Microsoft Clarity vs Hotjar

Free

From $32 per month (indicative, Growth tier by daily sessions)

Free with no traffic cap. Microsoft uses aggregated data to improve its products, which is the trade you are making.

Priced by daily sessions per module; Observe, Ask and Engage are billed separately, so a full setup is several subscriptions.

Everything, unlimited, at any traffic level.

Free plan with a daily session limit and basic heatmaps.

Category standard

Microsoft · since 2020

Category standard

Contentsquare · since 2014

• No cost and no sampling at any volume — nothing else in the category comes close on price.
• Rage-click and dead-click detection surfaces real usability problems immediately.
• Easy to install and reasonable default masking of sensitive fields.

• Non-technical teams adopt it without training, which is why it spreads inside organisations.
• Surveys and recordings together let you ask a user about the behaviour you just watched.
• Simple installation and good default privacy masking.

• Data goes to Microsoft, which is a real consideration for GDPR-sensitive deployments.
• Filtering and segmentation are shallower than paid tools.
• Support is community-based and the roadmap is not yours to influence.

• 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.

Almost anyone starting with session replay, and anyone whose paid tool is mainly used for basic replay.

Marketing and product teams that want behavioural insight without an analytics specialist.