A checkout form that quietly loses visitors does not announce itself in a traffic report. Session replay and heatmap tools exist for that gap: they record what visitors actually did on a page, as a replay you can watch or a click and scroll map you can read, so a marketer or product owner can see the stuck button instead of guessing at it. At the low end the category is free, which makes the buying decision harder than it looks: allowances are counted in sessions, pageviews or recordings, and retention windows run from one month to years. This ranking is written for a small or mid-sized business choosing its first or second tool. We weighed how fast a snippet turns into watchable sessions, what a month of real traffic costs once the free tier is gone, whether recordings can leave the product, and who stands behind the vendor today. The order is the verdict.
Visibility in this ranking can be paid for. Payment moves a vendor's position within the
shortlist; it never adds a vendor, and it never changes a word of the review. The largest vendors in session replay software
cannot hold places 1 to 3. How it works: placement disclosure ·
editorial process.
How we ranked these
Setup: one snippet, then a wait for the first sessions
Every tool here installs the same basic way, a JavaScript snippet in the page head or through a tag manager, and the first recordings usually appear within minutes of a test visit. The differences start after that. Microsoft Clarity, Mouseflow, Contentsquare, PostHog and Fullstory all have a free entry point you can try without a card, so a site owner can have real traffic recorded the same afternoon. Quantum Metric sells through a demo and an implementation project, and Heap puts session replay behind its paid Pro tier as an add-on. The less visible setup work is masking: deciding which form fields, account pages and customer details must never be captured. That decision belongs on day one, not after the first privacy review, and mobile apps need a separate SDK in every product we looked at.
The real price: what a month of traffic does to the unit you are billed in
Pricing units are the trap. Mouseflow bills by recorded sessions, from a free 500 per month to $319 for 100,000. Crazy Egg bills by pageviews, from $29 for 5,000 to $599 for a million, and caps how many recordings and heatmap reports each tier holds. Lucky Orange starts at $32 for 3,500 sessions and reaches $839 at 300,000. LogRocket starts at $176 a month and charges for the sessions it captures. PostHog meters recordings and gives away 5,000 a month. Clarity charges nothing, with no stated traffic limit. Fullstory, Heap, Contentsquare above its free tier and Quantum Metric publish no paid price, so the budget conversation happens after a sales call, not before it.
Getting your recordings out: replays are heavy, exports are thin
A recording is not a spreadsheet row, and no vendor here promises that your replays can be exported as video files you could replay elsewhere. What differs is how much of the surrounding data you can pull. Clarity documents a Data Export API, PostHog stores recordings next to its event data and lets you set billing limits per product, and OpenReplay is the one tool where you can run the whole stack on your own servers and keep every recording yourself. Retention matters more than export for most teams: Mouseflow keeps data for one month on its free plan and twelve on Premium, and PostHog keeps free-plan recordings for one month. Ask what the window is before you rely on a replay as evidence in a dispute.
Independence from the vendor: who owns the tool watching your visitors
Ownership moved a lot in this category. Hotjar no longer sells under its own name: its website now states it is part of Contentsquare, and Heap carries the same owner. Smartlook joined Cisco and will be folded into Splunk Observability Cloud, with new sales stopped on May 31, 2026 and the platform decommissioned on September 30, 2027, so we left it out of the ranking. Clarity belongs to Microsoft. Of the eleven products ranked, eight are headquartered in the United States and three in Europe: Mouseflow in Denmark, OpenReplay and Contentsquare in France. For a buyer who wants recordings kept off US infrastructure, PostHog offers an EU cloud in Frankfurt and OpenReplay states its cloud data sits on AWS servers in the EU.
Who it's for: marketers watching pages, engineers chasing bugs, and everyone in between
Three different jobs hide inside this one category. A marketer or store owner who wants to see why a landing page fails is best served by a free or low-cost heatmap tool such as Clarity, Mouseflow, Crazy Egg or Lucky Orange. A product team that wants replay tied to events, funnels, feature flags and experiments will get further in PostHog or Fullstory. An engineering team debugging a customer's broken session wants LogRocket or OpenReplay, which attach console logs, network calls and errors to the replay. Large e-commerce and financial-services companies with a dedicated digital experience team are the buyers Contentsquare and Quantum Metric are built around, and a five-person team should not start there.
