Info
Microsoft Clarity is free at any traffic volume, ships an official MCP server, and now covers mobile apps too, which makes it the obvious starting point. Mouseflow has the deepest friction diagnosis with seven heatmap types, FullStory the strongest autocapture model, and Crazy Egg the most distinct click-analysis views. All seven were compared on published pricing, what actually meters the bill, retention windows, MCP status, and API depth.
Microsoft Clarity is the best of these heatmap tools for most teams, and the price is genuinely zero. Mouseflow is the better buy if you need to diagnose why users are struggling rather than just see where they clicked, and at $25 a month it's also one of the best heatmap tools for small business sites past what Clarity's feature set covers.
Last updated: August 30, 2026. PickMySoft is reader-supported and independently researched. Every price, limit, and retention figure below came from vendor documentation on that date, never from a competing vendor's comparison page.
Why You Need Heatmap Tools
- Analytics tells you what, not why. A 70% drop-off on a pricing page is a number. A scrollmap showing nobody reaches the plan comparison is a fix.
- Rage clicks are free diagnostics. Repeated clicks on a non-interactive element name a broken expectation faster than any survey will.
- Form abandonment has a specific field. Field-level analytics identify the exact input where people quit, which is usually not the one you would guess.
- Mobile behaves nothing like desktop. Tap maps and scroll depth on small screens routinely contradict what the desktop layout implies.
- Agents can now read behavioral data. Five of the seven tools below expose sessions and heatmaps through MCP, so an assistant can summarize patterns without a dashboard.
- Free heatmap tools stopped being crippled. Two options here cover a mid-size site at zero cost, so the case for paying is now retention and data export rather than traffic volume.
How We Evaluated
Each tool was scored on pricing transparency, what actually meters the bill, AI and MCP maturity, and how much data you can get back out. Retention got real weight, because a recording you cannot replay next month is not an asset. We restricted this to UX heatmap tools for websites and apps, so the WiFi coverage maps and trading heatmaps that share the search term are out of scope. Facts came from vendor documentation only. Full criteria live in our methodology.
1. Microsoft Clarity
Clarity's pricing page says it plainly: free, forever, with no traffic limits and no forced upgrade. That is unusual enough to be suspicious, and the honest answer is that Microsoft uses the anonymized behavioral data to improve its own machine learning models. If that trade is acceptable, nothing else here competes on value, and the 2026 version has real depth including an official MCP server and native mobile SDKs.
Pricing: Free with no paid tier of any kind. No traffic cap, unlimited heatmaps, unlimited websites, unlimited team members. Retention is the real constraint: click and heatmap data 9 months, session playback 30 days, favorited or labeled sessions 9 months.
Top Features
- Session recordings with always-on capture
- Click, scroll, area, and conversion heatmaps
- Rage-click and dead-click frustration detection
- Copilot AI session and heatmap summarization
- Rich segmentation with 40+ filters
- Smart events and conversion funnels
Pros
- Genuinely unlimited traffic at zero cost
- Official Microsoft-maintained MCP server
- Native SDKs for Android, iOS, Flutter, React Native
Cons
- Session replays are deleted after 30 days
- Export API allows only 10 requests per project per day
AI/MCP Integration: Official first-party server. Microsoft publishes and maintains clarity-mcp-server under its own GitHub organization, documented on Microsoft Learn, working with Claude Desktop, VS Code, and other MCP clients.
API Integration: Yes, the Clarity Data Export API with JWT bearer auth. The limits are strict: 10 requests per project per day, data confined to the previous one to three days, a maximum of three dimensions per request, and a 1,000-row cap with no pagination.
Cloud Based: Yes, Microsoft-hosted. No self-hosted option. The JavaScript capture library is open source, but the analysis backend is cloud only.
Platforms: Web on any site, plus mobile SDKs for Android, iOS, Flutter, and React Native, and a browser extension for live on-page inspection.
Best For: Almost every team, as a baseline. There is no budget argument against installing it alongside whatever else you use.
Editor score: 4.6/5. Unlimited enterprise-grade behavior analytics at no cost, from a vendor with Microsoft's infrastructure behind it, is not a trade most teams should refuse. The score reflects genuine constraints rather than the price: 30-day replay retention and an export API capped at 10 daily calls make long-term trend work and warehouse pipelines effectively impossible.
Compare related tooling in our data analysis tools category.
