What Are You Guys Using For Heatmaps in 2026? Hotjar Pricing Has Me Losing My Mind

this week i finally hit my breaking point with hotjar. checked my renewal and they want $99/month for the business plan just to get decent session recordings and heatmaps across more than 3 sites. i'm running landing page tests for like 6 clients right now and that math just doesn't work when margins are already tight.

i switched to microsoft clarity for the free tier stuff and it's honestly decent for scroll depth but the heatmap quality feels a bit rough compared to what i'm used to. tried smartlook for a bit too, the $39/month plan seemed reasonable until i realized the session limit caps out fast with any real traffic.

curious what you guys are actually running in 2026 for cro work specifically, not just general analytics. does anyone have a solid workflow that combines scroll depth tracking with proper click heatmaps without spending $100+ a month? or are most of you just eating the hotjar cost and calling it a business expense?

Clarity works well for basic tracking, but its heatmaps are definitely less detailed than Hotjar. What helps is using Clarity for broad insights and a smaller paid tool only on key pages. Many beginners waste money tracking every site when only a few actually need deep analysis. Keeping premium tools limited usually keeps costs manageable.

ran into this exact problem with clarity vs hotjar split a while back, had a checkout funnel on an ecomm site where i was only running clarity on the product pages and saving hotjar for the cart page, turned out the drop was happening on a specific upsell modal that i never tagged for deep tracking because i thought it was "not a key page," missed that for like 6 weeks and it cost me probably 15-20% conversion bleed i only caught when i finally ran full hotjar across everything for one month. the "only track key pages" logic sounds smart until you realize you're the one deciding whats key before you have the data to know that.

I’ve been using Microsoft Clarity lately and for a free tool it’s honestly solid for most CRO work. The recordings and click heatmaps are good enough for landing page analysis, especially if you’re managing multiple client sites. Hotjar is still polished, but the pricing gets hard to justify when you scale past a few projects.

Most people have moved away from Hotjar unless they specifically need its advanced features. A common setup now is using Microsoft Clarity for free session recordings and heatmaps, along with Google Analytics to track user behavior and conversions. Some also add tools like Smartlook or Plausible Analytics for extra insights. Instead of spending $100+, most people combine free or low cost tools Clarity and GA alone can cover most CRO needs.

PostHog, much better than Clarity