Amplitude vs Hotjar vs Microsoft Clarity

Free tier available

Quote on request

Free

Paid plans are quote-based on monthly tracked users and events; enterprise contracts are substantial.

Hotjar's own plans are no longer sold. New buyers are quoted on Contentsquare's three product lines, which are billed separately, so budget for the line you need rather than one Hotjar-style bill. Existing customers are being migrated through 2026.

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

Free plan with a monthly event allowance suitable for early-stage products.

Not available to new users. Contentsquare's free tier is the successor and is more generous than Hotjar's old 35-sessions-a-day limit.

Everything, unlimited, at any traffic level.

Category standard

Amplitude · since 2012

Category standard

Contentsquare · since 2014

Category standard

Microsoft · since 2020

• The deepest retention and cohort analysis in mainstream product analytics.
• Good free tier for early-stage products.
• Strong data-governance tooling for event taxonomy.

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

• 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.

• Requires deliberate event instrumentation — nothing works without it.
• Enterprise pricing rises steeply with tracked users.
• Replay and experimentation are newer and less mature than the analytics core.

• You cannot buy it: new accounts are closed and you are really evaluating Contentsquare.
• Existing customers face a migration onto separately billed product lines, which can change the total.
• Weak for engineering debugging compared to LogRocket or FullStory.

• 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.

Product teams that need rigorous behavioural analysis over time.

Nobody new — start with Contentsquare or Microsoft Clarity instead. Existing Hotjar customers should plan the Contentsquare migration.

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