Hotjar: the address we list now redirects elsewhere · last checked 9 Nov 2026
Hotjar
Hotjar is now Contentsquare: free heatmaps, session replay, and 200k monthly sessions
If your questions about a page are visual — where people click, why they drop off, what broke — Contentsquare Free is the most generous behavior-analytics entry point I can point to: 200k monthly sessions, replay, heatmaps, funnels, surveys, and AI summaries at $0. Paid Growth starts at $39/mo billed yearly (page shows monthly scaling by session tier) and only makes sense once you need zone heatmaps, journey analysis, or 13-month data access. For retention and cohort work, look elsewhere.
Verdict generatedLast checked 8d ago · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/hotjar
- Marketing teams optimizing landing pages and conversion funnels
- UX researchers diagnosing usability issues with heatmaps and session replay
- Product managers checking whether a shipped feature actually gets used
- Small and mid-size sites wanting behavior analytics without heavy implementation
- Enterprises needing retention curves, cohort analysis, or lifecycle modeling
- Teams that need live real-time user behavior streams instead of post-hoc analysis
- High-traffic sites that will blow past 200,000 sessions a month
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Skip it if you need retention curves, cohort analysis or cross-month historical comparison — the free plan keeps only 1 month of data and lifecycle modeling sits in paid tiers or tools like Amplitude.
Free covers just 1 project and 1 month of data access, so any second site or a quarter-over-quarter comparison requires a paid upgrade.
Free at 200k sessions a month undercuts almost every behavior analytics competitor at the entry point. Paid Growth starts at $39/mo billed annually ($49/mo monthly) for the smallest tier — competitive with Hotjar's old Plus pricing, cheaper than FullStory or Amplitude at similar volume, but you're paying for projects, 13-month data access and Zone-based heatmaps rather than more sessions. Pro and Enterprise are custom-quoted against enterprise experience analytics vendors.
In short
Hotjar — Hotjar is now Contentsquare: free heatmaps, session replay, and 200k monthly sessions. Best for Marketing teams optimizing landing pages and conversion funnels, UX researchers diagnosing usability issues with heatmaps and session replay, Product managers checking whether a shipped feature actually gets used. Free to start; paid plans from $39/mo billed annually.
What is Hotjar?
Hotjar — Hotjar is now Contentsquare: free heatmaps, session replay, and 200k monthly sessions. Best for Marketing teams optimizing landing pages and conversion funnels, UX researchers diagnosing usability issues with heatmaps and session replay, Product managers checking whether a shipped feature actually gets used. Free to start; paid plans from $39/mo billed annually.
The pitch is simple for small sites and lean teams — you get click, hover, and scroll heatmaps, real session replays, funnels, surveys, error monitoring, and performance monitoring on a $0 plan, no credit card. The old Hotjar free cap was 35 sessions a day with 20 survey responses; Contentsquare Free lists up to 200k monthly sessions and 100 survey responses.
Key features
- Heatmaps with click, hover, and scroll visualization
- Attention Maps revealing engagement beyond clicks
- Session Replay of real user sessions
- Surveys and Feedback collecting 100 responses per month on Free
- Funnels visualizing drop-off at every step of a key flow
- Error Monitoring catching JavaScript errors that hurt conversions
- Performance Monitoring linking slow load times to behavior and revenue
- Sense Chat for plain-language questions about your data
- AI Summaries auto-recapping heatmaps and recordings
- LLM Connect (MCP) to query data from ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot
- Zone-based heatmaps and journey analysis on paid Growth plans
- 10+ integrations including Slack, Jira, and Unbounce on the free plan
- 15-day Growth trial with no credit card required
- Mobile app analytics for iOS and Android journeys
- Data access window of 1 month on Free, 13 months on Growth
Behind the verdict
Who should pick this: teams that want replay and heatmaps live on a site this afternoon without a procurement cycle. The free tier does the job — one project, one month of data access, replays, heatmaps, funnels, basic surveys, error and performance monitoring, plus MCP so you can query data from ChatGPT, Claude, or Copilot. For a marketing team tuning landing pages, that is enough to answer most questions. Where it bites: the free plan caps you at one project and one month of data history. If you need to compare this quarter to last, you are already shopping Growth, which brings 13-month access, three projects, zone-based heatmaps, journey analysis, impact quantification, and Sense AI chat with replay and heatmap summaries. Paid Growth is session-tiered. The page shows a range of monthly session buckets from 25k up to 200k and beyond, with $39/mo as the entry when billed yearly and $49 monthly. Read the slider carefully: it is priced by captured volume, so a high-traffic site can pay a lot more than the headline number. My honest read: if you are a UX researcher or product manager asking 'why did this flow fail,' this is worth a trial today. If your core question is 'which cohort sticks around and why,' you need Amplitude or FullStory — retention curves and lifecycle modeling are not what this tool is built around. One caveat on the migration: existing Hotjar logins still work, but you cannot create a new standalone Hotjar account. If a teammate sends you a Hotjar signup link, they are sending you to the wrong place. We'd start with the free plan, wire MCP into an assistant, and run funnels on the two or three flows that matter. If you find yourself wanting cross-project comparison or year-over-year data, that is the moment to price Growth — not before.