The 11 tools, reviewed
#1 Mouseflow
Danish session replay and heatmaps with plain session tiers · Denmark · mouseflow.com
Published session tiers Danish company 14-day trial, no card
Mouseflow earns first place because its price list says exactly what you get. Four published tiers climb from a free 500 sessions to $319 for 100,000, each with a stated number of sites, funnels and months of retention, and a 14-day full-feature trial needs no card. The product is built around the usual job for a small business: record visits, read heatmaps, and flag friction such as rage clicks before anyone has to watch an hour of video. It is also a Danish company with a Copenhagen head office, which settles the ownership question for European buyers.
Where it falls short
The free plan is a sampler, 500 sessions and one site, and it keeps data for a single month. Recording stops entirely when a month's sessions are used up, so a traffic spike can leave a blind spot. Full integrations and API access are reserved for the $319 tier, and there is no engineering view with console and network logs.
Wrong for
An engineering team that needs console logs and network calls attached to each replay, or a product team that wants events and experiments in the same place; LogRocket or PostHog fit better.
Pricing: Free at 500 sessions a month; Essential $25 for 5,000 sessions, Advanced $109 for 25,000, Premium $319 for 100,000, all published; annual billing saves up to 35%. (free plan)
Visit Mouseflow →
#2 PostHog
Product analytics with session replay billed per recording · United States · posthog.com
5,000 free recordings monthly EU cloud in Frankfurt Replay plus analytics
PostHog is where a product team should start when replay is a means to an end. Recordings sit beside events, funnels, feature flags, experiments and surveys, so a bad funnel step leads straight to the sessions behind it. The free tier gives 5,000 recordings every month and the pricing page lets you set a billing limit per product, which keeps a viral week from becoming a surprise invoice. You choose US (Virginia) or EU (Frankfurt) hosting at signup. It ranks second because Mouseflow is simpler for a marketer who only wants heatmaps and a flat plan.
Where it falls short
Recording retention is short: one month on the free plan and 90 days on pay-as-you-go, with longer windows tied to paid add-ons. The product surface is wide, which means a marketer who just wants a heatmap meets a lot of engineering vocabulary. Free usage stops at the limit instead of overflowing, so heavy traffic needs a card.
Wrong for
A marketer or store owner who wants heatmaps and a handful of recordings with no analytics setup or event tracking to configure; Clarity or Mouseflow is the lighter route.
Pricing: Free tier of 5,000 recordings a month, no card; pay-as-you-go beyond that, with per-product billing limits so usage cannot surprise you. (free plan)
Visit PostHog →
#3 OpenReplay
Open-source session replay you can host yourself · France · openreplay.com
Self-hostable Dedicated cloud from $199 EU-hosted
OpenReplay is the answer when the real requirement is to keep recordings on your own servers. The open-source edition runs on your infrastructure at no license cost, and the managed Dedicated plan removes caps on users, recordings and retention, billed hourly from $0.276. Replay comes with a developer tools panel, co-browsing for support, funnels and heatmaps, and the company's privacy policy states its own data sits on AWS servers in the European Union. Third place reflects the trade: you gain control and a flat bill, and you accept running more of it yourself.
Where it falls short
Self-hosting means someone on your side runs the servers, upgrades and storage, and a replay stack can grow large quickly. The managed offer is a dedicated instance with a $199 floor, so there is no small pay-as-you-go cloud tier. The heatmap tooling is less polished than at specialist marketing tools.
Wrong for
A marketer without an engineer on call, or a small shop that wants a free hosted plan with no servers to run; Clarity costs nothing and needs no servers.
