Hotjar
Analytics Verified May 2026
Hotjar deal: Save 40% on annual plans
Behavior analytics platform with heatmaps, session recordings, and user feedback surveys — now part of Contentsquare.
- Heatmaps, scroll maps, and click maps visualise exactly where users engage on every page
- Session recordings replay real user journeys without any complex instrumentation
- On-page surveys and feedback widgets capture qualitative insight directly in context
- Basic plan is genuinely free and functional for low-traffic sites or initial testing
How Hotjar scored 78/100
6 weighted criteria, each scored out of 10 and published with its reasoning. Featured placements never move a score.
Deal Strength
8.0 /10The offer pairs a free-forever Basic plan with a sizeable discount on annual billing, so teams can start mapping user behavior at zero cost and only pay once they scale past the daily session cap. Discounting the yearly plan is a genuine saving rather than a token trial credit.
Value for Money
8.0 /10Hotjar earns its price by bundling heatmaps, session recordings, conversion funnels and surveys into one behavior-analytics suite, and annual billing undercuts many single-purpose rivals. The trade-off is that heatmaps/recordings and surveys now bill as separate products, so teams that want both carry two subscriptions.
Capability
8.0 /10Hotjar combines qualitative and quantitative lenses in a single platform: heatmaps, session recordings, conversion funnels, rage-click detection, on-site surveys, feedback widgets and user tests. That breadth covers most product-experience research, though dedicated product-analytics tools go deeper on event tracking and cohort analysis.
Time to Value
8.0 /10Setup is genuinely fast. Paste one JavaScript snippet and Hotjar automatically starts recording sessions and building heatmaps, with no event-tagging plan to configure first. New users on the free Basic tier see real behavioral insight within hours of installing it.
Trust & Reliability
8.0 /10Hotjar is one of the most established names in behavior analytics, trusted by more than 1.3 million websites across 180-plus countries, with customers including HubSpot, HelloFresh and Unbounce. Its acquisition by enterprise analytics leader Contentsquare adds long-term backing and platform stability.
Flexibility & Exit
5.0 /10The discounted pricing applies only to annual plans, which commit you for the full year with no partial refunds after renewal, so it suits teams confident in ongoing use. A 30-day money-back guarantee covers new subscriptions, and a permanent free Basic tier means you can scale down rather than lose access outright.
Save 40% on annual plans
40% off all annual plans via JoinSecret
Affiliate link — same price for you, and it never moves the score.
- Heatmaps, scroll maps, and click maps visualise exactly where users engage on every page
- Session recordings replay real user journeys without any complex instrumentation
- On-page surveys and feedback widgets capture qualitative insight directly in context
- Basic plan is genuinely free and functional for low-traffic sites or initial testing
About Hotjar
Quick answer
Behavior analytics platform with heatmaps, session recordings, and user feedback surveys — now part of Contentsquare.
Hotjar at a glance
Hotjar answers the question that quantitative analytics cannot: not just what users do, but why they do it. While Google Analytics tells you that 70% of users leave the pricing page, Hotjar shows you the exact session recordings where those users scroll past the pricing table, hover over the FAQ section without clicking, and leave when they cannot find the comparison chart they are looking for. For product and marketing teams, this qualitative layer turns hunches about conversion problems into evidence-backed hypotheses that can be tested and fixed.
How it works
Install a single JavaScript snippet and Hotjar begins recording user sessions and generating heatmaps automatically. Heatmaps aggregate clicks, moves, and scroll depth across all visitors to show where attention concentrates and where it drops off. Session recordings capture individual user journeys — every click, scroll, form interaction, and navigation step — with automatic rage-click and U-turn detection flagging frustration patterns. Surveys and feedback widgets let you ask users direct questions at the exact moment they are engaging with your product.
The combination of heatmaps (aggregate patterns), session recordings (individual journeys), and surveys (direct feedback) gives product teams three complementary lenses on the same user behaviour. A typical investigation workflow is: identify a page with a high exit rate in analytics, open the Hotjar heatmap to see where attention drops, watch 5–10 session recordings to understand what users are trying to do, then send a targeted survey to users who exit without converting to confirm the hypothesis.
Pricing reality
The free plan captures 35 daily sessions with heatmaps on 3 pages and unlimited survey responses — sufficient for initial investigation on a small traffic site. Plus at $39/month (annual) raises daily sessions to 100 and removes the page limit for heatmaps. Business at $99/month captures 500 daily sessions and adds advanced filtering, funnel analysis, and data export. Scale at $213/month is designed for enterprise teams with unlimited sessions and console log tracking.
The JoinSecret 40% discount brings Plus to $23.40/month and Business to $59.40/month on annual plans — making Hotjar competitive with alternatives that offer fewer features at similar price points.
Hotjar vs the competition
| Tool | Heatmaps | Session recordings | Surveys | Entry paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hotjar | Yes | Yes | Yes (unlimited free) | $39/mo (annual) |
| FullStory | Yes | Yes | Limited | $300+/mo |
| Microsoft Clarity | Yes | Yes | No | Free |
| Lucky Orange | Yes | Yes | Yes | $32/mo |
| Heap | No (analytics only) | Yes (add-on) | No | $3,600/yr |
Who should buy, who should skip
Buy if
- You have a conversion rate problem on a specific page and need to understand why users are not completing the desired action.
