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Microsoft Clarity vs Hotjar for Shopify: The 2026 Verdict

Last verified: September 3, 2026

Microsoft Clarity costs nothing, has no traffic cap, and is the only one of the two that can see a Shopify checkout, on Shopify Plus. Hotjar costs from $49 a month, keeps data for 13 months on a paid plan against Clarity's 30 days for recordings, and can ask shoppers questions. The price of Clarity's "free" is written in Microsoft's Terms of Use, quoted below.

By Misha Gavura · 16 min read · Every figure below was read off a Microsoft, Contentsquare, Hotjar or Shopify page on September 3, 2026. Prices and terms change; re-check before you decide.

The short answer

Install Microsoft Clarity first if you run a Shopify store: it is free with no traffic limit, it ships as an official Microsoft app, and on Shopify Plus it tracks checkout through Shopify's Pixel. Pay for Hotjar when you need one of three things Clarity does not offer: surveys, 13 months of look-back on a paid plan, or a vendor whose terms do not grant Microsoft the rights quoted below. Run both if you have the traffic to justify two scripts and a job for each.

The rest of this page is the evidence, quoted from the vendors, because every comparison ranking for this search today carries at least one figure the vendor's live page no longer supports. We have separate deep dives on what Clarity's free forever costs a Shopify store and on what Hotjar can and cannot see on Shopify; this page is the head-to-head.

Side by side, sourced

Where a cell is in quotation marks, the words are the vendor's, read on September 3, 2026. Sources for each row are named in the sections that follow.

What "free" means: Microsoft's terms, quoted

Microsoft is open about why Clarity costs nothing. Under "Why is it free?" the pricing page reads: "Microsoft processes a massive amount of anonymous data around user behavior to gain insights and improve machine learning models that power many of our products and services." It ends: "We will never share your data with third parties." That is marketing. The contract is the Terms of Use at clarity.microsoft.com/terms, which you accept by installing. It carries no "last updated" date, so what follows is the text as rendered on September 3, 2026. Four clauses matter to a merchant.

Who controls the data. Section 4.4(c)(i): "You and Microsoft are independent Controllers of the Personal Data Processed in connection with the Offering. The parties agree that neither of them are a 'processor,' 'service provider,' or equivalent status under Data Protection Law in connection with the Offering." In plain terms, Microsoft is not processing your shoppers' data on your behalf. It is collecting that data for itself, alongside you.

What Microsoft may do with it. Section 4.4(c)(iii), in full:

"Microsoft may use the Personal Data it collects in connection with the Offering for any purpose in accordance with the Microsoft Privacy Statement, including to provide the Offering; improve Microsoft's products and services, including reporting and performance analysis; and create user profiles for purposes that include advertising. Microsoft may also use nonpersonal data it collects in connection with the Offering to provide and improve Microsoft's products and services, as well as to support research and development activities. This includes the use of such data in connection with artificial intelligence initiatives, such as training, fine-tuning, and evaluating machine learning models, enhancing system performance, and developing new features and capabilities."

Read that next to clause 1(b)(i), which restricts you: "You will use the Offering solely for analytics purposes such as experimenting on Your website and A/B testing. You will not use the Offering to create user profiles." You may not build profiles from Clarity data. Microsoft may, for advertising. That asymmetry is the price.

What you must tell your shoppers. Section 4.4(b): "You will disclose in your privacy notice the fact that Microsoft collects or receives Personal Data from you to provide Microsoft Advertising, and provide a link to the Microsoft Privacy Statements." If your privacy policy does not mention Microsoft Advertising today, installing Clarity obliges you to add it. Section 4.4(d) goes further for consent-based stores: "the scope of the consent you obtain will enable Microsoft to use the Personal Data it collects for the purposes described in this Section."

What can change. Section 9 lets Microsoft modify the service "including by removing features, adding or removing source types, or charging additional fees for features previously provided free or at different rates". Section 7 states Microsoft "is not obligated under these Terms or otherwise to provide any support services". Section 17 caps your recoverable damages at "U.S. $5.00".

