Microsoft Clarity vs Hotjar: Why I Switched and What I Gave Up

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Disclosure: This is not a paid promotion for either Microsoft Clarity or Hotjar. I have no affiliate or commercial relationship with either company. Microsoft Clarity is a tool I currently use; Hotjar is a tool I previously used. This comparison reflects my honest experience and research. Views are my own.

Why I was using Hotjar and what prompted the review

Hotjar was the obvious choice when I first needed a behavioural analytics tool. It had been the category standard for years, it worked well, and the free plan was enough to get started.

I started using Hotjar because it was the tool most commonly recommended when I was looking for heatmaps and session recordings. The setup was straightforward, the interface was clean, and the recordings gave me exactly the kind of visitor insight I was looking for. For a single site at low to moderate traffic volume, the free plan covered the basics.

The problem emerged as I started managing more sites. Running Hotjar across multiple business websites at meaningful traffic volumes meant moving to paid plans — and the cost started to add up across the portfolio. At the same time, Microsoft Clarity had been quietly improving. When I looked at what Clarity now offered — unlimited sessions and heatmaps at no cost, plus the Google Ads integration — the economics of staying on Hotjar’s paid plans no longer made sense for my situation.

That is the honest version of why I switched. It was not because Hotjar was failing me — it was because Clarity provided the specific features I was actually using, without a recurring cost, across as many sites as I needed.

The cost comparison

This is the most straightforward part of the comparison, because one of these tools costs nothing and the other does not.

Verify Hotjar pricing before relying on this

Hotjar has revised its pricing structure multiple times. The figures above reflect the general shape of Hotjar’s pricing at the time of writing — always check hotjar.com for current plan costs before making a financial decision. The direction of the comparison (Clarity is free, Hotjar costs money at scale) is stable, even if the specific numbers change.

For a single site with modest traffic, Hotjar’s free plan may cover your needs adequately. The cost comparison becomes significant when you are running multiple sites with meaningful traffic volumes, or when you need features that Hotjar reserves for paid tiers. Running Clarity across six business websites costs nothing. Running Hotjar across the same sites at equivalent functionality would represent a material monthly cost.

Where Clarity matches Hotjar

For the core use case — understanding what visitors do on your pages — Clarity covers the same ground as Hotjar, and in some respects goes further.

Heatmaps Tie

Both tools offer click heatmaps, scroll heatmaps, and the ability to filter by device type. Clarity adds dead click and rage click heatmap overlays as standard, which require no setup. Hotjar offers move maps (cursor movement tracking that can correlate with where visitors look), which Clarity does not provide. For the core use case of understanding where visitors click and how far they scroll, both tools are equally capable.

Session recordings Tie

Both tools record visitor sessions and replay them with click, scroll, and movement data. Clarity’s recordings include automatic rage click and dead click flagging as standard. Hotjar offers labels, tags, and favourites for organising recordings — useful for teams reviewing sessions collaboratively. The quality of the recordings themselves is comparable; the organisational features give Hotjar an edge for larger teams, but for a single operator the difference is minimal.

Frustration signal detection Clarity advantage

Both tools detect rage clicks. Clarity also automatically flags dead clicks, excessive scrolling, and JavaScript errors — surfacing these in the dashboard without any setup. Hotjar detects rage clicks and JavaScript errors but does not have an equivalent to Clarity’s dead click detection as a standard automatic signal. For passive frustration monitoring, Clarity requires less configuration.

Google Ads integration Clarity advantage

Clarity has a dedicated advertising dashboard that connects campaign-level data to session recordings and heatmaps — allowing you to filter behaviour by specific Google Ads campaign. Hotjar integrates with Google Analytics and allows GA segment filtering across its tools, but does not have a comparable campaign-level advertising dashboard. For anyone running paid search, this is a meaningful advantage for Clarity.

Multi-site management Clarity advantage

Clarity’s project-based structure allows unlimited sites under a single account at no additional cost. Hotjar’s pricing model can mean higher costs as the number of sites increases, depending on the plan. For agencies or multi-site operators, Clarity’s approach is considerably more practical from a cost perspective.

GA4 integration Tie

Both tools integrate with Google Analytics 4. Clarity allows you to view session recordings directly from within GA4 reports. Hotjar allows GA segment filtering across heatmaps and recordings. Both approaches are useful; neither has a decisive advantage for the typical use case.

Where Hotjar is still better

This is the part of the comparison that most Clarity advocates skip. Hotjar has genuine strengths that Clarity does not replicate — and they matter for certain use cases.

User feedback widgets and surveys Hotjar advantage

This is the most significant gap. Hotjar allows you to place feedback widgets directly on your pages — small, persistent prompts that let visitors rate a page or leave a comment in real time. It also supports targeted surveys that appear based on visitor behaviour: on exit intent, after a purchase, on a specific page, after a defined scroll depth. These tools capture the “why” behind behaviour in the visitor’s own words. Clarity has no equivalent. If asking visitors what they think is part of your optimisation workflow, Clarity cannot replace Hotjar here.

Team collaboration and integrations Hotjar advantage

Hotjar integrates with Slack, Jira, Microsoft Teams, Trello, and Asana — meaning insights can be shared directly to the tools a team is already working in. Recordings can be labelled, tagged, and organised for team review. For a team where multiple people are using the behavioural data — developers fixing bugs, designers improving UX, marketers optimising conversion — Hotjar’s collaboration features make it easier to distribute findings. Clarity’s team access is more basic: you can invite members with different permission levels, but there is no native integration with project management or communication tools.