2. Hotjar
Hotjar is still the best-known name in this category, but what you buy in 2026 is different from what most articles describe. Contentsquare announced the acquisition in September 2021, Hotjar Ltd legally merged into the Contentsquare Group on July 1, 2025, and hotjar.com/pricing now issues a permanent redirect to Contentsquare. The Observe, Ask, and Engage split is gone, and so are the Basic, Plus, Business, and Scale tiers.
Pricing: Three products, each with its own tiers, purchasable separately or mixed. Experience Analytics covering replays, heatmaps, and funnels: Free at $0 for up to 200,000 monthly sessions with one project and one month of data access, Growth at $49 monthly or $39 billed yearly from 7,000 monthly sessions with 13-month data, Pro and Enterprise both quote-only. Voice of Customer: Free at 100 monthly responses, Growth at $99 monthly or $79 yearly. Product Analytics is quote-only at every tier. USD.
Top Features
- Session replays of real user journeys
- Heatmaps showing clicks, taps, and scroll depth
- Surveys and feedback widgets with AI summaries
- User journey and funnel drop-off analysis
- Error and performance monitoring
- Filters, segmentation, and third-party integrations
Pros
- 200,000 monthly sessions on the free tier
- Official MCP server available even on free
- Mobile SDKs added under Contentsquare
Cons
- No longer sold as an independently priced product
- Two of the three products are entirely sales-gated
AI/MCP Integration: Official first-party server from Contentsquare with OAuth, supporting Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Dust, VS Code, and Cursor. It is metered on every tier: 300 tool calls a month on Free, 36,000 a year on Growth, 72,000 on Pro, and 108,000 on Enterprise.
API Integration: Yes, documented at docs.contentsquare.com, listed as a tier feature from Growth upward.
Cloud Based: Yes. No on-premise option documented.
Platforms: Web, plus native mobile SDKs for iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, Cordova, and Capacitor under the Contentsquare platform.
Best For: Teams that want qualitative feedback and behavior analytics from one vendor and can accept buying into the Contentsquare platform.
Editor score: 4.4/5. The free tier is genuinely usable and MCP access on it is generous. The deduction is structural rather than technical: new buyers sign up for Contentsquare, getting replays plus surveys means stacking two subscriptions, and the widely-repeated 35-sessions-per-day free cap belongs to a plan structure that no longer exists.
3. Mouseflow
Mouseflow is the diagnosis tool of the group. Seven heatmap types against the two or three most competitors ship, plus a composite Friction Score that folds click errors, rage clicks, dead clicks, bounce events, speed browsing, 404s, and custom events into one number you can filter sessions and heatmaps by. Field-level form analytics with hesitation timing rounds it out.
Pricing: Free at $0 for 500 monthly sessions. Essential $25 for 5,000. Advanced $109 for 25,000. Premium $319 for 100,000. Enterprise custom. Annual billing advertised at up to 35% off. Retention scales from 1 month on free to 12 months on Premium. USD, despite Mouseflow being Danish.
Top Features
- Seven distinct heatmap types on every tracked page
- Session replay with AI-assisted session querying
- Proprietary Friction Score for automatic frustration detection
- Field-level form analytics with drop-off and hesitation timing
- Conversion funnels with drop-off attribution
- Targeted on-site feedback surveys tied to session data
Pros
- Deepest friction diagnosis layer in this price band
- Official MCP server built on its own REST API
- EU data residency with ISO 27001 and SOC 1 Type II
Cons
- REST API, MCP, and two heatmap types require $319 Premium
- Web-only, with no native mobile SDK documented
AI/MCP Integration: Official. Mouseflow ships and documents its own server exposing sessions, heatmaps, funnels, feedback, form, and friction data over natural language. Restricted to Growth and Premium tiers and above.
API Integration: Yes. REST API with HTTP Basic auth, documented at api-docs.mouseflow.com, plus a separate JavaScript tracking API. Access is limited to Premium and above.
Cloud Based: Yes. No self-hosted or on-premise deployment documented.
Platforms: Websites and mobile web through a JavaScript snippet, deployable via Google Tag Manager, with roughly 42 listed integrations. No native iOS or Android SDK.
Best For: Conversion teams who need to know why a page underperforms, not just where the clicks land. Related tools sit in our digital marketing category.
Editor score: 4.3/5. The Friction Score is a genuinely composite metric rather than a repackaged rage-click counter, and seven heatmap types is real depth. Gating the API, the MCP server, and the attention and movement heatmaps behind the $319 tier is the problem: the two cheapest paid plans cannot export their own data.
