Visibility in this ranking can be paid for. Payment gives a vendor more visibility, higher up on the review pages; 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. Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category,
wherever the category has them; the established names follow from place 4 in their ranked order. How it works: placement disclosure ·
editorial process.
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.
- Pricing: Per session / month. 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: free plan.
- Best for: Small sites wanting predictable session-based pricing
- Strengths: Session replay; Heatmaps; Friction detection.
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.
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.
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.
- Pricing: Usage-based. 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: free plan.
- Best for: Product teams wanting replay inside analytics
- Strengths: Session replay; Product analytics; Feature flags.
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.
Wrong for
A marketer or store owner who wants heatmaps and a handful of recordings with no analytics setup or event tracking to configure.
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.
- Pricing: Open source + paid tiers. 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. Free plan: open source.
- Best for: Engineering teams that must own recordings
- Strengths: Session replay; DevTools; Co-browsing.
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.
Wrong for
A marketer without an engineer on call, or a small shop that wants a free hosted plan with no servers to run.
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.
- Pricing: Free. Free, described by Microsoft as free forever with no stated traffic limit and no paid version to upgrade to. Free plan: free plan.
- Best for: Anyone who wants replay at zero cost
- Strengths: Session recordings; Heatmaps; Funnels.
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.
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.
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.
- Pricing: Quote only. 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: free plan.
- Best for: Teams outgrowing basic heatmaps
- Strengths: Session replay; Heatmaps; Attention maps.
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.
Wrong for
A solo site owner who wants a stable, simple tool with a fixed price list.
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.
- Pricing: Quote only. 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: free plan.
- Best for: Product teams that want replay plus analytics
- Strengths: Session replay; Product analytics; Heatmaps.
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.
Wrong for
A very small site, or a team that needs a published price before it can approve a card purchase.
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.
- Pricing: Per pageview / month. 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 plan: free trial.
- Best for: Marketers who want heatmaps first
- Strengths: Heatmap reports; Session recordings; A/B testing.
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.
Wrong for
A team that wants to watch hundreds of sessions a week, or debug app errors with logs.
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: Per session / month. 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 plan: free trial.
- Best for: Small stores wanting live view and chat
- Strengths: Session recordings; Dynamic heatmaps; Conversion funnels.
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.
Wrong for
A team with heavy traffic on a modest budget, or a developer who needs error context.
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.
- Pricing: Per captured session. 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 plan: free trial.
- Best for: Engineering teams fixing broken customer sessions
- Strengths: Session replay; Heatmaps; Performance monitoring.
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.
Wrong for
A marketing team that wants a heatmap and a few recordings for under $50 a month.
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.
- Pricing: Per session / month. 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: free plan.
- Best for: Product teams who need analytics first
- Strengths: Session replay add-on; Heatmaps; Product analytics.
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.
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.
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.
- Pricing: Quote only. Custom pricing based on annual session volume, digital properties, add-ons and services; no free plan and no published figures. Free plan: none.
- Best for: Large retail and financial digital teams
- Strengths: Session replay; Interaction heatmaps; Journey mapping.
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.
Wrong for
Any business without a dedicated digital experience team and a procurement process.
Visit Quantum Metric →
Questions and answers
What is the best session replay software in 2026?
Mouseflow ranks first of 11, best for small sites wanting predictable session-based pricing. PostHog is second (product teams wanting replay inside analytics) and OpenReplay third (engineering teams that must own recordings). Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands, wherever the category has them.
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.
What happened to Hotjar?
Hotjar's site now states that it is part of Contentsquare and that the two platforms have merged.
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.
Is Smartlook still worth buying?
No. Smartlook joined Cisco and is being moved into Splunk Observability Cloud.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
