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Hotjar Alternatives for Shopify: 7 Tools, Verified Prices

Last verified: September 3, 2026

For a typical Shopify store, the best Hotjar alternative is Microsoft Clarity: free with no traffic cap, installed from the App Store with a 4.6 rating across 2,085 reviews, and able to see the checkout page. If you need checkout drop-off by step and more than 30 days of recordings, pay for Lucky Orange, from $19 a month on the App Store. Everything else on this page is a case for a specific kind of store, and every price was read off the vendor's own page today.

By Misha Gavura · 16 min read · Every figure on this page was read off a live vendor pricing page or Shopify App Store listing on September 3, 2026. Prices change; re-check before you buy.

How these seven were judged

Every Hotjar alternatives list on page one of Google is written by a vendor, and none is about Shopify. A Shopify store hits five problems a generic website never does, and the vendor lists skip all five.

1. App Store install. A first-party listing means Shopify billing, one-click uninstall and a public review count. A pasted script in theme.liquid means none of that, and it breaks on a theme switch: Microsoft's Clarity FAQ has an entry titled "My Shopify project was collecting data previously. Why did it stop?" and the answer is a theme change removed the script.
2. Checkout visibility. Shopify's checkout is not your theme. A tool that only records the storefront misses the pages where the money is decided. We quote what each vendor says about checkout in its own words.
3. Consent handling. Session recording in the EU and UK needs consent. We noted what each listing claims.
4. Speed cost. We ran no speed tests for this article, so no tool gets a millisecond figure. Where a vendor publishes a script size, we quote it as a claim.
5. Verified price at Shopify traffic tiers. Around 5,000, 25,000 and 100,000 sessions a month, read off the vendor's page today, with the App Store ladder shown separately where it differs from the website. It differs more often than you would expect.

The baseline is what Hotjar is now: hotjar.com/pricing returns a 308 redirect to contentsquare.com/pricing, and hotjar.com redirects to a page whose first line is "Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare." That gets its own section below. The full Hotjar ladder before and after the change is in our Hotjar pricing breakdown.

The comparison table

Entry price is the cheapest paid plan on the surface a Shopify merchant is most likely to buy from. Ratings and review counts are as displayed on the Shopify App Store on September 3, 2026.

1. Microsoft Clarity: the default for most stores

Clarity's pricing page renders nothing but a title to a plain fetch, so every limit here comes from Microsoft's Learn FAQ for Clarity, dated August 20, 2026. Verbatim: "Clarity is a free service forever. You never encounter traffic limits or are compelled to upgrade to a paid version." And: "No sampling (that is, tracking only a portion of your site's traffic)."

The App Store listing, "Microsoft Clarity: AI Insights", launched July 17, 2025, pricing "Free Forever", rating 4.6 from 2,085 reviews. Its data access lists "Web pixels" and "Online Store pages, theme, checkout page", it "Works with Checkout", and a feature bullet reads "GDPR and CCPA compliant with built-in consent and secure data."

Two FAQ lines matter before you install: "The Purchases feature is only available on Clarity projects of Shopify sites" and "Checkout Abandonment feature is only available on Clarity projects of Shopify Plus sites." A standard plan gets purchase tracking; checkout abandonment needs Plus.

On consent, the FAQ says: "Without proper consent, Clarity limits data collection in those regions to remain compliant with privacy laws." That is the right behaviour, and it means your EU recording count will be lower than your EU traffic.

Skip it if you need recordings older than a month. "Clarity retains recordings for 30 days from the time of recording. However, Favorite recordings and randomly selected sample of recordings are retained for up to 9 months." Fine for spotting a broken variant picker this week; not enough to compare Black Friday against the week before. Heatmaps also cap at "up to 100,000 page views per heat map". We go deeper on what Clarity does and does not do on Shopify and on Clarity against Hotjar directly.

2. Lucky Orange: the paid pick for checkout funnels

Lucky Orange publishes two ladders, and the App Store one is cheaper at the bottom. "Lucky Orange Heatmaps & Replay", launched July 8, 2014, rating 4.7 from 879 reviews, lists:

• Free: 100 sessions/month, 30 day data storage
• Launch: $19/month or $182.40/year, 500 sessions/month, 30 day data storage, Discovery AI +$5/month
• Build: $39/month or $374.40/year, 3,500 sessions/month, 60 day data storage, Discovery AI +$10/month
• Grow: $89/month or $854.40/year, 10,000 sessions/month, 60 day data storage, Discovery AI +$20/month

On luckyorange.com/pricing the same day: Build "$32/mo paid annually" for 3,500 sessions, Grow "$72/mo paid annually" for 10,000, Expand "$199/mo paid annually" from 50,000, Scale "$839/mo paid annually" from 300,000, Enterprise "Custom". The monthly toggle shows Build $39, Expand $249 and Scale $1,049. Storage "Starts at 60 days" with "90, 180 or 365 days available", and there is no free plan on the website, only "Try Lucky Orange free for 7 days".

