FullStory vs OpenReplay

Quote on request

From $4.5 per 1k sessions (indicative, cloud)

Quote-based annual contracts priced by session volume. Among the more expensive tools in the category.

Self-hosting costs only infrastructure. Cloud pricing is usage-based and cheaper than the closed-source leaders.

Free plan with limited monthly sessions.

Self-hosted community edition is free and unlimited.

Widely used

FullStory · since 2014

Established

OpenReplay · since 2021

• Retroactive analysis is a genuine capability difference, not a marketing angle.
• Excellent search: find the eleven sessions where a specific error occurred in checkout.
• Strong privacy controls with element-level exclusion rules.

• Full data sovereignty — recordings stay inside your infrastructure.
• Developer-focused feature set comparable to LogRocket.
• No volume-based pricing when self-hosted.

• Expensive, with opaque quote-based pricing.
• Capturing everything raises data-governance questions that need answering up front.
• Meaningful learning curve to use the search language well.

• Self-hosting session replay is a non-trivial operational commitment, including storage.
• Smaller community and fewer integrations than the commercial tools.
• Analytics and funnel features are thinner.

Product and support organisations that need to investigate specific user problems in depth.

Privacy-constrained or high-volume teams that cannot use a hosted replay vendor.