Pricing: Self-hosted open-source edition is free; Dedicated managed instances start at $199 a month, billed hourly at $0.276, with no user, recording or retention limits. (open source)
Visit OpenReplay →
#4 Microsoft Clarity
Free recordings, heatmaps and AI summaries from Microsoft · United States · clarity.microsoft.com
Free forever No stated traffic cap Mobile SDKs
For a business that has never watched a visitor session, Clarity is the cheapest honest place to begin. It records sessions, builds click, scroll and area heatmaps, supports funnels and smart events, and layers on Copilot summaries so you need not watch every recording. Mobile SDKs cover Android, iOS, Flutter and React Native, and a Data Export API exists. Microsoft states there is no obligation to upgrade to a paid version. It sits fourth only because the rules put dominant big-tech platforms below place three, not because it lacks substance.
Where it falls short
There is nobody to call: no paid tier means no account manager or contractual service level. Microsoft's own guidance says it should not be used on sites targeting users under 18. It is a standalone behavior tool, so features such as experiments, feature flags and deep product analytics are not what it is for.
Wrong for
A company that needs a vendor contract, dedicated support or documented service levels for compliance reasons, or a team that wants replay merged with product analytics; Fullstory or PostHog is the better route.
Pricing: Free, described by Microsoft as free forever with no stated traffic limit and no paid version to upgrade to. (free plan)
Visit Microsoft Clarity →
#5 Contentsquare (Hotjar)
Experience analytics that now includes Hotjar · France · contentsquare.com
Absorbed Hotjar 200k free sessions French vendor
Contentsquare is the biggest independent name in the category and now also the home of Hotjar, whose website tells visitors the two platforms have merged. Its free plan allows 200,000 sessions a month with heatmaps, replay, surveys, error monitoring, funnels and more than ten integrations, against the 35 sessions a day that Hotjar's old free plan allowed. Sense AI summarizes heatmaps and recordings. Because it is the dominant incumbent, the ranking rules place it fifth, but the free plan makes it a serious starting point and it also scales to a heavy enterprise program.
Where it falls short
Beyond the free tier, price is invisible and negotiated. The merger changes the product for anyone who knew Hotjar, so existing habits and integrations need rechecking. Features and availability of the free plan may be changed at Contentsquare's discretion, which its own terms note, so do not build a process on one limit.
Wrong for
A solo site owner who wants a stable, simple tool with a fixed price list; Mouseflow or Crazy Egg tell you the number up front.
Pricing: Free plan with 200,000 sessions a month plus a 15-day Growth trial; paid tiers beyond that are not published on its pricing page and run through a demo. (free plan)
Visit Contentsquare (Hotjar) →
#6 Fullstory
Digital experience analytics with a generous free plan · United States · fullstory.com
30,000 free sessions 12-month retention StoryAI
Fullstory is the product to look at when replay needs to feed a proper analytics practice. The free plan is unusually useful: 30,000 sessions a month, a full year of retention and up to ten users, with no card. Paid tiers add deeper analytics, mobile, guides and surveys, and StoryAI agents, and the company says it complies with the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Frameworks. It ranks below the self-serve specialists because it is not the one to choose when you want a number on a pricing page.
Where it falls short
All three paid tiers, Business, Advanced and Enterprise, are priced only after a demo request, so growth from 30,000 sessions is a negotiation. Mobile analytics, guides and surveys and several other pieces are sold as add-ons, which raises the total. The platform is broader than a pure heatmap buyer needs.
Wrong for
A very small site, or a team that needs a published price before it can approve a card purchase; Mouseflow and Crazy Egg both list theirs openly.
Pricing: Free plan with 30,000 sessions a month, 12 months retention and up to 10 users; Business, Advanced and Enterprise tiers have no published price. (free plan)
Visit Fullstory →
#7 Crazy Egg
Heatmaps, recordings and A/B tests billed by pageviews · United States · crazyegg.com
Published pageview tiers Unlimited domains and seats Built-in A/B testing
Crazy Egg began with heatmaps in 2005 and still treats them as the product, with recordings, A/B testing and surveys added around them. All four plans include unlimited domains and team members, and the published ladder runs from $29 a month for 5,000 pageviews to $599 for a million. The A/B testing is built in, which is useful for a marketer who wants to test the change the heatmap suggests without adding a separate tool. It lands seventh because recordings are the capped part of each tier.