None of this is unusual for a free Microsoft or Google product, but when the koji.so comparison says Microsoft "reserves rights to use your data", this is the clause it means. The FAQ adds two plain facts: "Microsoft/Clarity has access to the data", and "Clarity doesn't sell data."

Hotjar's side of this row is shorter. The Contentsquare pricing table lists an "Analytics collection rate" of 100% on every tier including Free, so the free plan is not a sample. The help centre lets you delete individual recordings, and once you do, "This process takes up to 30 days in total and all data is hard deleted." Clarity's FAQ, by contrast: "Currently, you can't delete or download specific recordings" and "You need to delete the entire project to delete user's data." If you receive an erasure request from an EU or UK shopper, that difference is not academic.

Retention, from each vendor's own page

This is the row that competitor pages get wrong most often, in both directions, so here are the primary sources.

Clarity. The data-retention doc on learn.microsoft.com (updated June 30, 2026) says: "Playback data is retained for 30 days. Labeled or favorited sessions are retained for 9 months. Heatmaps data is retained for 9 months." It adds: "Data on Clarity servers, including backups, is deleted after the retention period and cannot be recovered." The FAQ agrees on both figures. So if a recording matters, favourite it in the first month.

Hotjar. Hotjar publishes two answers and they do not agree. The Contentsquare pricing table has a row called "Analytics Data Access": 1 month on Free, 13 months on Growth, Pro and Enterprise. The help centre article "How Long Does Hotjar Keep My Data?" (updated October 23, 2025) says recordings and heatmaps "retain data for 365 days from the date of capture. This applies to all accounts and plans", and still carries an older table listing "Basic plan: 1 month, Plus plan: 6 months, Business plan: 12 months", plan names that no longer exist. One help article, two schedules, and neither matches the pricing table.

Our reading: the pricing page is the promise you are buying, so plan on 1 month of access on Free and 13 months on Growth, and treat 365 days as the deletion policy. Either way, paid Hotjar holds a full year of seasonality. Clarity holds recordings for one month and heatmap data for nine. If you want to compare this Black Friday's product page against last year's, only one of these tools will still have it.

What each one sees on a Shopify checkout

This is the row that makes the comparison Shopify-specific, and it turns on your Shopify plan, not on the tool.

Hotjar: storefront only. Hotjar's own Shopify article (updated August 12, 2026) ends its install steps with this: "This will install the Hotjar tracking code on your Shopify storefront only. Shopify's built-in checkout process doesn't support the direct integration of third-party scripts, including the Hotjar tracking code." Your recording ends when the shopper clicks Checkout. Shopify's Help Center explains why: only pixels "automatically load on the Storefront, Checkout, Thank you page, and Order status page", and a snippet in theme.liquid is not a pixel.

Clarity: checkout on Plus, purchases everywhere. Microsoft's install doc: "For Shopify Plus accounts, the checkout and post-checkout pages are now tracked in Clarity through Shopify's Pixel." The e-commerce insights doc draws the plan line: "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." On Plus, the abandonment card splits checkout into contact information, shipping method, payment and other, with a jump to the recordings that dropped at each step. One caveat from the FAQ: "Customers paying with ShopPay or expedited checkout options don't have their sessions showing up under the Abandonment card."

Mind the gap between Microsoft's docs and Microsoft's marketing. The Clarity blog post announcing the Shopify app (July 24, 2025) promises you can "track every step of the customer journey, including critical checkout and thank you pages" and never mentions Plus. The docs do. Trust the docs. The App Store listing's "Works with Checkout" line does not turn a Basic store into a Plus store.

So: on Shopify Plus, Clarity sees the checkout and Hotjar does not. On any other plan neither records the checkout pages, but Clarity still tells you which sessions purchased, which is enough to split product-page recordings into buyers and non-buyers. That is a real advantage on a standard plan too.

How each installs on Shopify

Clarity is an app. The listing at apps.shopify.com/microsoft-clarity is published by Microsoft Clarity, priced "Free", launched July 17, 2025, and rated 4.6 from 2,085 reviews on September 3, 2026. Microsoft's install doc is six steps, and the one people miss is step four: "ensure that the Clarity JS is toggled on, and select Save." Skip it and nothing is recorded. If you pasted the snippet into theme.liquid in the past, "the new Shopify App automatically migrates you without any code changes."

