Hotjar Alternatives for Indie Makers (Free and Cheap)

Verdict: For most indie makers, the best Hotjar alternative is Microsoft Clarity, because it is free with no traffic limits and gives you both session recordings and heatmaps. If you run a SaaS and want replay tied to product analytics, use PostHog's free 5,000 recordings a month. If you want to own the data, self-host OpenReplay.

Every price, limit and quote below comes from the vendor's own page, checked on 8 Nov 2026. Advice in between is ours and is marked as such.

TL;DR#

• Hotjar is now sold as Contentsquare. hotjar.com/pricing redirects to Contentsquare pricing. The Free plan is "$0/ forever" with 200k monthly sessions, but replays cover "5% sessions captured (max. 10k)". Growth starts "From $39/ month".
• Microsoft Clarity is the free default. "Clarity is a free service forever", with "No sampling" (Clarity FAQ).
• PostHog for SaaS. First 5,000 recordings a month free, then $0.005 per recording up to 15,000 (PostHog pricing).
• Mouseflow is the cheap classic. Free forever for 500 sessions a month on one site (Mouseflow pricing).
• Self-host: OpenReplay's Open-Source edition is free (OpenReplay pricing).
• Avoid Smartlook for new projects. It stopped selling new subscriptions on 31 May 2026 (Smartlook).

Disclosure: ZeroRaised publishes this guide and is a launch site for bootstrapped products. We have no commercial relationship with any vendor below and earn nothing if you sign up. Facts come from the linked sources as checked on 8 Nov 2026.

What you actually need from a Hotjar alternative#

Hotjar made two tools popular with small teams: session replay (watching a recording of one visitor's visit) and heatmaps (an aggregate picture of where people click and how far they scroll). For an indie maker, those answer two practical questions:

1. Why is my landing page not converting? Scroll heatmaps show whether visitors ever reach your pricing section or call to action. Pair this with our guide on how to write a SaaS homepage that converts, which tells you what should be above the fold in the first place.
2. Why are new users getting stuck? A handful of replays of failed onboarding sessions often beats a week of guessing.

You do not need traffic analytics from this tool. Counting visitors and sources is a separate job, covered in our free website analytics roundup and our PostHog vs Plausible comparison. This post is only about replays and heatmaps.

Our read: at indie scale you rarely need more than a few hundred recordings a month. What you need is a tool cheap enough to leave running, so the recording exists when a user emails you about a bug.

Hotjar alternatives compared#

Free tier, cheapest paid plan and self-host option, from each vendor's own page on 8 Nov 2026.

Sources: Contentsquare, Clarity FAQ, PostHog pricing, PostHog self-host, Mouseflow, Lucky Orange, Crazy Egg, OpenReplay, Sentry, Matomo, Matomo plugin, Smartlook.

Mouseflow's page did not show a currency symbol next to the Essential price when we fetched it, so check at checkout.

The tools, one by one#

Hotjar (now Contentsquare): the baseline#

Visiting hotjar.com/pricing now lands you on Contentsquare's pricing page. The Free plan is "$0/ forever" and includes "200k monthly sessions", "1 project", "1 month data access" and "Replays, Heatmaps & Funnels". The catch is replay capture: "5% sessions captured (max. 10k)".

The Growth plan is listed "From $39/ month", with a "Pay yearly (Save 20%)" toggle, and starts at 7k monthly sessions with "15% sessions captured (min. 20k)" and 13 months of data access. There is a 15-day Growth trial with no card. Contentsquare says European customers, including the UK, are billed in euros.

Our read: the free plan is still usable for a landing page, but a 5% replay sample means the one session you want to watch is probably not recorded.

Microsoft Clarity: best free option#

Clarity's homepage says "Free forever" and "No limits on traffic". Its FAQ adds "No sampling" and "There are absolutely no limits on the number of sites per account." Recordings are kept "up to 30 days from the time of recording", heatmaps are accessible "for up to 9 months", and heatmaps are "limited to up to 100,000 page views per heat map."

The trade-off is consent and data use. Clarity's FAQ says it "operates as a data controller", and its Consent Mode docs say: "Starting October 31, 2025, Clarity begins enforcing consent signal requirements for page visits originating from the European Economic Area (EEA), United Kingdom (UK), and Switzerland (CH)." Without consent, the FAQ warns, "some functionalities, like funnel tracking and session recordings, might be impacted."

Our read: Clarity is the right first install for a marketing site. If most of your traffic is from the UK or EU, expect fewer recordings unless your consent banner passes Clarity a consent signal.

PostHog: best for SaaS products#

PostHog's pricing gives you the first 5,000 recordings each month free, then $0.005 per recording from 5,001 to 15,000. On the free plan, that is about 165 recordings a day on average for a 30-day month (our arithmetic), more than most early products produce.

Heatmaps are more nuanced. PostHog's heatmap docs say "Heatmap data is free to ingest, so it doesn't contribute to your bill", but viewing heatmaps in the toolbar "requires a pay-as-you-go plan", and the free plan collects heatmap data for up to 3 pages.

The reason to pick PostHog is that replays sit next to funnels, events and feature flags, so you can jump from "users who dropped at step 3" to watching them. We compare its analytics side in PostHog vs Plausible and will not repeat that here.

Example (illustrative): a SaaS recording 9,000 sessions in a month would pay for 4,000 recordings above the free 5,000, so 4,000 x $0.005 = $20.