4. FullStory
FullStory's model is autocapture. It records interactions without pre-tagging and adapts as the site changes, which means you can ask a new question of sessions that already happened instead of instrumenting an event and waiting a fortnight for data. That retroactive property is the real product, and nothing else in this comparison matches it.
Pricing: Custom-quoted. Three Analytics tiers exist, Business, Advanced, and Enterprise, all gated behind a pricing request. A free tier does exist and is unusually generous on retention: 30,000 sessions a month, 12 months of data, up to 10 users, no card required. Mobile, StoryAI, Guides and Surveys, and Multi-Org Management are all priced as add-ons rather than included.
Top Features
- Autocapture with no manual event tagging required
- Retroactive analysis of historical sessions and untagged events
- Session replay with live session viewing
- Click maps, scroll maps, and conversion maps
- Funnels, segmentation, retention, and journey analytics
- Natural-language insights through StoryAI
Pros
- 12-month retention on the free tier, longest here
- Retroactive analysis of events you never tagged
- Official MCP server, a verified Claude connector
Cons
- No published price on any paid tier
- Mobile heatmaps cover click and conversion maps only
AI/MCP Integration: Official vendor server, documented in the developer guide and listed as a verified connector in Anthropic's directory. Enabled by org admins under StoryAI Features. Currently in beta and available to paying customers.
API Integration: Yes. Browser API, Server API, Mobile API, Guides and Surveys API, plus Fullstory Anywhere for warehouse activation, all documented at developer.fullstory.com.
Cloud Based: Yes, on Google Cloud with a US default and an EU data center. No on-premise option documented.
Platforms: Web and JavaScript plus native mobile SDKs for iOS and Android, with React Native and Flutter support. Mobile is a paid add-on.
Best For: Product and engineering teams who want to investigate incidents retroactively rather than plan instrumentation in advance.
Editor score: 4.1/5. Autocapture plus 12-month free retention is a strong combination, and the MCP server is well integrated. Two things pull it down: no paid tier publishes a price, and mobile heatmap coverage narrows sharply, with no scroll maps on native apps, no map capture in replay on iOS, and reduced resolution on Android.
5. Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg has been doing this longer than anyone here, and its five distinct report types from a single snapshot remain a real differentiator. Confetti in particular splits every individual click out by traffic source and device, which a flat heatmap cannot do. The pricing model is where buyers get caught.
Pricing: Metered on tracked pageviews, not sessions, which is unusual and matters. Starter $29 a month billed annually for 5,000 tracked pageviews, 5 heatmap reports, and 50 recordings, with no A/B testing. Plus $99 for 150,000 pageviews with unlimited A/B testing. Pro $249 for 500,000. Enterprise $599 for 1,000,000. A free tier is referenced in Crazy Egg's own support documentation, but its pageview limit is not documented as of August 30, 2026. USD.
Top Features
- Five heatmap report types on one page snapshot
- Session recordings of real visitor journeys
- Unlimited A/B testing on Plus and above
- On-site surveys and popup CTAs
- Conversion goal tracking and error tracking
- AI-optimized page data export to any LLM
Pros
- Five distinct click-analysis views from one snapshot
- Official MCP server pulling heatmap and recording data
- Native installs for eight CMS and ecommerce platforms
Cons
- Starter tier withholds A/B testing entirely
- Pageview metering scales cost with traffic, not visitors studied
AI/MCP Integration: Official. Crazy Egg publishes an MCP server that pulls heatmap, recording, and analytics data into Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or Copilot.
API Integration: Partially public. The customer-facing tracking API for goal-conversion events is publicly documented. The fuller API for creating heatmaps and reading results sits behind an account login, so no complete endpoint reference is published.
Cloud Based: Yes. No self-hosted or on-premise option.
Platforms: Web via a JavaScript snippet, with native installs for WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, Google Tag Manager, and Segment. No mobile SDK documented.
Best For: Marketing teams running A/B tests who want click analysis segmented by source and device.
Editor score: 3.9/5. Confetti and Overlay still do something the newer tools do not, and shipping an official MCP server was not a given for a product this established. The $29 tier is the issue: 5,000 tracked pageviews with A/B testing withheld pushes anyone serious straight to $99.
6. Lucky Orange
Lucky Orange bundles live chat, live visitor view, surveys, and announcements into the same subscription as heatmaps and recordings, and unlocks every feature on every tier. The only variables are session volume and retention. At 3,500 sessions a month, the $32 Build plan replaces two or three point tools, which is a real argument for a small ecommerce site.