Hotjar is a snippet: Online Store, Themes, Edit code, theme.liquid, then "Paste your Hotjar Tracking Code just before the closing </head> tag." There is no Hotjar-published Shopify app. The listing at apps.shopify.com/hotjar, "Hotjar Install", is by a third party called Dualsided, costs from $0.99 a month with a 7-day trial, launched July 20, 2018, and was rated 4.3 from 89 reviews on September 3, 2026. It requires your own Hotjar account. A snippet also lives in a file that theme updates and seasonal duplicates replace, so it has to be re-pasted; the app route survives that.

What Hotjar costs at Shopify traffic

Requesting hotjar.com/pricing on September 3, 2026 returns an HTTP 308 permanent redirect to contentsquare.com/pricing. Hotjar no longer has a price list of its own; you buy it as Contentsquare Experience Analytics. On that page, Free is $0 for "200k monthly sessions" and "1 project". Growth shows "$49" paid monthly and "$39" paid yearly, "From 7k monthly sessions", "13 month data access" and "3 projects". Pro and Enterprise are "Let's talk". The billing FAQ puts the yearly discount at "a 20% discount before VAT", "not applicable when paying by invoice."

The headline $49 buys 7,000 sessions a month, which is small for a store running ads. The page's slider data prices the Growth ladder like this, paid monthly:

The replay column matters more than the prices. It stops growing at 20k, and the page's own tooltip gives the rule: "Up to 20k monthly sessions: 100% captured. Over 20k monthly sessions: 15% captured (min. 20k)." A 100k-session store on the $409 tier gets replays of one session in five. Note too that Free's 200k sessions matches the top Growth tier by session count; what Free lacks is the 13 months of data access and the extra projects.

Surveys are priced separately. Voice of Customer is $0 on Free for "100" monthly responses and "3" widgets with "1 month" of responses access; Growth is $99 a month paid monthly or $79 yearly from 500 responses. A store that wants heatmaps plus real survey volume is buying two Growth products. The full ladder is on our Hotjar pricing page; Clarity's is one line, and it is $0 at any traffic.

The verdict by store size

Under roughly 10,000 sessions a month, standard Shopify plan. Clarity, and it is not close. Free, no cap, an official app, and a Purchases filter that separates buyers from browsers. Hotjar Free is also fine at this size, with the one-month data window as the only real limit, so pick it instead if surveys are what you are missing. Paying $49 for Growth here buys look-back and a second project, and little else you will use.

10,000 to 100,000 sessions a month, standard plan. Still Clarity for recordings and heatmaps, because Hotjar's replay allowance flattens at 20k while Clarity records everything. Add Hotjar's Voice of Customer to ask exit-intent questions, or Hotjar Growth if a 13-month history is worth $119 to $409 a month to you. It usually is for a store that runs seasonal campaigns. It usually is not for a store that reviews recordings once a month.

Any size, on Shopify Plus. Clarity is mandatory, because it is the only one of the two that tracks checkout, and the Checkout Abandonment card by step is the most useful view either tool offers a merchant. Whether you also keep Hotjar depends on surveys, and on whether your legal team is comfortable with Microsoft as an independent controller of your shoppers' behaviour data. That is a legitimate reason to pay Hotjar instead.

Over 200,000 sessions a month. Hotjar Growth ends at 200k and Pro is quote-only, so the choice becomes Clarity, still free, against a Contentsquare sales conversation. The deciding factors are governance and support: Clarity's terms say Microsoft "is not obligated" to provide support. If that is acceptable, the free tool scales. If not, you are buying Contentsquare.

The verdict by use: PPC pages, product pages, checkout

PPC landing pages. This is where the reddit thread on page one comes from, and the PPC crowd is right: for a landing page fed by ads, Clarity does the job for free. Scroll and click heatmaps, rage-click and dead-click insights, and unlimited recordings are the toolkit for finding where an ad-sourced visitor stalls, and the FAQ says referral-URL filters accept regular expressions. The one Hotjar feature that earns its cost here is an exit-intent survey asking why the visitor did not convert, and Hotjar Free's 100 responses a month will cover a test of that.

