Teams look past Hotjar because it now sits inside Contentsquare, new accounts are no longer opened under the Hotjar name, and the contract terms are Contentsquare's. Most go to PostHog, Amplitude or Mixpanel for replay inside a product analytics tool, or to Matomo for heatmaps in a self-hosted analytics suite.
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What each alternative does differently
1. PostHog
Open-source product analytics with session replay and feature flags built in · United States
Combines product analytics, session replay, surveys and heatmaps under one usage-based bill, each with a free monthly allowance. Replay works on web and on mobile SDKs, with masking before capture. A self-hosted version exists but is officially unsupported. It is built for product teams more than marketers.
Switch from Hotjar if you want replay, surveys and product analytics in one tool and your team can handle events.
Pricing: Usage-based pricing metered on events, session replays and feature flag requests, each with a free monthly allowance (1 million events, 5,000 recordings, 1 million flag requests); the MIT-licensed self-hosted version is free but officially unsupported. (free plan)
Full review: #2 of 14 in our ranking ·
Visit PostHog →
2. Matomo
Open-source web analytics you can self-host or run as a GDPR-friendly cloud · New Zealand
A full analytics suite where heatmaps and session recordings come from the Team bundle and above, at €275 for up to four users. A free Community edition is self-hosted without those features. You get data ownership and traffic reporting in the same product, at a higher entry price.
Switch from Hotjar if you want heatmaps and recordings next to traffic reports, on infrastructure you control.
Pricing: On-Premise is free and open source to self-host, with premium plugins sold one by one or in bundles from €275 a month; Matomo Cloud is priced by monthly hits on a published table, with a 21-day free trial and no credit card required to start. (open source)
Full review: #1 of 14 in our ranking ·
Visit Matomo →
3. Amplitude
Publicly traded product analytics and experimentation platform · United States
Product analytics first. The free plan lists 2 million events and 10,000 monthly session replays, plus a limited number of guides and surveys. Growth and Enterprise raise the replay allowance to 20,000 and 50,000 sessions, with add-ons available. It suits product teams tracking behavior across a funnel.
Switch from Hotjar if your questions are about product usage and retention, with replay as supporting evidence.
Pricing: A free plan covers 2 million events a month; Plus starts at $0 with the first 2 million events free and bills by event volume up to 70 million; Growth and Enterprise are custom-priced and hold experiment results, SSO and access controls. (free plan)
Full review: #6 of 14 in our ranking ·
Visit Amplitude →
4. Mixpanel
Event-based product analytics with self-serve funnels and cohorts · United States
Event analytics with 10,000 session replays a month on the free plan and up to 500,000 on Growth, billed on usage after the free tier. It lists no heatmaps on the pricing page. It fits teams that already track events and want recordings attached to them.
Switch from Hotjar if you track product events already and want replays tied to those events.
Pricing: A free plan covers up to 1 million monthly events; the Growth plan starts at $0 with the first 1 million events free and then bills by event volume up to 20 million, and Enterprise is quoted and holds SAML SSO and SCIM. (free plan)
Full review: #5 of 14 in our ranking ·
Visit Mixpanel →
5. Heap
Autocapture product analytics, now part of Contentsquare · United States
Free plan of 10,000 monthly sessions without replay or heatmaps. Both arrive as add-ons from the Pro plan, whose session pricing is custom. Growth shows an estimate once the snippet is installed. It suits teams that want automatic event capture and can pay for add-ons.
Switch from Hotjar if you want automatic event capture and can pay for replay and heatmaps as add-ons.
Pricing: A free plan covers up to 10,000 monthly sessions; Growth shows a price estimate once the snippet is installed, and Pro and Premier are priced by session volume through sales, with no published price table. (free plan)
Full review: #9 of 14 in our ranking ·
Visit Heap →
6. StatCounter
Simple, free hit-counter-style analytics for small sites · Ireland
The closest low-cost match for heatmaps. They start on Premium Plus at €19 a month for 20,000 sessions, while session replay is a paid add-on from €9. The free plan keeps 5,000 sessions and 14 days of data. It is lighter than Hotjar on surveys and error monitoring.
Switch from Hotjar if you want heatmaps on a small site for a few euros a month.