So under 10,000 sessions, buy from the App Store: it has the free plan, the $19 Launch tier the website does not sell, and the same Build and Grow monthly prices. Over 50,000, Expand and Scale only exist on the website. The reason to pay Lucky Orange rather than use Clarity free is one sentence on the listing: "Track cart abandonment and checkout drop-off by product and step." That is the checkout funnel Clarity reserves for Shopify Plus, at $39 a month on a standard plan, and its data access includes "Reports, web pixels".

Skip it if you do more than 10,000 sessions a month and want to stay on Shopify billing, because the next rung is on the vendor site at $199 paid annually. And do not count the free plan as a plan: 100 sessions is a Tuesday morning. Our full Lucky Orange on Shopify review and the Hotjar vs Lucky Orange comparison cover the feature side.

3. MIDA: the cheapest native app that does the job

MIDA is a Shopify-only app, and it is here for one reason: the lowest verified price for unlimited heatmaps plus checkout recordings from a first-party listing. "MIDA Replay, Heatmap & Insight", launched July 27, 2022, rating 4.9 from 552 reviews:

• Free: 250 sessions/month, live replays, unlimited heatmaps, abandoned cart recordings, 30-day storage
• Basic: $9.90/month, 5,000 sessions, advanced filters, error and search insights, lifetime data storage, 7-day trial
• Growth: $24.90/month, 15,000 sessions, revenue click tracking, conversion heatmaps, AI heatmap insights
• Enterprise: $44.90/month, 40,000 sessions, API export, bulk heatmap export, MCP integration

The first feature bullet is "Session Recording: Watch sessions & checkout to spot where users drop off", Checkout is under Works with, and charges are "billed every 30 days". Fifteen thousand sessions for $24.90 is a fraction of what any web-first tool here charges at that tier, and "lifetime data storage" on Basic is the longest retention on this list at any price.

Skip it if you run a non-Shopify site alongside the store, or if you want a decade of track record. Launched in 2022, it has three years of reviews against Lucky Orange's eleven. And note that mida-app.io ranks first on Google for "hotjar alternatives" with its own list, so read its reviews rather than its blog.

4. PostHog, through PixieHog: for stores with a developer

PostHog has no App Store listing of its own; apps.shopify.com/posthog is a 404. The route in is PixieHog by CeladonWorks, launched December 4, 2024, Free, rating 5.0 from 3 reviews: "Track customers across all surfaces: storefront, checkout and post-purchase. Compatible with Checkout Extensibility. Simplified customer privacy and GDPR compliance." Data access is "Web pixels", the sandboxed, consent-aware way to track on Shopify and the reason it can see checkout at all.

PostHog's pricing is usage-based and public. posthog.com/pricing lists the free monthly allowance as "1M events" and "5K recordings". Its session replay pricing page gives the per-unit ladder for web recordings after the first 5,000: $0.0050 from 5k to 15k, $0.0035 to 50k, $0.0020 to 150k, $0.0017 to 500k, $0.0015 above. Retention: "1 month" free, "3 months" paid.

On a Shopify-sized store that is cheap. Twenty-five thousand recordings a month is 5,000 free, 10,000 at $0.0050 and 10,000 at $0.0035, or $85 by my multiplication of PostHog's published rates; a hundred thousand is roughly $185 on the same basis. Those totals are mine, not PostHog's.

Skip it if nobody on your team wants to configure a product analytics platform. PostHog is an events warehouse with replay attached, not a dashboard you open on Monday, and PixieHog has three reviews. With a developer it is the most capable tool here. Without one you pay for it in hours.

5. Mouseflow: strong tool, weak Shopify door

mouseflow.com/pricing lists five plans. Free at "$0/month" with 500 sessions and 1 month retention. Essential at "25/month" with 5,000 sessions and 3 months. Advanced at "109/month" with 25,000 sessions and 6 months. Premium at "319/month" with 100,000 sessions and 12 months. Enterprise "Let's talk". The cards sit under a "Monthly / Annually" toggle labelled "Save up to 35%", and the fetched page does not say which state those figures were rendered in, so treat them as displayed and confirm at checkout. The 14-day trial includes "2,000 sessions", and the "Risk-Free 14-Day Guarantee" is for "first-time annual subscribers only".