Pricing: Build $32 a month billed annually or $39 monthly for 3,500 sessions. Grow $72 or $89 for 10,000. Expand $199 or $249 starting at 50,000. Scale $839 or $1,049 starting at 300,000. Enterprise custom above 700,000. Retention starts at 60 days on every tier, upgradable to 90, 180, or 365 days. Additional sites $5 each. Unlimited team members on all tiers. USD.
Free tier caveat: the main pricing page offers only a 7-day trial with no permanent free plan, despite the page title still saying otherwise. The Shopify App Store listing does carry a free tier at 100 sessions a month plus a Launch tier at $19 for 500 sessions, neither of which appears on luckyorange.com. Which entry point you use changes what you can buy.
Top Features
- Dynamic heatmaps for clicks, scrolls, and movement
- Session recordings with friction detection
- Conversion funnels with drop-off by step
- Live chat and live visitor view
- Unlimited surveys and announcements
- Page and form analytics with field-level drop-off
Pros
- Every feature unlocked on every paid tier
- Live chat bundled rather than sold separately
- Unlimited team members at all price points
Cons
- No public REST API, webhooks, or bulk data export
- Tier ladder jumps from 10,000 straight to 50,000 sessions
AI/MCP Integration: None official. No MCP server appears on luckyorange.com, in its developer docs, or in its GitHub organization. Access exists only through auto-generated third-party wrappers via Zapier MCP and viaSocket.
API Integration: Partial, and this is the real limitation. Lucky Orange publishes a browser JavaScript library and a Node.js server library, but no public REST or HTTP API, no webhooks, and no bulk data-export endpoint as of August 30, 2026.
Cloud Based: Yes. No self-hosted option.
Platforms: Web, with integrations for Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, WordPress, Webflow, Unbounce, ClickFunnels, HubSpot, GA4, Optimizely, and Google Tag Manager.
Best For: Small ecommerce sites that want behavior analytics and live chat from one subscription. Compare storefront tooling in our ecommerce software category.
Editor score: 3.8/5. Unlocking everything on every tier is a genuinely customer-friendly decision, and the bundled chat has real value at the low end. The absence of any documented export path is disqualifying for anyone who needs this data in a warehouse, and the 10,000 to 50,000 session gap means a mid-size site pays for capacity it will not use.
7. Plerdy
Plerdy covers more ground for the money than anything else here. One script and one subscription buy heatmaps, session replay, an SEO crawler with SERP tracking, popup forms, NPS surveys, and ecommerce revenue tracking. Most competitors sell behavior analytics alone and leave SEO and lead capture to separate vendors.
Pricing: Free forever at $0 with 100 heatmap pageviews a day, 500 video sessions, a 5,000-page SEO audit, 100 popup displays, and one month of storage. Startup $21 a month billed annually or $32 monthly for 500 heatmaps a day. Scale $42 or $64 for 1,500. Thrive $70 or $108 for 3,000 with six-month storage. Enterprise tiers run $97, $161, and $253 annually for 7,000, 15,000, and 50,000 heatmaps a day. Annual billing is 35% off. USD, despite Plerdy being Ukrainian.
Top Features
- Website click and scroll heatmaps with rage-click detection
- Session replay of real user visits
- Built-in SEO checker and SERP position tracker
- Popup forms, NPS, and website feedback surveys
- Ecommerce sales-performance and event tracking
- Conversion funnel analysis with A/B testing
Pros
- Widest feature breadth per dollar in this comparison
- Free tier is permanent rather than a trial
- Official extensions for seven CMS and ecommerce platforms
Cons
- No official MCP server and no documented export API
- Retention is 1 month on free and 3 months on mid-tiers
AI/MCP Integration: None official. No MCP server is documented on Plerdy's own site as of August 30, 2026. Access exists only through Zapier's third-party MCP endpoint.
API Integration: Partial. Plerdy issues API keys in-app for Zapier and email-service integrations, but publishes no public developer documentation for pulling heatmap or session-replay data programmatically.
Cloud Based: Yes. No self-hosted option documented.
Platforms: JavaScript on any site, with official extensions for Shopify, WordPress, Wix, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, and OpenCart, deployable via Google Tag Manager. Chrome extensions for SEO and UX analysis.
Best For: Small marketing teams who want behavior analytics, SEO checks, and lead capture from one subscription rather than three.