Models under the hood
as of 2026-11-08
Limitations
- Hotjar is now Contentsquare, and the site consistently pushes the Contentsquare brand; new users sign up on Contentsquare, not Hotjar.
- The free plan covers up to 200k sessions per month with heatmaps, recordings, surveys, funnels, error and performance monitoring, and MCP/AI connectivity, but only 1 project and 1 month of data access.
- Growth starts at $39/mo billed annually ($49/mo monthly) for the smallest 7k-session tier — you pay to unlock projects, 13-month data access and Zone-based heatmaps.
- Pro and Enterprise features (real-time and synthetic error monitoring, agentic memory, Conversation Intelligence) are priced custom.
- AI functionality is described generically (Sense, AI summaries, MCP) with no underlying model named and no published accuracy guarantee.
as of 2026-10-23
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Is Hotjar still active?
Hotjar: the address we list now redirects elsewhere · last checked 9 Nov 2026.
Viability score
How well maintained and how widely used is Hotjar? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: November 2026
How we score →What do users say about Hotjar?
What people actually say about Hotjar — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
Researched54 mentions across 3 sources (Hacker News, YouTube, Product Hunt) · researched Aug 24, 2026.
Average across the 3 sources that answered — each source counts once, not each post.
- +Heatmaps and recordings provide immediate, visually compelling UX insights.
- +Free tier is generous for small sites and testing.
- +Surveys and polls are easy to set up and yield direct user feedback.
- +Clean, intuitive interface that most beginners can adopt quickly.
- +Funnels help identify user drop-off points in key flows.
- −Session replay only captures a sample, not all visits.
- −No full product analytics like retention or cohort analysis.
- −Privacy concerns: users feel tracked and uneasy watching recordings.
- −Advanced features like Data Connect API are locked behind paid tiers.
- −The Contentsquare merger may confuse existing users about future pricing.
- • Data Connect API and certain advanced features require the full Contentsquare platform, which isn't transparently priced.
- • Adding more sessions or features beyond free quota can push costs up quickly, especially for high-traffic sites.
How we verified this
Every listed fact about Hotjar — pricing, features, links, status — is re-read from the vendor's own pages by our verification pipeline and each change is logged with a date; the last pass ran on 5 Nov 2026. Analysis is drafted with AI models and checked against our editorial standards before publishing; see how we verify.
Verification history
We have re-verified Hotjar 23 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — changed SSL certificate
- — changed link health
- — changed description, our verdict, features, pricing tiers, who should skip it, summary, pricing page, models
- — changed pricing page, hidden costs, setup time, pricing fit, description, who it suits, use cases, our verdict, features, limitations, switching in, switching out, who should skip it, pricing tiers
- — changed our verdict, features, description, summary, who it suits, pricing tiers
- — changed pricing page
Showing the 6 most recent of 23 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
How much does Hotjar cost in 2026?
Hotjar: Free to start; paid plans from $39/mo billed annually. Pricing last verified 5 Nov 2026.
Plans compared
Every published Hotjar tier, its price as the vendor publishes it, who it fits, and what it adds over the tier below. The 12-month cost projection follows.
| Plan | Price | Billing | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | — | Small and mid-size sites that want heatmaps, replay, funnels, surveys and error monitoring live without a budget lineAdds: Free entry point: 200k monthly sessions, 1 project, 1 month data access, 100 survey responses/month, AI features and MCP connectivity |
| Growth | From $39/mo billed annuallyVendor: “From $39/mo billed yearly (or $49/mo monthly)” | monthly, billed annually | Marketing teams running more than one site or campaign who need quarter-over-quarter comparison and journey analysisAdds: Adds 13-month data access, 3 projects, Zone-based heatmaps, journey analysis, impact quantification and Sense AI chat with replay and heatmap summaries; from $39/mo billed annually ($49/mo monthly) |
| Pro | Custom | quote | Product and analytics teams connecting web, mobile and AI-agent journeys who need attribution and cross-device path analysisAdds: Adds up to 6 projects, event-based cross-session and cross-device journey analysis, error analysis and real user monitoring, conversion and revenue attribution, and multi-session replay summaries |
| Enterprise | Custom | quote | Large organizations running experience analytics across many properties with support and SLA requirementsAdds: Adds unlimited projects, real-time errors and synthetic monitoring, dedicated support and SLAs, scheduled Sense Analyst insights and agentic memory with connectors |
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Hotjar's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Free at 200k sessions a month undercuts almost every behavior analytics competitor at the entry point. Paid Growth starts at $39/mo billed annually ($49/mo monthly) for the smallest tier — competitive with Hotjar's old Plus pricing, cheaper than FullStory or Amplitude at similar volume, but you're paying for projects, 13-month data access and Zone-based heatmaps rather than more sessions. Pro and Enterprise are custom-quoted against enterprise experience analytics vendors.