Where it falls short
Recordings are scarce: 50 on Starter, 1,000 on Plus, 5,000 on Pro and 10,000 on the top plan, so it is a heatmap tool with replay, not the reverse. Heatmap reports are also limited per tier. SAML SSO is held back for the $599 plan, and there is no engineering context.
Wrong for
A team that wants to watch hundreds of sessions a week, or debug app errors with logs; Mouseflow, Lucky Orange or LogRocket carry more recording capacity.
Pricing: Four published plans billed annually: Starter $29 a month (5,000 pageviews), Plus $99, Pro $249, Enterprise $599 for 1,000,000 pageviews; trials available. (free trial)
Visit Crazy Egg →
#8 Lucky Orange
Replay, heatmaps and live visitor view for small sites · United States · luckyorange.com
All features on every plan 7-day trial Live visitor view
Lucky Orange gives every plan the full feature set, so the plan you buy changes only the session volume and storage. Beyond recordings and dynamic heatmaps it adds funnels, form analytics, unlimited surveys and announcements, live chat, and a live view that shows who is on the site right now. That mix suits a small online store that wants to talk to a visitor who is stuck. Pricing is published, with a 20% discount for paying annually and unlimited team members. It ranks eighth because its value depends on using the live features.
Where it falls short
The trial lasts only seven days and there is no free plan. Storage beyond the default is a paid extra (90, 180 or 365 days) and each additional website costs $5. The jump from Expand at $199 to Scale at $839 is steep for a growing site, and the product has no engineering depth.
Wrong for
A team with heavy traffic on a modest budget, or a developer who needs error context; Clarity is free and LogRocket is built for debugging.
Pricing: Build $32 a month for 3,500 sessions, Grow $72 for 10,000, Expand $199 for 50,000, Scale $839 for 300,000, annual billing; 7-day trial. (free trial)
Visit Lucky Orange →
#9 LogRocket
Session replay built for debugging front-end problems · United States · logrocket.com
Debugging-led replay Self-hosting option Unlimited errors and logs
LogRocket is the pick for a software team whose problem is a customer saying the app broke. Replay carries the console, network requests, errors and performance data from the same session, and Galileo AI summarizes sessions and flags issues. Its pricing sentence is plain: pay for the sessions you capture, with analytics, logs and errors always unlimited, from $176 a month. Enterprise adds self-hosted deployment for regulated industries. The ranking reflects the narrower audience, since a marketer wanting heatmaps will find the starting price high.
Where it falls short
The $176 entry point is well above Clarity, Mouseflow and Crazy Egg, and a 14-day trial is the only free route. Pricing scales with captured sessions, so high-traffic public sites can climb quickly unless conditional recording is used. Self-hosting and unlimited seats sit on the Enterprise tier.
Wrong for
A marketing team that wants a heatmap and a few recordings for under $50 a month; Mouseflow, Crazy Egg or Clarity fit that budget far better.
Pricing: From $176 a month on captured sessions, with analytics, logs and errors unlimited; conditional recording at roughly $765 a month; 14-day trial, no card. (free trial)
Visit LogRocket →
#10 Heap
Product analytics with session replay sold as an add-on · United States · heap.io
10,000 free sessions Contentsquare-owned Replay is an add-on
Heap treats replay and heatmaps as support for analytics, not the headline. The free plan allows 10,000 sessions a month with core analytics charts, 6 months of data history and SSO, and Growth adds Sense AI, unlimited users and 12 months of history. Journeys, web analytics, session replay and heatmaps all appear in its navigation. It is a reasonable second tool for a product team that has already decided to analyze behavior with events and wants a recording to explain a drop-off.
