Hotjar vs Microsoft Clarity in 2026 (and Where Lucky Orange Fits)

Most Hotjar vs Clarity comparisons still describe a Hotjar that no longer exists: the 35-sessions-a-day free plan and the €32 Plus tier. Those were retired when Hotjar folded into Contentsquare in July 2025. Every number below was checked on the three vendors' own pricing and documentation pages on 21 September 2026, which is the only reason this article is worth reading over the ones above it.

Hotjar vs Clarity vs Lucky Orange at a glance

	Microsoft Clarity	Hotjar (Contentsquare)	Lucky Orange
Free plan	Yes, everything, forever	Yes, 200,000 sessions a month, 1 project	No, trial only
Entry paid price	None, there is no paid tier	$49/mo, or $39/mo billed yearly (Growth)	$39/mo, or $32/mo billed yearly (Build)
Traffic on the free or entry tier	Unlimited, no sampling	200,000 sessions a month on Free	3,500 sessions a month on Build
What happens at the limit	There is no limit	Heatmaps and funnels stop until the monthly reset	Upgrade for more sessions
Recording retention	30 days	1 month on Free, 13 months on Growth	60 days, upgrades to 90, 180 or 365
Heatmap retention	Up to 9 months	Same as recordings	Same as recordings
Surveys and feedback	No native product	Yes, basic on Free (100 responses), full product from $99/mo	Yes, unlimited surveys on every plan
Live chat and real-time view	No	No	Yes, both, on every plan
Funnels	Yes, no-code	Yes, on every plan	Yes, on every plan
Trial	Not needed	15 days of Growth, no card	7 days, full access
Best for	Any site that wants recordings and heatmaps at zero cost	Teams that need to ask visitors why, and long history	Stores and service sites that want chat and behavior data in one tool

What each one actually costs in 2026

Microsoft Clarity costs nothing. Its own FAQ says it plainly: a free service forever, no traffic limits, never compelled to upgrade. There is no paid tier to grow into, which is either the best thing about it or the reason an enterprise procurement team will not sign off on it.

Hotjar is now sold as Contentsquare's Experience Analytics product. The Free plan gives you up to 200,000 sessions a month, one project, one month of data access, and heatmaps, session replays, funnels and basic surveys with 100 responses a month. Growth starts at $49 a month, or $39 a month billed yearly, for 7,000 sessions and 13 months of data, and scales with volume up to 10 million sessions. Every new account gets a 15-day trial of Growth with no card, and paid Growth plans carry a 30-day money-back guarantee. One plan covers every site on the account in the same region, so you are not paying per domain. Surveys beyond the free allowance are a separate product, Voice of Customer, from $99 a month ($79 yearly) for 500 responses. We keep the full breakdown current in our Hotjar review.

Lucky Orange has no free plan, only a 7-day full-access trial. Build is $39 a month or $32 billed yearly for 3,500 sessions, Grow is $72 a month yearly for 10,000, Expand is $249 a month or $199 yearly for 50,000, and Scale is $1,049 or $839 yearly for 300,000. Every plan includes every feature: recordings, dynamic heatmaps, unlimited surveys, live chat, live visitor view, funnels, form analytics and unlimited team members. Retention starts at 60 days on all tiers, with paid upgrades to 90, 180 or 365. Additional websites cost $5 each.

The pricing question, then, is not which one is cheaper. It is whether the thing you need is free somewhere. Recordings and heatmaps are free in Clarity and on Hotjar Free. Surveys are free up to 100 responses on Hotjar. Live chat is not free anywhere, and that is Lucky Orange's whole pitch.

Heatmaps, recordings and the limit that matters

All three produce click, scroll and move heatmaps, split by device, and all three record sessions you can watch back. If you are choosing on heatmap quality alone you will not find a wrong answer.

Where they separate is what happens to your data over time and under load.

• Clarity never samples and never caps. Its FAQ lists "no sampling" as a feature, and it means it. Recordings live for 30 days, heatmaps for up to 9 months. If you need a recording from six weeks ago, it is gone.
• Hotjar on the current plans stops rather than samples. The collection rate is 100% until you reach the monthly sessions, and then heatmaps and funnels stop taking new data until the reset date. On Free, 200,000 sessions a month means most small sites never touch the limit. The constraint on Free is the one month of data access, not volume. Growth extends that to 13 months.
• Lucky Orange caps by plan. 3,500 sessions a month on Build is the real number to test against your GA4 traffic. Data lives 60 days by default.

Clarity also does something the other two do not do for free: dead-click, rage-click and error-click detection surfaced as filters, and AI summaries of what went wrong in a session. Hotjar has frustration scoring on paid plans. For a site with a form that people abandon, the error-click filter in Clarity is usually the fastest route to the bug.

What none of them fix is a blended heatmap. Mobile is the majority of traffic for most local businesses, and a heatmap that mixes desktop and mobile clicks describes a page nobody saw. Filter to mobile before you draw a conclusion, in any of the three. That habit is worth more than the tool choice, and it is the first thing we pull before any web design decision.

Surveys, feedback and the question "why"

Heatmaps show you where people gave up. They do not tell you why, and this is the axis on which the three tools genuinely differ.