Who should pick Hotjar?
Pick Hotjar if you are Marketing teams optimizing landing pages and conversion funnels, UX researchers diagnosing usability issues with heatmaps and session replay, Product managers checking whether a shipped feature actually gets used, Small and mid-size sites wanting behavior analytics without heavy implementation.
Look elsewhere if you are Enterprises needing retention curves, cohort analysis, or lifecycle modeling, Teams that need live real-time user behavior streams instead of post-hoc analysis, High-traffic sites that will blow past 200,000 sessions a month, Anyone trying to create a new standalone Hotjar account — signup is on Contentsquare now.
Skip it if you need retention curves, cohort analysis or cross-month historical comparison — the free plan keeps only 1 month of data and lifecycle modeling sits in paid tiers or tools like Amplitude.
GeneratedReal-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Hotjar actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
Install the Contentsquare snippet, open heatmaps and Attention Maps on the checkout, then watch three Session Replays of abandoned carts.
Outcome: You leave day one with a ranked list of three friction points and replay clips to attach to the next sprint ticket.
Launch an on-page survey with 100 monthly responses, pair it with Funnels on the signup flow, and use AI Summaries to scan recordings instead of watching them all.
Outcome: Qualitative objections and quantitative drop-off land in the same view, so you can separate what users say from what they do.
Ask Sense Chat why conversion shifted last week, then query the same data from Claude via the MCP connector while writing the weekly update.
Outcome: You get a plain-language answer plus an AI-recap of the relevant heatmap without leaving the tools you already write in.
Use cases
- Identify rage-click hotspots on a checkout page and prioritize fixes for the next sprint.
- Run an exit-intent NPS survey on a pricing page to surface objections.
- Use AI summaries to scan hundreds of session recordings for common drop-off patterns.
- Capture user-side feedback during a redesign launch with the feedback widget.
- Compare funnel drop-offs across devices to find mobile-specific blockers.
- Monitor JavaScript errors and correlate them with affected user sessions.
- Use Sense Chat to ask 'Why did conversion drop last week?' and get an answer.
- Query your Contentsquare data from Claude or Copilot via the MCP connector.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Hotjar — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
A single snippet install gets you heatmaps, replay and funnels in under an hour for a typical marketing site. Surveys need the widget placed on the target page, so budget another 30 minutes. Zapier-free native Slack and Jira integrations are a few clicks. The 15-day Growth trial opens additional capabilities immediately with no credit card.
Switching to or from Hotjar
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From legacy Hotjar: log in with your existing Hotjar credentials — the site states you're in the right place and existing accounts carry over to Contentsquare.
- →From Google Analytics: keep GA for traffic and add the Contentsquare snippet alongside it; Contentsquare answers the why behind the page, GA answers the what.
- →From Microsoft Clarity: run both snippets during a parallel week, then compare replay quality and funnel depth before dropping Clarity.
- ↗To FullStory: export session and funnel findings, then rebuild key funnels in FullStory if you need cross-month retention and lifecycle analysis.
- ↗To Amplitude: pipe event data out via Data Connect and model retention and cohorts there, since Contentsquare's free tier keeps only 1 month.
- ↗To Microsoft Clarity: simplest exit if cost is the driver — Clarity has no session cap, but you lose survey, funnel and error monitoring depth.
Resources & guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Hotjar”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Hotjar” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Hotjar.
Official links
What are the best Hotjar alternatives?
The closest alternatives to Hotjar we list are FullStory, Amplitude and Plerdy AI UX Assistant. Ranked by direct product-type match, not category overlap.
| Alternative | Pricing | Starts at | Last verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| FullStory | Contact Sales | Custom pricing | — |
| Amplitude | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
| Plerdy AI UX Assistant | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
Alternatives to Hotjar
View all
FullStory
Fullstory captures every click and scroll in your web and mobile product, then turns it into AI-readable behavioral data.
Amplitude
Product analytics with an AI agent that queries your data from Claude, Cursor, or MCP clients.
Plerdy AI UX Assistant
Plerdy AI UX Assistant turns heatmaps, session replays and rage clicks into a written UX audit with CRO fixes.
Tools that pair well with Hotjar
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Hotjar, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
FullStory
Fullstory captures every click and scroll in your web and mobile product, then turns it into AI-readable behavioral data.
Amplitude
Product analytics with an AI agent that queries your data from Claude, Cursor, or MCP clients.
Plerdy AI UX Assistant
Plerdy AI UX Assistant turns heatmaps, session replays and rage clicks into a written UX audit with CRO fixes.
Hotjar vs its closest rival
Hotjar's closest head-to-head is with Posthog.
Our Hotjar vs Posthog verdict written May 12, 2026 is more than 90 days old, so it is being re-reviewed against current data and is not shown.
Used Hotjar? Help shape our editorial sentiment research.