FullStory vs Microsoft Clarity
Feature checklists rarely decide anything. What decides it is the pricing metric, who has to write the tests, and which limitation you can live with.
Entry price
Quote on request
Quote onlyFree
FreeWhat drives the bill
The metric that actually scales your invoice.
Quote-based annual contracts priced by session volume. Among the more expensive tools in the category.
Free with no traffic cap. Microsoft uses aggregated data to improve its products, which is the trade you are making.
Free tier
Free plan with limited monthly sessions.
Everything, unlimited, at any traffic level.
Open source
Self-hostable
No-code authoring
Languages
Platforms
Fits teams
Adoption
Widely used
FullStory · since 2014
Category standard
Microsoft · since 2020
Strengths
- 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.
- 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.
Limitations
- 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.
- 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.
Best for
Product and support organisations that need to investigate specific user problems in depth.
Almost anyone starting with session replay, and anyone whose paid tool is mainly used for basic replay.
Pricing last reviewed August 2026 and is indicative only — confirm on each vendor’s own page.