Heatmap Tools Compared: 5 Free & Paid Options

"Will installing a heatmap tool grow our revenue?" It's one of the most common questions ecommerce operators ask. The honest answer is: heatmaps are excellent at hypothesis generation for where on the page revenue is leaking, but they will not tell you which channel or which ad brought you the buyers. This article compares five heatmap tools (Microsoft Clarity, Hotjar, Crazy Egg, Mouseflow, Ptengine) by features, pricing, and data retention — and ends with the structural limit they all share.

TL;DR#

1. Two free heatmap tools dominate the entry tier — Microsoft Clarity (unlimited sessions, free forever) and Hotjar Free (200k sessions/month, 1-month retention). They serve different needs and are often run in parallel.
2. The three paid tools differentiate on use case — Hotjar Pro (revenue-per-page-zone), Crazy Egg (A/B testing built in), and Mouseflow (form analytics + friction detection). Pricing ranges from Mouseflow Essential at $25/month to Crazy Egg Enterprise at $599/month.
3. All five share the same structural limit: heatmaps tell you what happens on the page, not which traffic source delivered the revenue. Channel-level efficiency (RPS, AOV, ROAS) requires a separate analytics layer.

1. What Heatmaps Show, and What They Don't#

Heatmap tools visualize in-page user behavior: clicks, scroll depth, mouse movement, form-field interaction, rage clicks. They are powerful at one specific job — pointing to the location on a page where users get stuck — and structurally weak at another: tying that behavior back to the channel or ad that brought the user.

This split — WHERE on page vs. WHICH channel — is the framing that makes the rest of the article click.

2. The Two Free Options — Microsoft Clarity vs. Hotjar Free#

2.1 Microsoft Clarity — Truly Free, No Session Cap#

Microsoft Clarity (clarity.microsoft.com) has been free since launch in 2020 and remains so as of 2026 [1]. The official site states: "available permanently at no cost" and "no traffic restrictions."

Core features [1]:

• Session recordings
• Heatmaps (clicks / scrolls / exit patterns)
• AI summaries of behavior patterns
• AI Chat for natural-language queries against the data
• Mobile app SDK for Android, iOS, Flutter, React Native

Clarity's strength is that price never becomes a wall. Even sites with millions of monthly pageviews stay free. The weakness: depth. A/B testing integration, advanced funnel analysis, and form-field drop-off insights live in other tools.

2.2 Hotjar Free — 200k Sessions, Now Inside Contentsquare#

Hotjar was acquired by Contentsquare in 2021 and is now described in Hotjar's own messaging as "part of the Contentsquare group" [2]. The Hotjar brand is preserved; new accounts are provisioned through the Contentsquare pricing flow [3]. The current plan structure is Free / Growth / Pro / Enterprise.

Hotjar Free, as of April 2026 [3]:

• Up to 200k monthly sessions (a major lift from earlier Free tiers)
• 1-month data retention
• Session replay capture rate: 5% (capped at 10k sessions)
• Heatmaps, Funnels, Replays, Error & Performance Monitoring, Basic Surveys
• MCP connector (LLMs can query Hotjar data directly)

2.3 Picking Between the Two Free Tools#

Many ecommerce teams run both in parallel — Clarity for broad behavioral coverage, Hotjar for surveys and LLM access. Both are free, so the only cost is two snippets in your tag manager.

3. The Three Paid Options — Hotjar / Crazy Egg / Mouseflow#

3.1 Hotjar Paid (Contentsquare group)#

Pro adds two notable features at the boundary of heatmap and revenue analytics: Zone-based Heatmaps with revenue metrics, and Impact Quantification — Quantify Revenue [3]. Both attribute revenue to on-page zones, not to traffic sources. The distinction matters and we return to it in section 5.

3.2 Crazy Egg — A/B Testing Built In#

Crazy Egg (founded 2005) is the senior of the group. Pricing as of 2026 [4]:

All plans are billed annually. Plus and above include A/B testing, error tracking, and CTA optimization. For a small ecommerce site that wants heatmaps + lightweight A/B testing in one tool, Plus at $99 is the standard fit.

