA, UK and Switzerland must give explicit consent; without it, recordings and funnels are limited. The cheapest test is to run both scripts for a week and keep the one you actually open.
Do you need heatmaps or replays?
Use heatmaps to see where clicks and scrolling pile up on one page; use replays to see why one person got stuck or left. Heatmaps need traffic to be readable, while a replay is useful from the first visit.
- Heatmaps answer layout questions: is the button seen, how far do people scroll, what do they click that isn't a link. They average many visits, so a page with few views gives a thin picture.
- Replays answer path questions: what this visitor did before leaving the checkout, whether the promo code failed, whether the phone layout broke. You watch one visit at a time, so filters (rage clicks, funnel step, device) pick which to watch.
- Funnels sit between the two: they show where people drop between steps, then you open the replays of those who left.
Small sites usually learn more from replays and funnels; sites with heavy traffic on a few pages learn more from heatmaps. You can also run a free heatmap tool next to a replay tool. Kwop's session replay has replays, journeys, funnels and rage clicks, and no heatmaps.
What if you need to know who paid?
The heatmap tools above are built to show behavior on a page, not which visitor paid you and who almost did. Kwop (kwop.io) is session replay software that ties every website visit to Stripe, Whop or Shopify revenue and tells you who to follow up. On Pro, it matches each payment to the visitor who typed the same email on your site, shows the replay next to the sale, scores every visitor by buying intent and writes the follow-up email for people who left without paying; one click opens it in Gmail, filled in. It has no heatmaps, surveys, A/B tests or live chat, and it does not record hosted checkout pages: the payment is matched afterwards by email.
To compare every tool that links replays to revenue, read session replays that show who paid. For a feature-by-feature view, see Kwop vs Hotjar. Or paste your site, see your visitors in minutes.
How do you switch without losing data?
Export what you want to keep, install the new script next to the old one, run both for a week, then remove the old one. Hotjar recordings cannot be exported as videos in bulk, so save the few that matter before your access ends.
- Export from Hotjar. The recordings list downloads as CSV or XLSX (metadata only, up to 100,000 rows per export); heatmaps download as a JPG image or CSV; survey responses as CSV or XLSX. A single recording can be turned into a highlight and downloaded as a video.
- Check your deadline. If Contentsquare moved your account, Hotjar stays read-only for 12 months, then its data is deleted.
- Install the new script in the <head> of every page you host, checkout pages included. Add its cookies to your cookie banner or consent tool: Contentsquare notes its tag does not inherit your Hotjar consent setup.
- Recreate masking. Hide fields and elements that show personal data in the new tool. If Contentsquare moved your account, it applies your Hotjar suppression settings automatically. Kwop masks every input by default, and its
flow-maskandflow-blockclasses hide more. - Run both for a week. Compare session counts and watch the same visit in both tools. Counts will differ: Contentsquare explains that Hotjar used dynamic sampling, while Contentsquare counts every session for analytics (up to plan limits) and replays only a share of them.
- Rebuild funnels, goals and integrations. Contentsquare lists Hotjar integrations it does not support, including Webhooks, Zapier, Trello, Asana and Linear.
- Remove the old script and update the list of tools in your privacy policy.
Disclosure: this page is written by Kwop, which appears in the table above. Kwop has no heatmaps or surveys. Competitor facts come from each vendor's own pages, checked on 17 October 2026. If one has changed, tell us at contact@kwop.io.
FAQ
Is Hotjar still free?
Not for new users. Hotjar takes no new accounts, and the free plan on offer is Contentsquare Free: up to 200,000 sessions a month, replays of 5% of them (10,000 at most) and 1 month of data. Existing Hotjar accounts keep their plan until Contentsquare moves them; if the Account Owner opts out, the Hotjar subscription continues (checked 17 October 2026).
Can I still create a Hotjar account?
No. Contentsquare's Hotjar page says new accounts can no longer be created on Hotjar, and hotjar.com redirects to contentsquare.com. If a Hotjar sign-up link sends you to Contentsquare, that is why: new users sign up for Contentsquare instead.
What is the best free Hotjar alternative?
For most small sites, Microsoft Clarity: it is free forever, with no traffic limits and no sampling, plus heatmaps, funnels and recordings kept for 30 days. Contentsquare Free is the closest to Hotjar itself, and PostHog's free tier fits if you also want product analytics.
Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity: which is better?
Clarity is better on price and volume: it is free and records every session, up to 100,000 a day per project. Contentsquare, which now runs Hotjar, is better if you need built-in surveys or, on its paid Growth plan, 13 months of history.
Is there a Hotjar alternative that shows revenue?
Yes. On its Pro plan, Kwop (kwop.io) matches each Stripe, Whop or Shopify payment to the visitor who typed the same email on your site and shows the replay next to the sale. PostHog's revenue analytics reads Stripe data too; Stripe is the only payment platform it supports so far.
Does Kwop have heatmaps?
No. Kwop has session replays, journeys, funnels and rage clicks, but no heatmaps, surveys or A/B tests. If you need heatmaps, run it next to Microsoft Clarity or Contentsquare Free.
Which Hotjar alternative works on Shopify?
Microsoft Clarity and Lucky Orange both publish their own app in the Shopify App Store. Kwop installs in your theme.liquid file and, on Pro, matches each Shopify order to its visit by email (the connector needs a Shopify custom app with an Admin API access token, which starts with shpat_); it does not record Shopify's checkout pages.
Sources
- Contentsquare, Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare, checked 17 Oct 2026.
- Contentsquare, Pricing (Experience Analytics plans), checked 17 Oct 2026.
- Contentsquare Help Center, Moving from Hotjar to Contentsquare? FAQs, updated 12 Oct 2026, checked 17 Oct 2026.
- Hotjar Help Center, How to Share and Export Data, updated 21 Sep 2026, checked 17 Oct 2026.
- Microsoft Learn, Clarity FAQ, dated 8 Sep 2026, checked 17 Oct 2026; Microsoft, clarity-mcp-server on GitHub, checked 17 Oct 2026.
- PostHog, Pricing and Revenue analytics: payment platforms, checked 17 Oct 2026.
- Mouseflow pricing, Lucky Orange pricing, Fullstory pricing and Crazy Egg pricing, all checked 17 Oct 2026.
- Smartlook, homepage notice and FAQ on the wind-down, checked 17 Oct 2026.
- Shopify App Store listings for Microsoft Clarity and Lucky Orange, checked 17 Oct 2026.
See who pays on your site
Paste your link and create a free account: a few minutes later you watch 3 test visits of your site as videos. No card.