The retention ladder, 1, 3, 6 and 12 months stated per plan, is the reason to consider Mouseflow against Clarity's 30 days. The Shopify door is the problem. apps.shopify.com/mouseflow is not Mouseflow: it is "Mouseflow Script Install" by Stratmann Digital, launched April 21, 2021, $0.99/month, 0 reviews, which "automatically includes the Mouseflow script in your theme" using ScriptTags. Mouseflow's own Shopify help article documents pasting the code "just before the closing body tag" in theme.liquid, and points to a separate guide "to Installing Mouseflow on Shopify Checkout pages". Checkout is possible, by a separate procedure, and none of it goes through a first-party app.

Skip it if you want one-click install and Shopify billing. Pick it if you need form analytics and a friction score with a year of history and can maintain a script through theme updates.

6. heatmap.com: priced on revenue, built for seven-figure stores

heatmap.com meters something no other tool here does. Its pricing page says plans are priced on the store's revenue rather than session limits: "Your plan price is based on your store's trailing 12-month revenue. We auto-detect this from your connected store." Launch "$199/mo" for $0 to 10M revenue, Growth "$349/mo" for $10 to 25M, Scale "$699/mo" for $25 to 50M, "50M+ in revenue? Book a Demo". Every plan lists "100% traffic coverage" and "Try Free for 14 Days". Retention is "365 Days" on Launch and "Forever" above. The toggle reads "Save up to 33% with annual prepay".

What you pay for is "Revenue Attribution (revenue-per-pixel)". The FAQ explains how: "With a snippet in your site header and thank you page, we're able to track all your transactions with revenue and all the pre-purchase actions someone took on your website." The thank-you page snippet is how it sees the order, which also tells you it is not reading the checkout steps in between. On speed, the vendor claims "Our snippet is only 8kb"; that is its test, not ours.

We could not find a Shopify App Store listing. apps.shopify.com/heatmap is an unrelated app, HeatMap by Webyze, rated 1.0 from 2 reviews, eleven other guessed slugs return 404, and heatmap.com's own Shopify page says "Sign up, connect your Shopify store" with no App Store link.

Skip it if you are under seven figures. At $199 a month the entry plan costs more than Lucky Orange Grow, MIDA Enterprise and a 25,000-recording PostHog bill combined, and the add-ons ("CRO Strategist (Full Service) $1,000/mo", "Concierge Onboarding $750 one-time") make the intended buyer clear.

7. Crazy Egg: on the list with a warning label

Crazy Egg is here because it is a well-regarded product with a merchant-friendly overage policy, and because something changed this week. crazyegg.com/pricing on September 3, 2026 lists Starter $29/month for 5,000 tracked pageviews, 50 recordings and 6 months of storage; Plus $99 for 150,000 pageviews; Pro $249 for 500,000; Enterprise $599 for 1,000,000. The footnote: "All plans are billed annually and start with a free trial. No overages, ever."

On August 31 Crazy Egg's App Store listing was live with a different ladder: Standard $49 a month, billed every 30 days, for 75,000 tracked pageviews, written up in Crazy Egg pricing: two ladders, one product. Today apps.shopify.com/crazy-egg returns: "This app is not currently available on the Shopify App Store. If you have support questions, contact Crazy Egg directly." No rating, no pricing, no install button.

We do not know why and will not guess. What it means today is that the only way to buy Crazy Egg is the website, which is annual-only, and the only way to install it on Shopify is a script.

Skip it if you are choosing a tool this week; wait for the listing to return. If you are already a customer, nothing about your account changes because a listing went dark, and the no-overages term is still the best in the category.

Why Shopify stores are leaving Hotjar

Because the Hotjar they signed up for is gone, and what replaced it is priced on a different meter. Here is what the pages say today.

hotjar.com/pricing returns a 308 to contentsquare.com/pricing/?utm_source=hotjar-pricing, and the Contentsquare pricing page carries a banner for people who arrive that way: "Looking for Hotjar pricing? You're in the right place. Contentsquare includes all your favorite Hotjar tools plus much more." The hotjar.com homepage 301s to contentsquare.com/hotjar, which opens with "Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare. The two platforms have merged into a single, more powerful experience intelligence platform."