Pricing: A free plan covers 5,000 sessions a month with 14 days of data retention; Premium starts at €9 a month for 20,000 sessions with three years of retention, Premium Plus adds heatmaps, session replay is a paid add-on, and paid features have a 30-day free trial. (free plan)
Full review: #10 of 14 in our ranking ·
Visit StatCounter →
7. Piwik PRO
EU-based analytics and consent management for regulated industries · Poland
Four modules in one suite: analytics, tag manager, data activation and consent manager, with EU-operated hosting in Sweden on Business. We saw no heatmap or replay feature on the pricing page. The trial lasts 30 days without a card. Pick it when consent and tag management outweigh behavior views.
Switch from Hotjar if you need analytics with consent and tag management and can use a separate replay tool.
Pricing: No free plan; the Business plan starts at €36 a month for up to 2 million monthly actions across up to 20 domains, Enterprise starts at €366 a month billed annually, and a 30-day free trial needs no credit card. (free trial)
Full review: #4 of 14 in our ranking ·
Visit Piwik PRO →
8. Google Analytics
Free, ubiquitous analytics built on the GA4 event model · United States
Free of charge according to Google's marketing page, covering cross-device journeys and machine-learning insights. That page does not mention heatmaps or session replay, so it replaces Hotjar's counting side and not its visual side. Pair it with a replay tool if you need both.
Switch from Hotjar if you mainly need traffic and conversion numbers at no cost and drop the visual layer.
Pricing: Free for the volume almost every business will ever generate; Google Analytics 360 adds SLAs, higher sampling limits and a BigQuery daily export of billions of events (against 1 million a day on standard) on a quoted enterprise contract. (free plan)
Full review: #7 of 14 in our ranking ·
Visit Google Analytics →
9. Plausible Analytics
Lightweight, cookieless analytics on a single-page dashboard · Estonia
Cookieless traffic analytics with scroll depth tracking, goals and funnels, hosted on European-owned infrastructure per its site. It does not mention heatmaps or session replay. Plans scale by pageviews, with a 30-day trial. It answers what happened on a page, never what a visitor did on it.
Switch from Hotjar if you want light, cookie-free traffic numbers and no recordings of visitors.
Pricing: Subscription tiers (Starter, Growth, Business, Enterprise) priced by monthly pageviews on a published table, a 30-day free trial with no card, and a free self-hosted Community Edition under AGPLv3 for teams willing to run it themselves. (free trial)
Full review: #3 of 14 in our ranking ·
Visit Plausible Analytics →
10. Fathom Analytics
Bootstrapped, cookieless analytics with no ads or data resale · Canada
Pageview-priced traffic analytics with no cookie banners, event and revenue tracking and an API. Plans include at least 50 sites, and there is no free plan, only a seven-day trial that needs a card. We found no heatmaps or replay on its pricing page.
Switch from Hotjar if you run many small sites and want privacy-first stats without recordings.
Pricing: Subscription tiers priced by monthly pageviews on a published table, from $15 a month for 100,000 pageviews across 50 sites, with a 7-day free trial that needs a card; the company describes itself as bootstrapped with zero investors. (free trial)
Full review: #8 of 14 in our ranking ·
Visit Fathom Analytics →
11. Simple Analytics
Minimal, cookieless analytics built and hosted in the EU · Netherlands
A one-page dashboard that is EU-hosted and collects no personal data. A free plan covers five websites with 30 days of retention and a required badge on hobby sites. Paid plans are priced by pageviews. It offers no heatmaps or recordings in what we read.
Switch from Hotjar if you want a minimal EU-hosted dashboard and have no use for visitor recordings.
Pricing: A free plan for hobby sites covers 5 websites with one month of history and a required badge; paid self-serve plans are priced by monthly pageviews from €20 a month for 100,000, with a 14-day free trial and no card. (free plan)
Full review: #11 of 14 in our ranking ·
Visit Simple Analytics →
12. Woopra
Real-time customer journey analytics with broad integrations · United States
Customer journey analytics, not page-level observation. The Pro plan starts at $999 a month with 24 months of retention and 50 seats, and signups get the first month free. Its feature list names profiles, journeys and automations, not replay. It targets funded companies, not small sites.
Switch from Hotjar if you want to follow individual customers across touchpoints and have budget for it.
Pricing: No free plan; the Pro plan starts at $999 a month for 5 million or more events, with the first month free as a 30-day trial, and Enterprise is quoted with longer data retention. (free trial)
Full review: #12 of 14 in our ranking ·
Visit Woopra →
