Hotjar

Heatmaps, session replays, and surveys to understand user behaviour.

About

In practice. What you can do with Hotjar.

Hotjar remains one of the easiest ways to see what visitors actually do on a site: heatmaps for attention, session replays for individual journeys, and on-site surveys for direct feedback. First-run setup stays simple, and the free tier is generous enough to run a real audit before paying anything.

The catch is what happened after Contentsquare's acquisition: the product that used to be one bill for heatmaps, replay, and surveys is now three separately priced product lines (Experience Analytics, Voice of Customer, Product Analytics). A team that wants the full old-Hotjar experience now stitches together multiple subscriptions instead of one plan, and pricing on the paid Growth tier scales steeply with session volume.

For a solo freelancer or a small team that just needs occasional heatmaps and a handful of session replays, the free tier or an entry Growth plan still does the job well. For anyone who needs surveys and product analytics too, budget for more than the historical single Hotjar price.

Practical uses

Spotting why visitors abandon a checkout or signup flow by watching session replays of real drop-offs.
Using heatmaps to check whether a redesigned landing page actually gets attention on the elements that matter.
Running an on-site survey to collect qualitative feedback on a specific page or feature.

Features & use cases

Analytics ux

Replays sessions

Tests utilisateurs

For. What works in its favour.

Fast to set up, no engineering work needed for a first useful result.
Generous free tier (200K sessions/month) is enough for many small sites to run a real audit.
AI-generated summaries of heatmaps and recordings speed up analysis on busier sites.

Pays off from

59 minsaved a month

Hotjar costs $39/month. If your hour is worth $40, those 59 min cover it.

Your hour is worth$40/h

Against. What to plan for.

Heatmaps/replay, surveys, and product analytics are now three separately billed products instead of one plan.
Paid tier pricing scales steeply with session volume and can surprise teams that grow past the entry tier.
No clear self-serve bulk data export was found, which weighs on portability if the team switches tools later.

Too expensive if

You use it less than once a month
A simple free version or a tool already in your stack would do

Pricing. What does Hotjar cost ?

Free

Permanent free plan

200,000 sessions/month for heatmaps and session replay
1 project
Unlimited seats included.

Growth

ToolTrim reference price

$39/mo

Billed annually · $49/mo billed monthly.

Starts at $49/month paid monthly, or $39/month billed annually (Save 20%), for the lowest session tier (from 7K monthly sessions)
Scales with session volume up to a materially higher price at 200K+ sessions (exact top figure not confirmed on an official page)

Pro

Custom quote.

Custom pricing
From roughly 1M+ sessions/month
Up to 3 projects
Retroactive filtering
AI replay summaries
Revenue tracking

Enterprise

Custom quote.

Custom pricing, unlimited projects, experience monitoring, error summaries, data feeds, SLAs.

Checked on October 2, 2026Official pricing

Alternatives. What could replace Hotjar?

PostHog3.8/5 · Very goodFreeBundled product analytics, session replay, feature flags, error tracking and more, each with its own free monthly allowance.

Amplitude3.6/5 · Very goodFreeThe product analytics platform to understand user behaviour.

Dovetail3.2/5 · GoodFreeDovetail centralizes user interviews, documents and surveys into a searchable repository with AI summaries and semantic clustering.

Our verdict. What to know about Hotjar.

How the score breaks down

Added value

Still gives fast qualitative insight into user behavior, but the post-acquisition split into three separately billed products (heatmaps/replay, surveys, product analytics) raises the effective cost of getting the same coverage the old bundled Hotjar plan gave.

Simplicity

Historically one of the fastest tools to get a first heatmap or recording running, with a simple free tier and no engineering setup required.

Fit for purpose

Delivers on its core promise (see real visitor behavior) without workarounds, and now adds AI-generated summaries to speed up analysis.

Performance

Feature ceiling is now backed by Contentsquare's broader experience-analytics platform (funnels, error/performance monitoring, retroactive filtering on higher tiers), well above a standalone heatmap tool.

Reversibility

No clear self-serve bulk-export or open API for historical recordings/heatmaps was found on the accessible pages; data appears to stay largely inside the platform.

Decided? Visit Hotjar or compare alternatives

AI. What it changes for Hotjar.

AI augments this tool

Go further with AI

Hotjar added AI summaries of recorded sessions and user feedback, to spot friction points faster without watching every video one by one.

Can AI replace it?

Replace Hotjar with an AI? No: recording real user behavior (heatmaps, sessions) remains a real-data collection need, not generation. Verdict: AI summarizes the data, Hotjar collects it.

The AIs that matter here

ChatGPT

Frequently asked questions. What people ask about Hotjar.

What is Hotjar used for?

Heatmaps, session replays, and surveys to understand user behaviour.

How much does Hotjar cost?

Hotjar costs $39/month (Growth plan). Price verified on October 2, 2026.

Is Hotjar suitable for beginners?

A marketer, growth lead, or product person on a small team who needs to see how visitors actually behave on a site or app (where they click, where they drop off, what confuses them) without setting up a full analytics engineering stack.

Is Hotjar worth the price?

If your monthly sessions push you past the entry Growth tier, get an exact quote before committing; the jump between tiers is steep.

What are the best alternatives to Hotjar?

The main alternatives to Hotjar are: PostHog, Amplitude, Dovetail. Free alternatives: PostHog, Amplitude, Dovetail.

Stacks. Where Hotjar fits in.

HotjarFrom $39/mo

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