Where it falls short
On the pricing page, session replay appears only as an add-on under Pro, so the free plan does not include it. Growth pricing is given after signup, not published, and Pro and Premier are fully custom. Heap now belongs to Contentsquare, which makes its long-term roadmap a question for the parent company.
Wrong for
A marketer or small shop that wants replay included on a free tier; Contentsquare's free plan and Clarity both include recordings at no charge.
Pricing: Free for up to 10,000 sessions a month; Growth is priced by sessions through signup, Pro and Premier are custom; session replay is an add-on on Pro. (free plan)
Visit Heap →
#11 Quantum Metric
Enterprise digital analytics with replay and AI · United States · quantummetric.com
Enterprise contracts No free plan Felix AI
Quantum Metric is built for large digital organizations that want session replay, journey mapping and anomaly detection inside one enterprise contract. Its pricing page is explicit that cost depends on annual session volume, the number of digital properties, add-ons and professional services, and every plan includes implementation and training. Felix, its AI layer, summarizes sessions and works as an analyst. It earns eleventh place in a ranking written for small and mid-sized buyers, not because the product is weak but because that buyer has no way to try it.
Where it falls short
No free plan, no trial figure and no published price, so the first step is a demo. Add-ons such as Employee Experience, Contact Center and Voice of Customer extend the bill. The platform is aimed at big retail, financial and travel programs and carries more process than a small team needs.
Wrong for
Any business without a dedicated digital experience team and a procurement process; Contentsquare's free plan or Clarity is a faster way to learn what you need.
Pricing: Custom pricing based on annual session volume, digital properties, add-ons and services; no free plan and no published figures. (none)
Visit Quantum Metric →
What the data says about this market
The most striking fact about this market is how little it costs to start. Of the eleven products ranked here, six offer a permanent free plan (Clarity, Contentsquare, Fullstory, Mouseflow, PostHog and Heap), and OpenReplay is open source, so you can run it yourself at no license cost. Only Quantum Metric offers no way in without a sales call. The free tiers are not equal. Clarity states no traffic limit, Contentsquare gives 200,000 sessions a month, Fullstory 30,000, Heap 10,000 and Mouseflow just 500. A buyer comparing the headline word "free" without checking the unit will pick the wrong tool.
Consolidation is the second pattern. Contentsquare absorbed Hotjar, whose own site now redirects its pricing page to Contentsquare, and its Heap acquisition sits on the same owner list. Cisco is retiring Smartlook into Splunk. Microsoft keeps Clarity free, which sets a ceiling on what anyone can charge for basic recordings and heatmaps. Geography is lopsided too: eight of the eleven vendors are US-based, three European, and only the European ones sell on data-residency grounds without qualification.
Published pricing is available for seven of the eleven: Clarity (free), Mouseflow, Crazy Egg, Lucky Orange, LogRocket, OpenReplay and PostHog, which publishes its usage meter. Fullstory, Heap, Contentsquare and Quantum Metric keep paid tiers behind a conversation. The split follows buyer size. Tools that publish a price are aimed at teams that decide alone and buy by card, while the quote-only group sells to departments with procurement, security reviews and a digital experience budget. Between the two sits a gap of mid-sized buyers who are too big for a $29 plan and too small for a sales cycle, and few vendors here price for it.
The 11 ranked vendors, counted
- Headquarters by region: North America 8, Europe 3
- By country: United States 8, France 2, Denmark 1
- Pricing model: Per session / month 3, Quote only 3, Free 1, Open source + paid tiers 1, Per captured session 1, Per pageview / month 1, Usage-based 1
- Free option: Free plan 6, Free trial 3, None 1, Open source 1
Counted from the 11 vendors on this page. More in our market data.
For the wider market behind session replay software, read our report The Global Shift to ICT Services,
or browse all industry reports.
Questions and answers
What is the best session replay software in 2026?
