What is the best free Hotjar alternative?

Microsoft Clarity. It gives you unlimited session replay and heatmaps at no cost, with rage-click detection included. The trade is that it sets cookies so you need consent, it has no traffic-source reporting, and Microsoft becomes the controller of your visitors' data.

Which Hotjar alternative does not need a cookie banner?

Of the tools here, Mrkr is cookieless by default and Matomo and PostHog can be configured that way. Clarity, FullStory, Mouseflow, Smartlook, Contentsquare, and Hotjar itself all set cookies and need consent in the EU, UK, and California.

Which alternatives have heatmaps?

Clarity, Matomo, FullStory, PostHog, Mouseflow, Smartlook, and Contentsquare all do. Mrkr does not have heatmaps at all, which is the main reason it does not replace Hotjar for a redesign project.

Which alternatives have on-site surveys?

Hotjar and PostHog have real survey products. Most of the replay tools here do not, and Mrkr has none. If you bought Hotjar mainly for the feedback widget, your realistic options are keeping Hotjar or adding a dedicated survey tool.

Why do people leave Hotjar?

Three recurring reasons: the daily session cap stops recording exactly when traffic spikes, pricing rises quickly once you add seats and sessions, and the consent banner costs you a share of the sessions you were trying to record in the first place.

Can I replace Hotjar with one tool?

Only if you are honest about which half you used. Heatmaps and surveys point to Clarity, Matomo, or Mouseflow. Replay with traffic and revenue context points to Mrkr or FullStory. Very few teams get both halves from one cheaper product.

9 Hotjar alternatives, honestly compared.

Written by the team behind one of them, which is why the entry for ours leads with the two things it does not do. Every price and capability checked against the vendor's own pages.

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What is the best Hotjar alternative?

Microsoft Clarity if you want free replay and heatmaps and can live with a cookie banner. Matomo if you want the whole suite in one place. FullStory if searching across every recorded session is the workflow. Mouseflow for form analytics. Mrkr if you want session replay without asking visitors for consent. There is no single answer, only one per case.

The first question is which half of Hotjar you actually used. Teams who used the heatmaps and the surveys have a different shortlist from teams who used the recordings, and most roundups blur the two. This one does not.

What replay looks like when it knows the source.

Hotjar and Clarity give you a list of recordings. Mrkr records inside the analytics dataset, so every session carries its referrer, campaign, landing page, and revenue. That is not a substitute for a heatmap, which Mrkr does not have.

A Mrkr session replay playing back a recorded visit with its timeline. — A Mrkr session replay with the session detail it was recorded alongside. Open it in the live demo.

What Hotjar actually costs you.

The daily session cap

A launch is when you most want recordings, and exactly when the cap stops producing them.

The consent banner

People who decline differ systematically from those who accept. The sample is biased, not smaller.

The second tool

No traffic sources means an analytics product beside it, and two definitions of a session.

The nine, one by one.

Microsoft Clarity

Free, unlimitedBanner required

Best free replay and heatmaps

Unlimited session replay and heatmaps for nothing, which no paid product can match on price, plus rage-click and dead-click detection. The costs sit elsewhere. It sets cookies, so you need consent, and the sessions you lose to the banner are not a random sample. It has no traffic sources or campaign attribution, so nobody reports monthly numbers out of it, and Microsoft is the controller of your visitors' data. For most teams it ends up running next to something else rather than replacing anything.

Mrkr compared with Microsoft Clarity

Matomo

~EUR 19/mo cloud, or self-hostedDepends on configuration

Best if you want everything in one suite

Session recording, heatmaps, form analytics, funnels, ecommerce, and full web analytics in a single product, available as GPL software you host yourself. It is the most complete option here and also the heaviest. Cookies are on by default, so the no-banner claim depends entirely on how carefully it was configured, and the recording and heatmap features are paid plugins on self-hosted installs.

Mrkr compared with Matomo

FullStory

Quoted by salesBanner required

Best for searching across every session

The strongest replay product in the list. Retroactive search across every session you have ever recorded, automatic frustration signals, and the depth an enterprise experience team expects. There is no published price and no self-serve path, so a small team will spend a sales cycle before seeing the product, and it sets cookies like everything else in this category.