Editor score: 3.6/5. The breadth is real and the free tier is permanent rather than a trial in disguise, which counts. Short tier-gated retention plus no documented export endpoints means anything outside the dashboard is hard, and unlike five others here it has no first-party MCP server.
Comparison Table
| Tool | Best For | Starting Price | Standout Feature | AI-MCP Support | API Integration |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Clarity | Any team, any traffic | Free forever | No traffic cap at zero cost | Official, Microsoft-maintained | Export API, 10 calls/day |
| Hotjar | Behavior plus feedback | Free, $39/mo Growth | 200k free monthly sessions | Official, metered per tier | REST, Growth and above |
| Mouseflow | Diagnosing friction | Free, $25/mo Essential | Seven heatmap types, Friction Score | Official, Premium only | REST, Premium only |
| FullStory | Retroactive investigation | Free, paid quote-only | Autocapture with no tagging | Official, beta | Browser, Server, Mobile APIs |
| Crazy Egg | Click analysis by source | $29/mo Starter | Confetti splits clicks by source | Official | Tracking API public only |
| Lucky Orange | Small ecommerce sites | $32/mo Build | Live chat bundled in | None, Zapier only | Client libraries, no REST |
| Plerdy | Breadth on a budget | Free, $21/mo Startup | SEO crawler bundled with heatmaps | None, Zapier only | Zapier keys only |
How to Choose Heatmap Tools
- Install Clarity first regardless. It costs nothing, caps nothing, and gives you a baseline to judge whether a paid tool adds enough to justify itself.
- Rank the best heatmap tools for website work by your own bottleneck. Diagnosis, retroactive investigation, and segmented click analysis are three different problems, and no single tool leads on all three.
- Check what meters the bill against your traffic shape. Crazy Egg counts pageviews while Mouseflow and Lucky Orange count sessions, which produces very different bills for the same site.
- Read the retention window before the feature list. Clarity deletes replays after 30 days and Plerdy's free tier keeps one month, which rules both out for quarterly analysis.
- Confirm the export path exists at your tier. Mouseflow's API needs the $319 plan, and Lucky Orange has no REST API at all.
- Decide whether you need mobile app coverage. Only Clarity and FullStory ship native SDKs, and FullStory's mobile heatmaps omit scroll maps entirely.
- Separate real MCP servers from Zapier wrappers. Five vendors here publish first-party servers. Lucky Orange and Plerdy do not, whatever a marketplace listing implies.
- Watch for tier gaps rather than tier prices. Lucky Orange jumps from 10,000 to 50,000 sessions, so a site at 15,000 pays for 50,000.
What This Actually Costs
Take a site doing roughly 30,000 sessions and 100,000 pageviews a month. Microsoft Clarity covers it at $0 with no caveats. FullStory Free also covers it at $0, at 30,000 sessions with 12-month retention, which is the most generous free offer here on retention.
Among paid options, Crazy Egg Plus handles the pageview volume at $99. Plerdy Enterprise 1 lands near $97 for the daily heatmap quota. Lucky Orange Expand costs $199, because 30,000 sessions clears the 10,000 ceiling on Grow and there is nothing between. Mouseflow is the sharpest jump: 30,000 sessions exceeds the 25,000 on Advanced at $109, so the real number is Premium at $319, which at least brings the API and MCP server with it.
Hotjar Experience Analytics Growth starts at $39 billed yearly from 7,000 monthly sessions, so 30,000 sits in a higher band than the entry price implies. Budget from your own session count rather than the headline figure.
Final Thoughts
Two things changed in this category and most write-ups have not caught up with either. Hotjar is no longer a standalone product, and Smartlook is no longer purchasable at all. Anything describing Hotjar's Basic and Plus tiers or recommending Smartlook is working from a version of the market that ended this year.
The other shift is that free stopped meaning crippled. Clarity has no traffic cap, FullStory Free keeps a year of data, and Hotjar's free tier allows 200,000 monthly sessions with MCP access on top. The strongest argument for paying is no longer volume. It is friction diagnosis, retention, and getting your data back out.
Start with Clarity. Add Mouseflow if you need to understand struggle rather than observe clicks. Add FullStory if your questions tend to arrive after the incident. Choose Crazy Egg for segmented click analysis alongside A/B testing, Lucky Orange if bundled live chat genuinely replaces a second tool, and Plerdy if one subscription covering SEO and lead capture is worth more than a first-party API. More options sit in our data analytics archive and the website audit software category.