The plan cards are rendered by script, so we read them from the plan data embedded in the page. The product is "Digital Experience Analytics". Its Free plan, labelled internally "Spring launch - March 16, 2026", lists "200k monthly sessions", 10,000 replays, "1 project", "Replays, Heatmaps + Funnels", "Error & performance monitoring" and "Basic surveys" at 100 a month. Growth is "From" $49, sold as session bundles:

Seven of fifteen bundles are shown; the ladder runs from 7k to 200k sessions, and replays are capped at 20,000 a month from the 25k bundle up to 120k. The billing toggle reads "Pay monthly / Pay yearly" with "Save 20%", and the FAQ says "Our growth plans do not require an annual contract." Growth data access is "13 month data access", with the tooltip "Access to all session tracking data for 13 months and 2 months for the Session Replays." Pro starts "From 1m+ monthly sessions".

Contentsquare's own Hotjar page says the old free plan captured "35 / day" against "200k / month" now. On sessions alone the new free plan is far more generous. So why leave?

1. The meter moved from sessions to replays and retention. Free gets 200,000 sessions but 10,000 replays. The first paid bundle, at $49, gets 7,000 sessions and 7,000 replays: fewer sessions than free. What $49 buys is 13 months of data access and the Growth features, not traffic.
2. The cap is a hard stop. From the FAQ: "If you reach the session limit on our Free and Growth plans: You won't get any new heatmap or funnel data until next month's reset date." A Black Friday spike on a 25k bundle means no heatmaps for the rest of November.
3. Replay retention on Growth is two months. Thirteen months of session data, but "2 months for the Session Replays", and the recordings are what merchants actually watch.
4. The App Store door is new, empty, and disagrees with the website. A first-party listing, "Contentsquare Analytics", launched December 9, 2025 and has 0 reviews on September 3, 2026. It works with Checkout, uses web pixels, and promises "session replays on Shopify storefront and checkout pages". But its Free plan reads "Up to 20k monthly sessions" where the website's plan data says 200k, its Growth plan reads "$49 / month or $480/year and save 18%" where the website says 20%, and it warns "External charges may be billed by Contentsquare separately from your Shopify invoice." And apps.shopify.com/hotjar is not Hotjar at all: it is "Hotjar Install" by Dualsided, a $0.99 a month script installer rated 4.3 from 89 reviews.
5. Every alternative above has a free tier. When the product you paid for is rebranded and re-metered, the switching cost has already been paid for you.

None of this makes Contentsquare a bad product. For a store that wants funnels, error monitoring and surveys in one place, the Free plan is a real offer. But the search phrase is "Hotjar alternatives", and the honest reading is that Hotjar itself has become one. The Hotjar on Shopify guide covers what the product does once installed.

Picks by store size

Sessions per month is what every tool but one meters on. Shopify Analytics shows it under Sessions; take the peak month of the last three, not the average.

• Under 5,000 sessions a month. Microsoft Clarity, free. If you want a paid app for checkout recordings and lifetime storage, MIDA Basic at $9.90 for 5,000 sessions is the cheapest first-party listing we verified. Lucky Orange's $19 Launch stops at 500 sessions.
• 5,000 to 25,000. Clarity is still free and uncapped. If 30-day retention bites: Lucky Orange Grow, $89 for 10,000 sessions, 60 days, checkout drop-off by step; MIDA Growth, $24.90 for 15,000; Mouseflow Advanced, 109 as displayed for 25,000 with six months. Contentsquare's 25k bundle is $139.
• 25,000 to 100,000. The vendor-site ladders take over. Lucky Orange Expand is $199 paid annually for 50,000, website only. Mouseflow Premium is 319 as displayed for 100,000 with a year of retention. PostHog at 100,000 recordings is roughly $185 by my arithmetic. Contentsquare's 100k bundle is $409. Clarity is still free, and 30 days is usually enough to answer this week's question.
• Seven figures of revenue. heatmap.com Launch, $199 a month under $10M trailing revenue with 365 days of retention, is the only tool here priced for the question a store that size asks: not "where do people click" but "which element is worth money".

Tools we cut, and why

• Smartlook. Its pricing page now opens with "Smartlook has joined Cisco!" and a timeline: "31 May 2026 – End of Sale (EoS): No new Smartlook subscriptions will be sold" and "30 September 2027 – Platform Decommissioned". You cannot buy it, and apps.shopify.com/smartlook is a 404.
• FullSession. We did not fetch its pricing page or an App Store listing for this article, so it gets no figure and no verdict.
• Matomo, Sprig and Survicate. All three rank for this phrase with their own lists. Matomo is web analytics with a heatmap add-on; Sprig and Survicate are survey tools. None is a heatmap-and-replay replacement for a store, so none was priced here.

Disclosure. We are building StorePilot, a CRO tool for Shopify. It is not on the App Store and cannot be installed on a live store yet, so this page has nothing to sell you, and none of the seven tools above paid to be here.