Mrkr compared with FullStory

PostHog

Usage-based, large free tierDepends on configuration

Best if you also want flags and experiments

Replay and heatmaps sit inside a full product-analytics platform with feature flags, experiments, surveys, and a warehouse. Enormously capable, open source, self-hostable, and with a free allowance that is genuinely generous. It is also the most complex thing on this page. If nobody on the team will own that complexity, it becomes ten configured products nobody opens.

Mrkr compared with PostHog

Mouseflow

Priced by monthly recording volumeBanner required

Best for form analytics

Replay, heatmaps, funnels, and form analytics with friction scoring, aimed squarely at conversion teams. Form analytics is the differentiator: it tells you which field people abandon, which neither Hotjar nor most of this list does well. Cookie-based, so consent applies, and it is a behaviour tool rather than a source of traffic reporting.

Smartlook

Priced by monthly session volumeBanner required

Best if you need mobile app replay too

Session replay and heatmaps covering native iOS and Android alongside the web, in one account. If your product is an app and a marketing site, that single-account coverage is a real advantage over every web-only tool here. Cookie-based, and the web analytics around the replay is thinner than a dedicated analytics product.

Contentsquare

Quoted by salesBanner required

Best for large enterprise experience teams

The enterprise end of this category, and the company that acquired Hotjar in 2021. Journey analysis, zone-based heatmaps, and revenue impact modelling across very large sites, sold with the implementation support that implies. It is priced and scoped for organisations with a dedicated experience-analytics function, which makes it the wrong answer for almost everyone reading a page about Hotjar alternatives.

Mrkr

From $5/mo, 14-day trialNo banner in the default modeOur product

Best if you want replay without a cookie banner

Our product, so weigh this accordingly, and read the limitations first. Mrkr has no heatmaps and no on-site surveys, which are the two things most people actually bought Hotjar for. If those are your reason, pick Clarity, Matomo, or Mouseflow instead. What Mrkr does is session replay inside a cookieless analytics tool: recordings carry their traffic source, campaign, landing page, and revenue, so you can watch the sessions from a specific paid campaign that did not convert. It is newer than everything above and cannot be self-hosted.

Hotjar itself

$32/mo, 100 daily sessionsBanner required

Still the best at heatmaps and surveys

Worth saying plainly, because most roundups will not: if heatmaps and on-site surveys are the job, Hotjar is still the most developed tool for it and switching may not be an upgrade. The common reasons to leave are the daily session cap, which quietly stops recording during a traffic spike, the per-seat pricing above the base plan, and the consent requirement. If none of those are hurting you, staying is a reasonable answer.

Mrkr compared with Hotjar itself

All nine, in one table.

Tool	From	Banner?	Replay	Heatmaps	Funnels
Hotjar	$32/mo	Yes	Yes	Yes	Only on higher tiers
Microsoft Clarity	Free	Yes	Yes	Yes	Basic
Matomo Cloud	~EUR 19/mo	Depends on configuration	Yes	Yes	Yes
FullStory	Quoted by sales	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
PostHog	Usage-based	Depends on configuration	Yes	Yes	Yes
Mouseflow	Recording-volume pricing	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Smartlook	Session-volume pricing	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Contentsquare	Quoted by sales	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Mrkr	From $5/mo, 14-day trial	No, in the default cookieless mode	Yes	No	Yes

Every vendor in this table details checked against the vendor's own pricing and feature pages on 2026-08-24. Where a vendor does not publish a fixed list price, this table says how they charge rather than guessing a number. Vendors change packaging often, so confirm before you buy.

Watch a real recorded session

The live demo has replay running on a populated dataset, alongside the traffic sources and revenue each session came with. No signup and no card.

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Questions, answered.

Keep reading

Mrkr vs Hotjar in detail
The head-to-head rather than the roundup.
Microsoft Clarity alternatives
What free replay costs you elsewhere.
FullStory alternatives
The enterprise replay field, reviewed.
How Mrkr session replay works
rrweb, masking, storage, and retention.
How analytics works without cookies
Why the banner question decides this list.
Open the live demo
Replay on a real dataset, no signup.

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