Alternatives · 2026
Ranked, scored and explained. What each one does better, what you give up, and when staying put is the right call.
Clarity is free at any volume with no session cap, so nobody leaves it over price. They leave for two other reasons. The first is the consent banner: Clarity sets cookies and records sessions, which in the UK and EU is the more demanding end of the consent requirement, and if you are trying to remove your banner then Clarity is the thing standing in the way. The second is what free means here. Microsoft's own documentation describes using the collected data for its own purposes, inside a company that sells advertising.
The third, quieter reason is portability. Export is limited, so your history does not travel with you.
When to stay put. Keep Clarity if your budget is genuinely zero and a consent banner is already acceptable to you. For a small business whose realistic alternative is having no behaviour data at all, it is very hard to argue against, and the product itself is good rather than merely free.
| Tool | From | Free tier | Cookies | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Absolutely Analytics | $9 per month | No free tier. A 30-day trial of the exact tier you picked | None, so no consent banner | 8.9 |
| Hotjar | Free then from $39 | Yes, 200,000 monthly sessions on one project | Yes | 5.6 |
| Matomo | Free self-hosted; cloud from €22 | Yes, the entire on-premise product | Optional, and it runs cookieless if configured | 7.0 |
| LogRocket | Free then from about $69 | Yes, 1,000 sessions a month | Yes | 5.8 |
| FullStory | Free then quoted | Yes, with a monthly session limit | Yes | 5.7 |
| Smartlook | Free then from about $55 | Yes, with a monthly session limit | Yes | 5.5 |
The answer if the consent banner is the problem. Click, scroll and attention maps from $14 with no cookies and no banner, in the same tool counting your traffic, and session replay that masks every input in the browser before transmission rather than after receipt.
From $9 per month. None, so no consent banner. Full review →
The answer if you want a vendor whose incentive is your subscription rather than your visitors' data. Better on-page surveys, a free tier at 200,000 monthly sessions, and Growth from $39 a month billed yearly.
From Free then from $39. Yes. Full review →
The answer if you want heatmaps and session recording on your own hardware. Self-hosted it costs nothing and nothing leaves your infrastructure, though the Cloud heatmap allowance is small at 1,500 pageviews a month.
From Free self-hosted; cloud from €22. Optional, and it runs cookieless if configured. Full review →
The answer if the recordings are for engineers. Console output, network requests and application state captured alongside the session, which turns an unreproducible bug report into a video with a stack trace.
From Free then from about $69. Yes. Full review →
The answer if you want to query sessions rather than watch them, at enterprise scale and with a quoted price.
From Free then quoted. Yes. Full review →
The answer if you need native mobile app replay, where Clarity's coverage is weaker than its web offering.
From Free then from about $55. Yes. Full review →
Three reasons. To avoid the consent banner, which Clarity requires and which costs you a share of your visitors. To keep an advertising company's script off your pages. And to own and export your history, which Clarity's limited export makes difficult.
There is no charge and no session cap, so the catch is not commercial. Clarity sets cookies and Microsoft's own documentation describes using the data it collects for its own purposes. That is disclosed and legal, and it is a different bargain from paying a vendor a subscription.
Only the cookieless ones. Absolutely Analytics includes click, scroll and attention maps without setting cookies. Matomo can be configured to run cookieless with IP anonymisation. Hotjar, FullStory, LogRocket and Smartlook all set cookies and all need consent.
Only partially. Clarity's export options are limited, which is the practical cost of the free tier and a good reason to start a replacement running in parallel before you need the history rather than after.
These are desk reviews and the ordering reflects my own weighted scoring, which is published in full. There are no affiliate links on this page and no vendor has paid to appear on it. Read the full Microsoft Clarity review, or send me a correction.