Microsoft Clarity

Microsoft Clarity is the closest thing the industry has to a free Hotjar. Microsoft's own FAQ describes it as a free service forever: no traffic limits, no sampling, no credit card, and no paid version to be pushed into. You get session recordings, click and scroll heatmaps, funnels, smart events, and Copilot-powered summaries and chat, with mobile SDKs for Android, iOS, React Native, Flutter, and Cordova/Ionic apps.

The trade-offs are spelled out in the same docs. Recordings are kept for 30 days (favorites and a random sample stay up to 9 months), heatmaps for up to 9 months at up to 100,000 page views each, and the API docs note sampling may kick in past 100,000 recordings per project per day. Privacy defaults are sensible — Balanced mode masks numbers and email addresses, inputs and dropdowns are masked in every mode — but for visitors in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland Clarity requires a valid consent signal, and without one sessions are fragmented and full replays unavailable. Data lives with Microsoft; there is no self-hosted option.

1. Create a project at clarity.microsoft.com and paste the tracking snippet (or deploy via Google Tag Manager, WordPress, or Shopify).
2. Choose a masking mode in settings — Balanced or Strict — to control what gets captured in forms.
3. Link Google Analytics to filter recordings and heatmaps by GA segments.
4. Review heatmaps and Copilot summaries; favorite important recordings to keep them up to 9 months.