- You are running CRO experiments and need qualitative evidence to generate hypotheses before investing in A/B test infrastructure.
- You want to collect user feedback at specific moments in the product journey without building a custom survey integration.
- You need to justify UX changes to stakeholders — a 2-minute session recording compilation is more persuasive than a conversion rate chart.
Skip if
- You need free, unlimited session recording — Microsoft Clarity provides heatmaps and session recordings at no cost, with fewer advanced features.
- Your primary need is event-based product analytics (funnels, retention, cohorts) — Mixpanel or Amplitude are more appropriate for that workflow.
- You are on a very low-traffic site (fewer than 100 sessions/day) — the free plan's 35 daily sessions covers your needs and paid plans provide limited additional value at that traffic volume.
What's included
- Click, move, and scroll heatmaps aggregated across all visitors on any page
- Session recordings capturing every click, scroll, and navigation step per user
- Rage-click and U-turn detection automatically flagging user frustration
- Funnel analysis showing drop-off rates at each step of a defined conversion flow
- Survey builder with targeting rules (page, device, time on page, exit intent)
- Feedback widgets for in-context user ratings and open-ended comments
- Advanced filtering: filter recordings by device, country, referral source, or custom attributes
- Integrations with GA4, Segment, Mixpanel, HubSpot, and Optimizely
- Highlights feature to clip and annotate session recordings for team sharing
- Console log tracking on Scale plan for debugging alongside UX analysis
Hotjar pricing
Verified May 2026. Vendor's published rates at the time we checked — always confirm at checkout.
| Plan | Price | Term | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $0 | forever | Up to 35 daily sessions; heatmaps, recordings, and basic feedback |
| Plus | $32/mo | annual | Daily session limits removed for most features; Trends included |
| Business | $80/mo | annual | Scale sessions and events; funnels, cohort analysis, Slack integration |
| Scale | Custom | custom | High-volume enterprises; SSO, dedicated CSM, advanced privacy controls |
How to claim it
4 steps. The last one is the part most people skip.
- 1
Open Hotjar through the link on this page
It carries our referral tag. The price you pay is identical either way, and it never changes the score on this page.
- 2
Pick the plan that matches your usage
This offer applies automatically through the link — there is no code to enter.
- 3
Confirm the discount before you pay
The order summary should show the reduced amount. If it does not, stop and tell us — we re-test listings that stop working.
- 4
Check what happens at renewal
40% off all annual plans via JoinSecret
Where Hotjar wins and loses
What works
- Heatmaps, scroll maps, and click maps visualise exactly where users engage on every page
- Session recordings replay real user journeys without any complex instrumentation
- On-page surveys and feedback widgets capture qualitative insight directly in context
- Basic plan is genuinely free and functional for low-traffic sites or initial testing
What doesn't
- Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare — pricing and roadmap are shifting toward enterprise positioning
- Free plan limited to 35 daily sessions, not enough for high-traffic sites
- No built-in A/B testing — experimentation requires a separate tool
- Session recordings consume storage quickly on high-traffic sites; older recordings are purged
The bottom line
Hotjar is the go-to behavior-analytics platform for teams that want to see exactly how people use their site, pairing heatmaps and session recordings with on-site surveys and a genuinely free tier to start. The best pricing needs an annual commitment and the products now bill separately, but for qualitative UX insight it remains a clear Strong Buy.
Hotjar is a product experience tool that combines heatmaps, session recordings, and user surveys. Heatmaps show where users click and how far they scroll. Session recordings replay individual user journeys in real time. Surveys let you ask users direct questions at specific moments. Together, these tools help product and marketing teams understand why users behave the way they do on a website or product.
Yes. Hotjar's free Basic plan captures 35 daily sessions with heatmaps on up to 3 pages and unlimited survey responses. No credit card is required. The free plan is sufficient for initial investigation on low to medium-traffic sites.
Google Analytics tells you what users do (page views, bounce rates, conversion rates). Hotjar shows you why they do it (where they click, where they get stuck, what they say in surveys). The tools are complementary — use GA4 to identify which pages have conversion problems, then use Hotjar to understand the specific behaviour causing those problems.
Hotjar's script is loaded asynchronously and has a negligible impact on page load time for most sites. However, on mobile devices or low-end hardware, the additional JavaScript can occasionally contribute to lower INP scores. Hotjar recommends sampling (recording a percentage of sessions rather than all sessions) to reduce script execution on constrained devices.
The JoinSecret deal provides 40% off all annual Hotjar plans for 12 months. Plus drops from $39/month to $23.40/month, Business drops from $99/month to $59.40/month. After 12 months, billing reverts to standard annual pricing.
Yes. Hotjar supports user identification via a JavaScript snippet that associates a recording with a user ID from your own system. This lets you filter session recordings by specific users — useful for customer support investigations or watching a specific cohort's behaviour.
