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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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In short

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 recorded session playing back in the mrkr replay player, with its duration, pages, country, and device.

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 picks

The nine, one by one.

  1. Microsoft Clarity

    Best free replay and heatmaps

    Price
    Free, unlimited
    Consent
    Banner required

    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

  2. Matomo

    Best if you want everything in one suite

    Price
    ~EUR 19/mo cloud
    Consent
    Depends on configuration

    Session recording, heatmaps, form analytics, funnels, ecommerce, and full web analytics in a single product. 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.

    mrkr compared with Matomo

  3. FullStory

    Best for searching across every session

    Price
    Quoted by sales
    Consent
    Banner required

    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

  4. PostHog

    Best if you also want flags and experiments

    Price
    Usage-based, large free tier
    Consent
    Depends on configuration

    Replay and heatmaps sit inside a full product-analytics platform with feature flags, experiments, surveys, and a warehouse. Enormously capable, 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

  5. Mouseflow

    Best for form analytics

    Price
    Priced by monthly recording volume
    Consent
    Banner required

    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.

  6. Smartlook

    Best if you need mobile app replay too

    Price
    Priced by monthly session volume
    Consent
    Banner required

    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.

  7. Contentsquare

    Best for large enterprise experience teams

    Price
    Quoted by sales
    Consent
    Banner required

    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.

  8. mrkr

    Best if you want replay without a cookie banner

    Disclosure
    Our product
    Price
    $1 for 14 days, then from $5/mo
    Consent
    No banner in the default mode

    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 an analytics tool that is cookieless by default: 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.

    More on mrkr

  9. Hotjar itself

    Still the best at heatmaps and surveys

    Price
    $32/mo, 100 daily sessions
    Consent
    Banner required

    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

Compared

All nine, in one table.

ToolFromBanner?ReplayHeatmapsFunnels
Hotjar$32/moYesYesYesOnly on higher tiers
Microsoft ClarityFreeYesYesYesBasic
Matomo Cloud~EUR 19/moDepends on configurationYesYesYes
FullStoryQuoted by salesYesYesYesYes
PostHogUsage-basedDepends on configurationYesYesYes
MouseflowRecording-volume pricingYesYesYesYes
SmartlookSession-volume pricingYesYesYesYes
ContentsquareQuoted by salesYesYesYesYes
mrkr$1 for 14 days, then from $5/moNo, in the default cookieless modeYesNoYes

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.

Live demo

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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FAQ

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.

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