Hotjar alternatives
12 other tools do this job. Which one is right depends on why Hotjar is not working for you — so start from the reason, not the list.
Why teams leave Hotjar
- Session-based pricing across three separate modules adds up quickly.
- Sampling on lower tiers means the session you need may not have been recorded.
- Weak for engineering debugging compared to LogRocket or FullStory.
Worth saying: Hotjar is genuinely strong at this — non-technical teams adopt it without training, which is why it spreads inside organisations. If that is the part you rely on, switching may cost more than it saves.
If cost is the problem
Cheaper than Hotjar at the entry point, or free outright.
Microsoft Clarity
Session Replay
Free, unlimited session replay and heatmaps. Genuinely free, at any traffic volume.
Mixpanel
Session Replay
Event analytics with fast, self-serve reporting non-analysts can actually use.
Matomo
Session Replay
Self-hosted web analytics with 100% data ownership and no sampling.
PostHog
Session Replay
Open-source product analytics, replay, flags and experiments in one self-hostable platform.
If you need open source
Hotjar is proprietary; these are not.
Matomo
Session Replay
Self-hosted web analytics with 100% data ownership and no sampling.
PostHog
Session Replay
Open-source product analytics, replay, flags and experiments in one self-hostable platform.
OpenReplay
Session Replay
Open-source, self-hosted session replay — your user data never leaves your infrastructure.
If it has to run on your own infrastructure
Hotjar is cloud-only; these can be self-hosted.
Matomo
Session Replay
Self-hosted web analytics with 100% data ownership and no sampling.
PostHog
Session Replay
Open-source product analytics, replay, flags and experiments in one self-hostable platform.
OpenReplay
Session Replay
Open-source, self-hosted session replay — your user data never leaves your infrastructure.
Everything else in Session Replay
Ranked by how widely adopted they are. Compare any two to see the differences that matter.
Free, unlimited session replay and heatmaps. Genuinely free, at any traffic volume.
Retroactive analytics: define a metric today and get its history from recorded sessions.
Event analytics with fast, self-serve reporting non-analysts can actually use.
Enterprise experience analytics that quantify the revenue impact of a UX problem.
Autocapture analytics: every interaction is tracked, so you never miss an event again.
Session replay built for engineers: console, network, Redux state and stack traces.
Open-source product analytics, replay, flags and experiments in one self-hostable platform.
Open-source, self-hosted session replay — your user data never leaves your infrastructure.
Not sure which of these fits?
Answer six questions about your stack, team and budget and we will narrow it down for you.
Run the stack finder