Head to head
Microsoft Clarity vs FullStory
Free at any volume, or quoted at enterprise scale. Scored on ten weighted measures, with every price read on the same day.
Microsoft Clarity
5.9/10
No. 20 of 30
FullStory
5.7/10
No. 25 of 30
One of these is free at any traffic volume with no session cap. The other does not publish its prices. That asymmetry frames everything else, and it is worth being explicit about it before comparing features.
Clarity runs on more than two million sites and gives you recordings, click and scroll maps, rage-click detection and AI summaries for nothing. FullStory indexes every interaction so sessions become queryable, and sells that to enterprises.
The verdict
Microsoft Clarity, for almost everybody who is not already an enterprise buyer.
It does the core job well. The recordings are solid, the heatmaps readable, the AI summaries save you watching forty sessions to find a pattern, and there is no session cap to plan around. When the alternative costs an unpublished sum that requires a sales call, the burden of proof sits heavily on the paid option.
FullStory's advantage is real but narrow: turning sessions into a dataset you can query, at a scale where that matters, with the governance an enterprise expects. If you want every session containing a rage click on checkout and then the conversion rate of that cohort, Clarity will not do it and FullStory will.
The thing to weigh rather than skip is what free means here. Clarity sets cookies and Microsoft's own documentation describes using the collected data for its own purposes, inside a company that sells advertising. That is disclosed and legal, and it is a different bargain from paying a vendor a subscription. Both tools need a consent banner regardless.
Side by side
| Microsoft Clarity | FullStory | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall score | 5.9 / 10 | 5.7 / 10 |
| Rank on this list | No. 20 of 30 | No. 25 of 30 |
| From | Free at any volume | Free then quoted |
| What that buys | No paid tier, no traffic limit, no session cap | A free tier with a session limit; paid pricing is quoted rather than published |
| Free tier | The whole product is free | Yes, with a monthly session limit |
| Cookies | Yes | Yes |
| Script size | Tens of kilobytes | Tens of kilobytes |
| Hosting | Microsoft | US, with regional options |
| Trading since | 2020 | 2014 |
| Price | Free at any volume, no session cap | Free tier with a session limit; paid quoted |
| Pricing transparency | No price to publish | Not published above the free tier |
| Session querying | Filters and AI summaries | Every interaction indexed and queryable |
| Business model | Undisclosed value to Microsoft | Your subscription |
| Data export | Limited | Available on paid plans |
| Cookie banner in the UK and EU | Required | Required |
| Installed base | More than 2 million sites and apps | Enterprise-weighted |
The ten measures, scored
| Measure | Microsoft Clarity | FullStory |
|---|---|---|
| Insight quality | 6 | 7 |
| Privacy architecture | 3 | 4 |
| Value for money | 10 | 5 |
| Setup and time to data | 8 | 6 |
| Script weight | 4 | 2 |
| Analytical depth | 4 | 8 |
| Behaviour tooling | 9 | 9 |
| Data ownership | 3 | 6 |
| Accuracy | 5 | 6 |
| Vendor conduct | 6 | 5 |
| Weighted overall | 5.9 | 5.7 |
Higher is better. The overall figure is the weighted mean, relative to the 30 tools on this list. How this works.
Which one should you pick
Choose Microsoft Clarity if
You want recordings and heatmaps, a consent banner is acceptable, and the budget is small or nil.
Choose FullStory if
You need to query sessions as data at enterprise scale, and you have the budget and the procurement process for a quoted contract.
Common questions
Is Microsoft Clarity really free?
There is no charge and no session cap at any volume. It is not free of cost: Clarity sets cookies and Microsoft's own documentation describes using the collected data for its own purposes. You are paying in data rather than money.
What does FullStory do that Clarity cannot?
Index every interaction so sessions can be queried as a dataset, then quantified. Asking for every session with a rage click on checkout and measuring what that cohort did is beyond Clarity's filtering.
Do both require consent?
Yes, in the UK and EU. Both set cookies and record sessions, which is the more demanding end of the consent requirement, so both cost you the visitors who decline.
Which should a small business choose?
Clarity, almost always. It is free at any volume and does the core job well, and FullStory's advantages appear at a scale and budget most small businesses do not have.
Both entries above are desk reviews written from published evidence, and every judgement is my opinion rather than a statement of fact. Read the full reviews for Microsoft Clarity and FullStory, or tell me where I have got something wrong.