Product pages. Closer. Clarity's Purchases filter lets you watch sessions that bought against sessions that did not, and its product filters, which need Product JSON-LD on the page, slice by product name, price and rating. Hotjar's zone-based heatmaps on Growth are a cleaner way to see which gallery image, accordion or review block gets attention, and its 13-month window shows whether a redesign moved anything a season later. If product-page iteration is your main CRO work and you have the traffic, Hotjar Growth is a defensible spend. If not, Clarity.

Checkout. Clarity, on Plus, or nothing. Hotjar's documentation rules itself out, and on a standard plan neither tool shows the checkout steps.

When to run both

Running both is common and there is no technical conflict: Clarity is an app, Hotjar is a snippet, and they do not touch the same files. The sensible split is Clarity for recordings, heatmaps and, on Plus, checkout, and Hotjar for surveys and long look-back. That costs $0 to $99 a month depending on survey volume, less than Hotjar Growth alone at real traffic.

The costs of running both are not on the invoice. Two scripts run in every shopper's browser, so measure your product page's Core Web Vitals before and after. Two consent integrations need configuring; the Clarity FAQ says that without consent in the EEA, UK and Switzerland "sessions are fragmented" and "full session replays and user journey continuity are unavailable." If after a quarter you only open one of them, remove the other.

Why other comparisons disagree with this one

If the numbers here do not match what you read elsewhere, it is because the vendors changed and the articles did not. Each was read on September 3, 2026 next to the live vendor page it cites.

• Crazy Egg's comparison (September 23, 2025) prices Hotjar at "$39/month" for Plus and "$79/month" for Business, caps the free plan at "Up to 35 daily sessions", and says Clarity keeps favourited recordings for 13 months. The live pricing page has no Plus or Business tier and no daily cap, and the live Clarity retention doc says 9 months, not 13.
• Koji's comparison (June 27, 2026) states "365 days of data retention on all plans" for Hotjar and a free tier "limited to about 35 sessions/day". The 365-day figure is the help-centre deletion policy, not the 1 month and 13 months on the page you buy from, and the daily cap does not appear on the live pricing page at all.
• Microsoft's own comparative guide (June 27, 2024) says Hotjar's "Paid plans range from $32 a month to over $500 a month". Today the floor is $39 yearly or $49 monthly and the Growth ceiling is $739.
• Contentsquare's Clarity comparison (updated August 23, 2026) is accurate on the independent-controller clause and on project-level deletion. It is a vendor page, so it does not mention that its own Free tier limits data access to one month.

The same pattern shows up on every heatmap tool we have priced, including Lucky Orange. Our Hotjar versus Lucky Orange page and the Hotjar alternatives round-up apply the same rule as this one: no number that was not read off a live page that day.

Disclosure. We are building StorePilot, a CRO tool for Shopify. It is not on the Shopify App Store and cannot be installed on a live store yet, so this page has nothing to sell you against either tool. Both show you what shoppers did. Neither tells you whether the fix you make afterwards earned more; that is a split test, and it is the part we are working on.

Questions merchants keep asking

Is Microsoft Clarity better than Hotjar for a Shopify store?

For most stores on a standard Shopify plan, Clarity is the better first install: free with no traffic cap, an official Microsoft app, and a Purchases card on any Shopify project. Hotjar wins when you need surveys, 13 months of look-back, or would rather not sign Microsoft's data terms. Neither is an A/B testing tool, and neither shows step-by-step checkout on a non-Plus store.

Is Microsoft Clarity really free?

Yes. The pricing page is headed "It's free, forever" and states: "You'll never run into traffic limits or be forced to upgrade to a paid version" (clarity.microsoft.com/pricing, read September 3, 2026). The Terms of Use keep the option open: section 10 says "Microsoft may charge fees for use of or access to some or all of the Offering" with notice first. There is no paid tier today.