Mouseflow: cheapest classic heatmap tool#

Mouseflow is the one dedicated heatmap and replay vendor we checked that still has a free plan: "Free forever", one website, 500 sessions and one month of data history, with session replays and click, scroll and geo heatmaps included. Essential is 25 a month billed annually for 5,000 sessions and 3 months of history.

Lucky Orange and Crazy Egg: paid, trial only#

Lucky Orange has no free plan, only "Try Lucky Orange free for 7 days". Its Build plan is $32/mo paid annually for up to 3,500 monthly sessions, with base data storage starting at 60 days. It says "all features available on all plan levels".

Crazy Egg says "All plans are billed annually and start with a free trial." Starter is $29/month billed annually for 5,000 tracked pageviews and 50 recordings a month.

Our read: the free tiers above cover what most indie makers need, so pay for these only if you want their extras.

OpenReplay: best self-hosted option#

OpenReplay's pricing page says the Open-Source edition is free and that you host it on your own infrastructure, with community support on GitHub and Slack. If you do not want to run it, the Dedicated managed instance starts "from $199/mo".

PostHog self-hosted and Matomo#

PostHog's self-host docs offer "a free Docker Compose deployment under an MIT license", but say "self-hosted deployments are officially unsupported" and suggest a machine "equivalent to a Hetzner VM with 4 vCPU, 16GB RAM, and more than 30GB storage". That is a lot of server for a side project.

Matomo On-Premise is free in its Community edition, but heatmaps and recordings come from the premium Heatmap & Session Recording plugin, which is "Free for 30 days. No credit card required." and part of Matomo's paid Team bundle and above. It makes sense if you already run Matomo.

Sentry: replay for debugging, not conversion#

Sentry's free Developer plan is for "solo devs working on small projects" and lists 50 replays. Team is $29/mo monthly or $26/mo annual. We found no heatmaps on its pricing page. Use it when the question is "what did the user do before this error?", not "why is my pricing page not converting?"

Smartlook: skip it#

Smartlook's pricing page now reads "End of Sale is now in effect", with no new subscriptions since 31 May 2026 and the platform decommissioned on 30 September 2027.

Pick by use case#

Our editorial picks, based on the facts above.

Privacy and consent in the UK and EU#

Replay tools record individual behaviour, which puts them in a different bucket from aggregate analytics. The UK ICO's guidance on storage and access technologies describes a statistical ("analytics") exception, but says it "does not allow you to monitor or track individual visitors to your service". It lists "logs or recordings of individual visitors to your website and the actions they took" as needing consent unless the purpose is security, while "average scroll depth or the total number of hits on sections of a page" can fall under the exception. For third-party tools, the provider "must be a processor, not a joint controller".

Our read, not legal advice:

1. Treat session replay as consent-required for UK and EU visitors.
2. Mask form inputs and anything sensitive. Most tools above offer masking; turn it on before launch.
3. Inside a logged-in app, mention replay in your privacy policy and consent flow.
4. Record less. Sampling only onboarding or checkout pages is cheaper and easier to justify.

How to set one up in 30 minutes#

1. Install Clarity on the marketing site and connect your consent banner to it.
2. Add PostHog replay inside the app if you have a login, and mask inputs.
3. Pick one page and one question, such as "do visitors reach the pricing section?"
4. Watch 10 recordings a week, write down the friction you see, fix one thing, repeat.

Frequently asked questions#

Is there a free Hotjar alternative?#

Yes. Microsoft Clarity is free forever with no traffic limits, no sampling and no limit on the number of sites, according to its FAQ. PostHog's free plan includes 5,000 session recordings a month, and Mouseflow has a free plan with 500 sessions a month on one website.

Is Hotjar still free?#

Hotjar's pricing URL now redirects to Contentsquare's pricing page. Its Free plan is $0 forever with 200k monthly sessions, 1 project and 1 month of data access, but replay capture is limited to 5% of sessions, up to a maximum of 10k.

Do I need cookie consent for session replay in the UK or EU?#

Usually yes. The ICO's storage and access guidance says the statistical (analytics) exception does not allow you to monitor or track individual visitors, and lists logs or recordings of individual visitors and their actions as needing consent unless they are for security. Microsoft Clarity has enforced consent signals for EEA, UK and Swiss traffic since 31 October 2025.

What is the best self-hosted Hotjar alternative?#

OpenReplay is the most direct option: its Open-Source edition is free and runs on your own infrastructure with community support. PostHog offers a free MIT-licensed hobby deploy but says self-hosted deployments are officially unsupported and recommends a machine with 4 vCPU and 16GB RAM. Matomo On-Premise can add heatmaps and recordings through a paid premium plugin.

Should I still pick Smartlook?#

No for a new project. Smartlook's pricing page says end of sale took effect on 31 May 2026, with no new subscriptions sold, and the platform is due to be decommissioned on 30 September 2027.

Launch, then watch the replays#

ZeroRaised is a launch directory for products built without institutional VC. Once replay is running, submit your product for free and watch how launch-day visitors actually use your page. For more tool guides for bootstrapped makers, join the ZeroRaised newsletter.

Sources#

• Hotjar pricing (redirects to Contentsquare), last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Contentsquare pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Microsoft Clarity homepage, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Microsoft Clarity FAQ, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Microsoft Clarity Consent Mode, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• PostHog pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• PostHog heatmaps docs, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• PostHog self-host docs, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Mouseflow pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Lucky Orange pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Crazy Egg pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• OpenReplay pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Sentry pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Matomo pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Matomo Heatmap & Session Recording plugin, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Smartlook pricing and end of sale notice, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• ICO: what are the exceptions (storage and access technologies), last checked 8 Nov 2026