Hotjar was built around that question. On-page surveys, feedback widgets, exit polls, a one-question "what stopped you?" on a page that is not converting. The Free plan gives you 100 responses a month and three widgets, which is enough to run one exit poll on one page. The full Voice of Customer product adds unlimited surveys, branching, AI summaries of responses and integration with the recordings, so you can watch the session of the person who left the comment.

Lucky Orange includes unlimited surveys and announcements on every plan, plus live chat, which is a different route to the same answer: talk to the visitor while they are on the page.

Clarity has no native survey or feedback product. It shows you the struggle with unusual precision and leaves the asking to you. If you want the why, you pair it with a Hotjar Free account for the survey, or with a form.

If your site converts poorly and you do not know why, that is the Hotjar use case. If it converts poorly and you can see why in a recording, Clarity is enough.

Privacy, data use and who owns what

This matters more than most comparisons admit, because the free tool is free for a reason.

Clarity's FAQ states it does not sell data and points to the Microsoft Privacy Statement; it also states that Clarity does not currently respond to browser Do Not Track signals, and that deleting one user's data means deleting the whole project. Several competitors' comparisons flag that Microsoft reserves rights to use Clarity data in aggregated, anonymized form. Read the privacy statement yourself before installing it on a site that handles anything sensitive.

Hotjar's Contentsquare plans include data privacy controls, SOC 2 Type 2 reporting and ISO 27001 on every tier, with SSO through Google on the lower plans and SAML on Pro and Enterprise. Field masking and IP anonymization have been on by default in Hotjar for years.

Lucky Orange masks form fields by default and lets you exclude pages and elements from recording.

For a local service business none of this is likely to change your decision. For a clinic, a law firm or anything with a login, it should.

Which one to pick, by situation

A local business site, under 20,000 visits a month, one person looking at the data. Clarity. Free, unlimited, no sampling, and the rage-click and error-click filters find most problems on their own. Add a Hotjar Free account only if you want to run an exit poll.

An ecommerce store or a service site that wants to talk to visitors. Lucky Orange. Live chat, live visitor view, surveys and heatmaps on one bill from $32 a month, with Shopify, WordPress and BigCommerce integrations. It is the only one of the three where the chat is native.

A team that runs conversion research, needs 13 months of history, or has to answer "why" with data. Hotjar on Growth, with Voice of Customer if you run more than one survey at a time. The 15-day trial and the 30-day refund make it cheap to find out.

Any site with under 200,000 sessions a month that wants to try both. Install Clarity and Hotjar Free side by side. Both are free at that volume, they do not conflict, and you will know within a month which interface you open more.

Anyone deciding on a paid tier. Do not buy before you have run the free tool for a month against your real traffic. The session count in GA4 tells you which plan you need, and our guide on how to track website traffic shows where that number lives. If the decision comes down to budget, run the numbers through our marketing ROI calculator first; behavior data is only worth paying for when it changes what you build.

Common questions

Is Microsoft Clarity better than Hotjar?

For recordings and heatmaps at zero cost, yes: Clarity has no traffic limit, no sampling and no paid tier. Hotjar is better when you need surveys and feedback widgets to learn why visitors leave, or 13 months of data history. They are not exclusive; many sites run both.

Is Microsoft Clarity really free?

Yes. Microsoft's own FAQ describes Clarity as a free service forever with no traffic limits and no compelled upgrade. There is no paid plan. Recordings are retained for 30 days and heatmaps for up to 9 months.

Does Hotjar still have a free plan in 2026?

Yes, but not the old 35-sessions-a-day one. New accounts get Contentsquare's Free plan: up to 200,000 sessions a month, one project, one month of data access, with heatmaps, replays, funnels and basic surveys. Growth starts at $49 a month, or $39 billed yearly.

Is Lucky Orange cheaper than Hotjar?

On the entry paid tier, slightly: Lucky Orange Build is $39 a month or $32 yearly for 3,500 sessions, against Hotjar Growth at $49 or $39 yearly for 7,000. Hotjar gives you more sessions for the money; Lucky Orange gives you live chat, real-time views and unlimited surveys on the same plan. Lucky Orange has no free plan, Hotjar does.

Can I use Hotjar and Microsoft Clarity together?

Yes. Both install as a script tag and they do not interfere with each other. A common setup is Clarity for unlimited recordings and heatmaps and Hotjar Free for a survey or feedback widget, which keeps both at zero cost.

Which one is best for a Shopify store?

Lucky Orange, if you want live chat and checkout funnels in the same tool; it has a native Shopify integration and every plan includes chat. Clarity is the free option and works on Shopify through its app. Hotjar works too, with the same Free and Growth plans as any other site.

What we would do

Install Clarity today, on every site, because there is no reason not to. Point it at your worst-performing page, filter to mobile, sort recordings by rage clicks, and watch ten.

If after a month you find yourself wishing you could ask the visitor a question, add Hotjar Free and run one exit poll. If you find yourself wishing you could answer the visitor's question while they are still there, that is Lucky Orange, and it is the only one of the three you will actually pay for.

Written by J Raydel Sanchez, Founder and CEO of tamer Marketing, a digital marketing agency in Hialeah, Florida. Prices, limits, retention and trial terms verified on clarity.microsoft.com and learn.microsoft.com/clarity, contentsquare.com/pricing and luckyorange.com/pricing on 21 September 2026. tamer Marketing has no affiliate relationship with Microsoft, Contentsquare, Hotjar or Lucky Orange.