What does Microsoft do with my Clarity data?

The Terms of Use, section 4.4(c)(iii), say Microsoft "may use the Personal Data it collects in connection with the Offering for any purpose in accordance with the Microsoft Privacy Statement", including to "create user profiles for purposes that include advertising", and may use non-personal data for "training, fine-tuning, and evaluating machine learning models." The pricing page adds: "We will never share your data with third parties." Both read September 3, 2026.

How long does Clarity keep recordings compared with Hotjar?

Clarity's retention doc: "Playback data is retained for 30 days. Labeled or favorited sessions are retained for 9 months. Heatmaps data is retained for 9 months." Hotjar's answer depends on the page: the Contentsquare pricing table lists "Analytics Data Access" as 1 month on Free and 13 months on Growth, while the help centre says recordings and heatmaps "retain data for 365 days from the date of capture. This applies to all accounts and plans." Both live on September 3, 2026.

Can Clarity or Hotjar record the Shopify checkout?

Hotjar cannot: "Shopify's built-in checkout process doesn't support the direct integration of third-party scripts, including the Hotjar tracking code." Clarity can on Shopify Plus: "the checkout and post-checkout pages are now tracked in Clarity through Shopify's Pixel." On a non-Plus plan Clarity still shows a Purchases card, but Checkout Abandonment is "only available on Clarity projects of Shopify Plus sites."

How much does Hotjar cost for a Shopify store in 2026?

hotjar.com/pricing now redirects to contentsquare.com/pricing. There, Experience Analytics is $0 on Free (up to 200k monthly sessions) and Growth starts at $49 a month paid monthly, $39 yearly, for 7k sessions, rising to $119 at 20k, $409 at 100k and $739 at 200k. Surveys beyond the free allowance are a separate product, Voice of Customer, from $99 monthly or $79 yearly. Pro and Enterprise are quote-only.

Does Hotjar still have a free plan?

Yes, and it is larger than most comparison pages say. The Contentsquare pricing page lists Free at $0 with 200k monthly sessions, 1 project, replays, heatmaps and funnels, and basic surveys; the plan-slider data caps Free at 10k replays. The catch is the "Analytics Data Access" row: 1 month on Free against 13 months on Growth.

Does Microsoft Clarity have surveys?

No. The Clarity FAQ lists "Session Recordings, Heatmaps, ML Insights" and the word "survey" does not appear anywhere in it, nor on the pricing page's feature list. If you want to ask a shopper why they left, Hotjar is the one that can, and its free tier includes basic surveys with up to 100 responses a month.

Can I run Clarity and Hotjar at the same time on Shopify?

Yes. Clarity installs as an app and Hotjar as a snippet in theme.liquid, so they do not touch the same file. Hotjar covers surveys and long look-back; Clarity covers checkout on Plus and unlimited recordings at zero cost. The cost is two scripts in every shopper's browser and two consent flows to configure. Measure Core Web Vitals before and after, and drop one within a quarter if you are not opening it.

Does Clarity or Hotjar slow down a Shopify store?

Both say the script is asynchronous. Clarity's FAQ: "Visitors to your site notice no change in site speed or performance." Hotjar is more candid: "we cannot guarantee that your site will not be affected in any way", and its own test shows about 0.01 seconds added to interactive and 0.3 seconds to full load. Those are vendor numbers. Test your own product page before and after.

A note on sources. Every price, limit, retention period and contract clause on this page was read on September 3, 2026 from clarity.microsoft.com (pricing, terms), learn.microsoft.com/clarity (FAQ, data retention, Shopify install, e-commerce insights, funnels), contentsquare.com/pricing including its plan-slider data, the Hotjar help centre articles on retention, Shopify, deletion and site speed, both Shopify App Store listings, and Shopify's pixels overview. The Clarity Terms of Use page shows no last-updated date, so clauses are quoted as rendered that day. The reddit thread that ranks for this search could not be fetched and is not quoted. Where this page says something is absent, the same search was first run against a string known to be present on that file. Terms and prices change; re-read the vendor page before you sign.