3.3 Mouseflow — Form Analytics and Friction Detection#

Mouseflow's specialty is form analytics and friction detection [5].

Essential ($25) is the sweet spot — Friction Insights and Form Analytics unlock at the lowest paid tier. For a small ecommerce store struggling with checkout drop-off, Mouseflow can pinpoint that 30% of visitors abandon at the address field while 20% bail at credit card entry.

3.4 Choosing Among the Paid Three#

4. Ptengine — The Japan-Local Option#

Worth a mention for teams operating in the Japanese market. Ptengine (ptengine.jp) offers three plans as of April 2026 [6][7]:

Strengths: fully Japanese UI, Japan-based support, and a single platform that combines analytics ("Insight") with experimentation and personalization ("Experience"). It's metered by pageviews, not sessions, so model your numbers carefully — a site averaging 5 PV/session pushes 100k sessions into the Premium tier.

Weakness: sampling on lower plans, and recording features are less granular than the Western tools.

5. The Limit All Five Share — They Don't Tie Revenue to Channel#

After the comparison the structural truth becomes obvious: every heatmap tool answers "what happened inside this page". None of them answers "which traffic source delivered the buyer".

Even Hotjar Pro's "Zone-based Heatmaps with revenue metrics" — the most advanced revenue feature in heatmap-land today — measures revenue per page zone, not per traffic source. Google Ads ROAS, Meta Ads RPS, organic search AOV: none of them appear in a heatmap report.

The metrics that drive ad-budget decisions are computed against sessions and revenue tagged by channel/UTM:

• AOV (Average Order Value) = Revenue / Orders
• RPS (Revenue Per Session) = Revenue / Sessions
• ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) = Revenue / Ad Spend

These only become decision-useful when broken down by channel, by UTM, by landing page. "Meta Ads sessions have an RPS of $1.50 vs. Google Search at $4.50" is the kind of statement a heatmap will never produce.

For deeper coverage of channel-level analysis, see:

• ROAS Calculation: Complete Guide
• The UTM Source You Should Not Use for Meta Ads
• Last-Click Attribution Trap
• GA4 Default Channel Group: 5 Causes of Direct/(none)

5.1 Heatmaps and Channel Analytics Are Complementary#

Moving a CTA two sections up to cut LP drop-off by 30% is heatmap work. Killing Meta Ads to redirect spend into Google Ads and lifting overall ROAS from 180% to 240% is channel-analytics work. Both are needed — they just live in different tools.

6. Decision Tree by Goal#

Price and session capacity at a glance:

Whichever you pick, channel-level revenue analysis stays a separate problem. A revenue-first analytics layer (such as RevenueScope) sits next to the heatmap, not above or below it. The heatmap tells you where the page leaks; the channel analytics tells you which ad is paying for it.

Wrap-up#

• Free tier is mature: Microsoft Clarity for unlimited traffic, Hotjar Free for 200k with surveys
• Paid tier choice is goal-driven: per-zone revenue (Hotjar Pro), A/B testing (Crazy Egg), form analytics (Mouseflow)
• Ptengine wins for Japan-only teams with native-language requirements
• All five share the same blind spot: they answer WHERE on page, not WHICH channel

Combine the two layers and the optimization loop closes.

References#

[1] Microsoft, "Microsoft Clarity Official Site," accessed April 2026. https://clarity.microsoft.com/

[2] Hotjar, "Hotjar is now part of the Contentsquare group," accessed April 2026. https://www.hotjar.com/

[3] Contentsquare, "Hotjar Pricing — Experience Analytics plans," accessed April 2026. https://contentsquare.com/pricing/

[4] Crazy Egg, "Pricing — Starter / Plus / Pro / Enterprise," accessed April 2026. https://www.crazyegg.com/pricing

[5] Mouseflow, "Pricing — Free / Essential / Advanced / Premium / Enterprise," accessed April 2026. https://mouseflow.com/pricing/

[6] Ptengine, "Pricing — Free / Growth / Premium," accessed April 2026. https://www.ptengine.jp/plan/

[7] ITreview, "Ptengine pricing data," accessed March 2026. https://itreview.jp/products/ptengine/price