Customisable dashboards Hotjar advantage

Hotjar allows you to create unlimited customisable dashboards — tailored views for different goals (conversion rate optimisation, bug fixing, UX review) or different team members. Clarity’s dashboard is fixed: it shows what it shows, and while useful, it cannot be configured to prioritise the metrics most relevant to your specific workflow. For a team with multiple stakeholders, this matters. For a single operator, it matters less.

Data retention for recordings Hotjar advantage (paid plans)

Clarity retains session recordings for 30 days. Hotjar’s paid plans offer longer retention periods, meaning you can go back and watch recordings from several months ago rather than being limited to the last month. For heatmap and aggregated data, Clarity retains up to 13 months — so this gap only matters for session recordings specifically. If you regularly need to go back to recordings older than a month, this is a genuine limitation of Clarity.

Privacy and data considerations

Both tools now require cookie consent for UK and EEA visitors. But there are differences in how each handles data that are worth understanding.

Since October 2025, both Clarity and Hotjar require valid consent signals for visitors from the UK, EEA, and Switzerland before their tracking scripts can collect full session data. From a practical implementation standpoint, both tools work with consent management platforms and require a cookie banner to be in place.

The difference is in data storage and company positioning. Hotjar is a European company with a historically strong privacy-first stance — it has emphasised that user data stays within the EU and is not used for advertising or sold to third parties. This made the consent question relatively straightforward: analytics data collected by Hotjar is used only for analytics.

Clarity is a Microsoft product. Data is stored in Microsoft Azure infrastructure, including US-based servers. UK and EU customers contract with Microsoft Ireland, and data transfers comply with the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. Microsoft’s terms for Clarity allow the data to be used for operational purposes. This does not make Clarity non-compliant — Microsoft’s legal structures cover the cross-border transfer requirements — but it is a different data model than Hotjar’s, and it is worth understanding if data residency or Microsoft’s broader data use is a concern for your business or your clients.

What I actually gave up in the switch

Being honest about this matters — because if what you are giving up is something you rely on, switching is the wrong decision.

The main thing I gave up was user feedback. Hotjar’s feedback widget — the ability to add a small prompt to any page that lets a visitor rate it or leave a comment — is something I used occasionally but not systematically. When I looked at how often that data was actually driving decisions versus how much the cost was, it did not hold up.

The surveys are the bigger trade-off. Being able to ask a departing visitor “What stopped you completing your purchase?” or “What were you looking for that you didn’t find?” is genuinely valuable data that no heatmap or recording can provide. For the business websites I run — B2B services like IT support, telecoms, and managed print — the visitor journey is typically: find the site, assess whether the company looks credible, make an enquiry. Direct survey data is less central to that journey than it would be for an e-commerce site or a SaaS product where understanding specific objections matters more.

I also gave up the longer recording retention. Thirty days is enough for the way I use recordings — which is as a responsive investigation tool rather than a historical archive. But I am aware that if I needed to go back and watch what was happening on a specific page three months ago, that data would not be there in Clarity.

Who should switch and who should stay on Hotjar

The decision is straightforward once you are clear about which features you are actually using versus which ones you are paying for but not getting value from.

What would make me go back to Hotjar

Being clear about the conditions under which a tool is the wrong choice is more useful than a permanent endorsement.

If the work I was doing shifted significantly toward direct user research — running structured exit surveys, collecting net promoter score data, or building an optimisation process that depended on visitor verbatim feedback — I would consider Hotjar again. That kind of voice-of-customer data, captured directly on the page in the moment, is something Clarity does not provide and probably will not.

If I was working with a larger team where recordings needed to flow into Jira tickets or Slack channels as part of a structured UX review process, Hotjar’s collaboration features would matter in a way they currently do not for a small operation.

And if Clarity changed its free model — which it has not shown any sign of doing, but which is worth being aware of — the cost equation would need to be revisited.

For now, across Carden IT Services, Carden Telecoms, Carden Managed Print, Carden Hotspots, and Growth MSP, Clarity is doing the job I need it to do — at a cost that makes running it across all of them without a second thought entirely practical.

For the full picture of how I use Clarity across these businesses, see my Microsoft Clarity overview.

Full feature comparison at a glance

A reference table covering the most commonly compared features between the two tools.

Feature	Microsoft Clarity	Hotjar
Price	Free forever, no limits	Free plan limited; paid plans from ~£26/month
Session recordings	Unlimited, no cap	Limited on free plan; unlimited on paid plans
Heatmaps	Unlimited, no cap	Limited on free plan; more on paid plans
Rage click detection	Automatic, no setup	Available on paid plans
Dead click detection	Automatic, no setup	Not a standard equivalent feature
Move maps (cursor tracking)	Not available	Available
On-page feedback widgets	Not available	Available (paid plans)
Visitor surveys	Not available	Available (paid plans)
Google Ads integration	Full advertising dashboard, campaign filtering	GA segment filtering only — no dedicated ads dashboard
Google Analytics integration	Available	Available
Team collaboration tools	Basic permissions	Labels, tags, Slack, Jira, Teams integrations
Customisable dashboards	Fixed dashboard	Unlimited custom dashboards
Recording retention	30 days	Longer on paid plans
Heatmap data retention	Up to 13 months	Varies by plan
Mobile app tracking	Available	Web only
Multi-site management	Unlimited projects, no extra cost	Costs scale with sites and traffic
AI-powered summaries	Copilot summaries included	Available on some plans
Data location	Microsoft Azure (US-based, with EU-US DPF)	EU-based (stronger for data residency requirements)
GDPR / UK GDPR consent required	Yes — since October 2025	Yes — consent required

Disclosure: This is not a paid promotion for either Microsoft Clarity or Hotjar. I have no affiliate or commercial relationship with either company. Microsoft Clarity is a tool I currently use; Hotjar is a tool I previously used. This comparison reflects my honest experience and research. Views are my own.