Questions merchants keep asking

What is the best Hotjar alternative for a Shopify store?

For most Shopify stores, Microsoft Clarity. It is free with no traffic limit and no sampling per Microsoft's own FAQ, its App Store listing carries a 4.6 rating from 2,085 reviews, and the app has checkout page access. Its limit is 30-day retention. If you need checkout drop-off by step and longer storage, Lucky Orange is the paid pick, from $19 a month on the App Store. Checked September 3, 2026.

Is Hotjar still available, or is it Contentsquare now?

Hotjar's pricing page now redirects to contentsquare.com/pricing, and hotjar.com itself redirects to a Contentsquare page that reads "Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare." The pricing page carries a banner: "Looking for Hotjar pricing? You're in the right place." So the product you would be buying is Contentsquare's Digital Experience Analytics, with a Free plan and a Growth plan from $49. There is a first-party Shopify App Store listing, Contentsquare Analytics, launched December 9, 2025, with zero reviews as of September 3, 2026.

Is there a completely free Hotjar alternative for Shopify?

Yes. Microsoft Clarity is free with no paid tier, no traffic limit and no sampling per Microsoft's FAQ. Contentsquare's Free plan, which is what Hotjar's free plan became, lists 200,000 monthly sessions and 10,000 replays on its website. Lucky Orange, MIDA, Mouseflow and PostHog have capped free tiers: 100, 250, 500 and 5,000 sessions or recordings a month.

Which Hotjar alternatives install from the Shopify App Store?

As of September 3, 2026: Microsoft Clarity, Lucky Orange and MIDA have first-party listings. PostHog is reached through PixieHog, a free third-party app. Mouseflow's only listing is a $0.99 a month third-party script installer with zero reviews. heatmap.com has no listing we could find. Crazy Egg's listing reads "This app is not currently available on the Shopify App Store."

Which of these tools can see the Shopify checkout?

Lucky Orange tracks "cart abandonment and checkout drop-off by product and step". Microsoft Clarity's app has checkout page access; its FAQ says Purchases works on Shopify sites while Checkout Abandonment is Shopify Plus only. MIDA lets you "Watch sessions & checkout." PixieHog tracks storefront, checkout and post-purchase. Mouseflow has a separate guide for Checkout Extensibility. heatmap.com places a snippet on the thank-you page for revenue tracking.

How much does Lucky Orange cost for a Shopify store?

It depends where you buy. On the App Store: Free (100 sessions), Launch $19 a month for 500, Build $39 for 3,500, Grow $89 for 10,000, each 20% off paid yearly. On luckyorange.com, Build is $32 a month paid annually or $39 monthly, Grow $72 paid annually, and there is no free plan, only a 7-day trial. Both read September 3, 2026.

Does Microsoft Clarity slow down a Shopify store?

We did not measure it and will not quote a number we did not measure. Its App Store listing has 2,085 reviews at 4.6 and it installs through Shopify's web pixel and theme integration rather than a pasted script. If speed worries you, run a Lighthouse test on the same product page before and after, and keep it only if the difference is inside your noise.

What happened to Crazy Egg on the Shopify App Store?

On August 31, 2026 apps.shopify.com/crazy-egg was live with a $49 a month Standard plan. On September 3, 2026 the same URL returns "This app is not currently available on the Shopify App Store." Crazy Egg's site still sells Starter at $29 a month billed annually for 5,000 tracked pageviews. We do not know whether the listing is coming back.

Is Smartlook a good Hotjar alternative?

Not any more. Its pricing page now says it has joined Cisco: "31 May 2026 – End of Sale (EoS): No new Smartlook subscriptions will be sold" and "30 September 2027 – Platform Decommissioned."

Should I pick a tool based on sessions or on revenue?

Most tools meter sessions or pageviews: Lucky Orange goes from $39 to $89 between 3,500 and 10,000 sessions. heatmap.com meters trailing twelve-month revenue instead, at $199 a month under $10M. If your traffic swings with ad spend, a revenue-metered tool will not surprise you in a good month. If it is steady, session pricing is cheaper at every tier we checked.

A note on sources. Every price, plan, limit, rating and review count on this page was read off a live response on September 3, 2026 from contentsquare.com/pricing (plan data embedded in the page), contentsquare.com/hotjar, learn.microsoft.com/en-us/clarity/faq, the pricing pages of Lucky Orange, Crazy Egg, Mouseflow, Smartlook, PostHog and heatmap.com, and the Shopify App Store listings named in the text. The PostHog monthly totals are my arithmetic on published unit rates and are labelled as such. We ran no speed tests. Prices change; treat this as a map of how each tool is priced, not a quote.