Mouseflow comes first for a small or mid-sized business: its four paid tiers are published, running from $25 to $319 a month, there is a free 500-session plan, and heatmaps, replay and friction detection are all included. PostHog is the better pick if replay needs to sit beside funnels, feature flags and experiments. OpenReplay is better when recordings must stay on your own servers. If cost is the only issue, Microsoft Clarity is free.
Is Microsoft Clarity really free?
Microsoft describes Clarity as a free service forever, with no obligation to move to a paid version, and its homepage states there are no traffic limits. It includes session recordings, heatmaps, funnels, Copilot summaries and mobile SDKs. The trade is support: with no paid tier there is no account manager or service level agreement, so a business that needs a contract should look elsewhere.
What happened to Hotjar?
Hotjar's site now states that it is part of Contentsquare and that the two platforms have merged. Its pricing page redirects to Contentsquare, whose free plan covers 200,000 sessions a month with heatmaps, session replay, surveys, error monitoring and funnels. Existing Hotjar users can still log in from the Hotjar site, but anyone starting fresh signs up with Contentsquare.
How many sessions or pageviews will I actually need?
Take last month's sessions from your analytics tool and divide by what you plan to record. A site with 20,000 sessions fits Mouseflow's Advanced tier at 25,000 sessions, or Lucky Orange's Grow at 10,000 only with sampling. Crazy Egg counts pageviews instead, so a content site with many pages per visit reaches its limit sooner. PostHog counts recordings, which you can sample, so spend follows what you choose to capture.
Is Smartlook still worth buying?
No. Smartlook joined Cisco and is being moved into Splunk Observability Cloud. Its own notice lists May 31, 2026 as end of sale, August 31, 2026 as the end of contract renewals, and September 30, 2027 as the date the platform is decommissioned. Splunk says it will not migrate historical data, so export reports and recordings you want before the support window ends.
Which tool is best for debugging a customer's broken session?
LogRocket and OpenReplay are the two built around that job. LogRocket attaches console logs, network requests and errors to each replay and starts at $176 a month. OpenReplay includes a developer tools panel and can be self-hosted free. PostHog and Fullstory also link replay to error data. Clarity, Mouseflow and Crazy Egg are aimed at marketers and show behavior rather than technical context.
Do session replay tools capture passwords and card numbers?
They should not, but that depends on configuration. Every tool here offers masking so sensitive fields are hidden before data leaves the browser, and Crazy Egg says it masks sensitive data in recordings automatically. Do not assume defaults cover your custom checkout or account pages. Test with a dummy transaction, check the replay, and exclude entire pages that show personal details before you roll the tag out site-wide.
Can I keep session recordings in the EU?
Some vendors let you. PostHog offers an EU cloud region in Frankfurt alongside a US one in Virginia, and OpenReplay says its data sits on AWS servers in the European Union and can be self-hosted anywhere. Mouseflow, Contentsquare and OpenReplay are European companies. Vendors based in the United States, such as Fullstory, cite transfer mechanisms like the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework instead of local hosting.
What is the difference between session replay and a heatmap?
A session replay shows one visitor's visit in sequence, including mouse moves, scrolls, clicks and form entry, so you can see what went wrong for that person. A heatmap combines many visitors on one page into a click, scroll or attention map, so you see where behavior concentrates. Replay answers why one person got stuck. Heatmaps show where most people do. Nearly every tool here includes both.
Will recording sessions slow down my website?
Recording scripts add some weight, but the tools in this group load asynchronously and are meant to run without blocking the page. The practical risk is not speed but volume, because capturing every session on a large site is costly and rarely necessary. Sampling a share of traffic, or using LogRocket's conditional recording, keeps the cost down. Measure page speed with the script on and off after installing.
Should a small business pay for a session replay tool at all?
Often not at first. Clarity is free with no stated traffic limit, Contentsquare's free plan allows 200,000 sessions a month, and Fullstory's allows 30,000. Pay when you hit a real limit: retention that is too short, a missing integration, sessions you cannot filter, or a need for logs and support. Mouseflow at $25 and Crazy Egg at $29 are sensible first paid steps.
