Monthly cost as recorded sessions grow
Clarity never changes — it's $0 at every row. Watch how fast LogRocket's bill starts climbing compared to Hotjar's much larger free allowance.
| Sessions/mo | Clarity | Hotjar | LogRocket | Cheapest paid option |
|---|
Why "free" means three different things here
Microsoft Clarity has no pricing page because it has no price — it's unmetered and unlimited, full stop. Microsoft doesn't monetize it through a paid tier; the cost to you is accepting its data terms and living with a lighter analytics/funnel feature set than the paid tools offer. There is no breakpoint, no overage, nothing to budget for. Hotjar, now sold as Contentsquare Experience Analytics after the 2026 merger, takes the opposite approach: a genuinely generous free tier (10,000 recorded sessions/month, within a 200,000-session traffic cap) that covers most small sites outright, then a roughly 15-step Growth ladder that scales from about $49/month near 7,000 sessions up to $739/month at 200,000 sessions. Past 1,000,000 sessions, Pro and Enterprise pricing disappears behind a sales call.
LogRocket front-loads the bill. Its free plan caps out at just 1,000 sessions/month with a single month of retention — a ceiling most production sites clear in days, not months. The self-serve Team plan picks up from there starting near $99/month for roughly 10,000 sessions, with Professional plans around $295/month (annual commitment) for higher volumes and Enterprise custom-quoted at scale. The practical result: a low-traffic side project pays $0 on either Hotjar or Clarity but is already paying LogRocket, while a site needing LogRocket's deeper developer-focused tooling (Redux/network inspection, error correlation) accepts that trade-off deliberately rather than by accident.
How this calculator works
The Session Replay & Heatmap Cost Calculator compares three vendor pricing shapes — Microsoft Clarity (always free, unlimited), Hotjar/Contentsquare Experience Analytics (large free tier, then a self-serve session ladder) and LogRocket (small free tier, then a self-serve session ladder that starts billing sooner) — at your monthly recorded sessions. Clarity's cost is always $0. Hotjar is $0 up to your free-session input, then interpolates along its published Growth ladder (roughly $49/mo near 7,000 sessions up to $739/mo at 200,000 sessions) and switches to "Contact sales" above 1,000,000 sessions. LogRocket is $0 up to its free-session input, then interpolates between its published Team anchor (~$99/mo near 10,000 sessions) and Professional anchor (~$295/mo near 100,000 sessions), switching to "Contact sales" above that. The sweep table below shows all three across a range of session volumes so you can see exactly where each free tier runs out.
These are representative pricing shapes based on published 2026 figures and third-party pricing trackers, not live vendor quotes — actual Hotjar/Contentsquare and LogRocket pricing varies by billing term (monthly vs annual), region/currency, project count and negotiated enterprise terms, and both vendors sell custom Pro/Enterprise tiers above their published self-serve plans. Always confirm current pricing directly with the vendor before budgeting.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Hotjar cost in 2026?
Hotjar is now sold as Contentsquare Experience Analytics. The free plan covers up to 10,000 recorded sessions per month (within a 200,000-session traffic cap) for one project. Paid Growth plans start around $49/month near 7,000 sessions and climb a roughly 15-step ladder to about $739/month at 200,000 sessions. Past 1,000,000 sessions, Pro and Enterprise pricing is quote-only. These are representative published figures, not live quotes — confirm current pricing with Contentsquare before budgeting.
Is Microsoft Clarity really free, and why?
Yes — Clarity has no paid tier at all. It's free forever with no session or traffic limits, and Microsoft publishes no upsell plan. The trade-off isn't money: using Clarity means accepting its data-collection terms, and it ships less funnel/segmentation depth than Hotjar or LogRocket. For a team that mainly needs session replay and heatmaps without deep conversion analytics, it's effectively free infrastructure with no asterisk on price.
What free tier does LogRocket give you, and when do you need to pay?
LogRocket's free plan covers up to 1,000 sessions/month with 1 month of retention and 3 seats — about a tenth of Hotjar's free allowance. Most sites with even modest traffic outgrow that within weeks. The self-serve Team plan then starts near $99/month for roughly 10,000 sessions/month and scales up through higher session bands from there. Professional plans (around $295/month) require an annual commitment for higher volumes; Enterprise is custom-quoted for 1M+ sessions.
Which session replay tool is cheapest for a growing startup?
Microsoft Clarity is unconditionally cheapest since it's always $0 — but it ships fewer analytics and funnel features than Hotjar or LogRocket. Between the two paid tools, Hotjar's free tier (10,000 sessions) outlasts LogRocket's (1,000 sessions) by roughly 10x, so a startup under about 10,000 monthly sessions pays $0 on Hotjar while already owing money on LogRocket. Past that point, run your own session volume through the calculator above — Hotjar's ladder tends to stay proportionally cheaper per session at high volume, while LogRocket's bill ramps up sooner.
Can I use Microsoft Clarity instead of paying for Hotjar or LogRocket?
For core session replay and heatmaps, yes — many teams run Clarity as their always-on default and only add a paid tool for what Clarity doesn't do well: deep funnel and conversion analytics (Hotjar), or developer-focused replay bundled with error, log and network/Redux inspection (LogRocket). A common pattern is Clarity everywhere for free, with a paid tool layered in only once a specific team needs its deeper feature set.