Heatmap and session recording tools

A heatmap adds up many visits to one page and colours it: warm where a lot happens, cool where little does. Each kind answers a different question.

• Click heatmaps show where people click or tap. They tell you whether the main button gets the clicks, which menu links nobody uses, and whether people click images or headings that are not links. Crazy Egg, Clicky and Overtracking all name click heatmaps in their plans.
• Scroll heatmaps show how far down the page people get. They tell you whether your offer, form or price sits below the point where most visitors stop. Crazy Egg's free Instant Heatmaps keep both click and scroll data for 30 days.
• Move heatmaps follow the mouse pointer. On a desktop they give a loose hint of what people read or hesitate over; on a phone there is no pointer to follow. None of our reviews lists a move heatmap, so ask the vendor if you want one.

Some tools add other views. Crazy Egg's paid Heatmap Reports add confetti, overlay and list views, Clicky filters a heatmap by goal or split test, and Contentsquare's Growth plan adds zone-based heatmaps.

A heatmap needs traffic: a page with a handful of visits shows a few dots, not a pattern. Start with pages that matter and get steady visits, such as the home page, the pricing page or a landing page for paid campaigns. Paid plans often ask you to pick pages anyway: Crazy Egg's Starter plan includes 5 heatmap reports, and Overtracking switches heatmaps on page by page. Menus that open, pop-ups and carousels can blur the picture.

A session recording replays one visit: pages, scrolling, mouse movements and clicks. Where a heatmap shows a pattern, a recording shows a reason, such as a visitor clicking a button that does nothing or giving up on a form field. Watching random visits wastes time, so start from a question. Mixpanel, for example, takes you from a drop in a funnel to the recordings of the people who left.

Four things differ from tool to tool:

• How many visits are recorded. Plans record a sample. Contentsquare's free plan records 5% of sessions, up to 10,000 a month. Mixpanel's free plan includes 10,000 replays a month and Growth 20,000. Matomo's $26 cloud plan includes 150 recordings a month, and Crazy Egg's $29 Starter plan 50.
• How long they are kept. Mixpanel keeps replays 30 days, Contentsquare Growth 2 months and Matomo Cloud 3 months. Crazy Egg keeps them 6 months on Starter and 2 years on the higher plans.
• What is masked. Recordings can capture what people type. Crazy Egg says it masks email, password, number and text fields in the browser, before anything is sent. Contentsquare says its tag never collects text typed into form fields and always masks email addresses and card numbers in replays. Test the masking on your own forms before you record real visitors.
• Consent. Most recording tools here set cookies: Crazy Egg one kept a year, Mixpanel one kept 365 days, Contentsquare one kept 13 months. In the EU that generally means asking first. Contentsquare can hold replay data until a visitor consents.

Check what happens at the limit too. On Contentsquare's Growth plan, heatmaps and funnels stop collecting until the next month, and Crazy Egg pauses tracking until the 1st.

Heatmaps and recordings show what people do on a page. They do not tell you how many people came, from which source or campaign, or how this month compares with last year. Contentsquare keeps acquisition analysis for a Pro add-on, and includes a Google Analytics integration on every plan.

So most sites run two tools: traffic analytics for the numbers, and a heatmap tool for the few pages they want to improve. The traffic side can be any analytics tool, for example WireBoard, made by SwissOps, which runs this site: it streams visitors, sources and events live across several sites, and leaves heatmaps and recordings to a tool like these. Two tools mean two scripts, two privacy setups and two bills.

Several tools here do both jobs:

• Crazy Egg includes free web analytics (visitors, sources, campaigns, devices and locations) next to its heatmaps.
• Clicky and Overtracking are traffic tools first, with click heatmaps from $14.99 and €6.95 a month.
• Matomo is a full analytics suite whose cloud plan includes heatmaps and recordings.
• Umami adds heatmaps and replays to cookieless traffic analytics, on its Business plan or self-hosted.

"Free" here means a plan you can keep, not a trial. Limits and prices are those in each review.

Among these tools, only three give you heatmaps and recordings without paying: Contentsquare's free plan, Mixpanel's free plan, and Umami on your own server. Crazy Egg's free plan has heatmaps but no recordings.

Hotjar belongs to Contentsquare, a Paris analytics company that bought it in 2021 and has now folded it in. New Hotjar accounts can no longer be created. Existing customers get a Contentsquare account with the same login, and their tracking code keeps working. Their plan moves to Growth unless the account owner opts out, and the old Hotjar account turns read-only until it is deleted. Contentsquare's migration page gives 90 days in one answer and 12 months in another, so check the notification email. Surveys now come from Contentsquare's Voice of Customer plans: free for 3 surveys or widgets and 100 responses a month, then from $79 a month. Contentsquare also owns Heap.

Smartlook is being retired by Cisco, which owns it. New sales ended on 31 May 2026 and renewals on 31 August 2026; on 30 September 2027 the platform shuts down and all data is deleted. Cisco points customers to Digital Experience Analytics in Splunk Observability Cloud, but no history moves across, so export what you need through Smartlook's REST API by 31 August 2027. If you used Smartlook for recordings together with events and funnels, Mixpanel has all three on its free plan. For heatmaps and recordings alone, Contentsquare's free plan includes both.

• Recordings without paying: Contentsquare (up to 10,000 a month, one month of data) or Mixpanel (10,000 a month, kept 30 days).
• Heatmaps and traffic numbers in one cheap tool: Overtracking from €6.95 a month, with data in France, or Clicky at $14.99, with data in the US.
• No cookies: Umami's tracking code sets none, and Clicky sets no tracking cookies by default. Overtracking's script set none when we checked, though its privacy policy says otherwise.
• Data in the EU: Contentsquare stores Free and Growth data in Ireland, Matomo Cloud in Frankfurt and Overtracking in France, and Umami and Mixpanel let you pick an EU region. Crazy Egg and Clicky keep data in the US.
• Your own server: Umami includes replays and heatmaps when self-hosted; Matomo sells them as paid plugins.
• A/B tests as well: Crazy Egg from its $99 Plus plan, or Matomo Cloud from $26 a month.
• A product with logins: Mixpanel, or Heap if you are ready for a sales-led contract.