Session replay records real visits to your site so you can watch where people hesitate, rage-click or give up.
For most CRO teams the best place to start is Microsoft Clarity, which is free with no traffic limits.
Pay for Contentsquare (which now includes Hotjar), Mouseflow, Lucky Orange or FullStory when you need longer data history, funnels tied to replays, or support from the vendor.
PostHog is the pick for product teams that want open source and replay in the same place as analytics and experiments.
We have not used these tools ourselves. This roundup is based on each vendor's pricing pages and docs, checked in November 2026. We may earn a commission if you buy Lucky Orange or Heatmap.com through our links.
That doesn't change which tool we recommend first, which is a free one.
| Tool | Pricing model (as of November 2026) | Free option | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Clarity | Free | Yes, no traffic limits or sampling | Every site, as a first install |
| Contentsquare (incl. Hotjar) | Growth from $39/mo billed yearly; Pro and Enterprise quote-only | Yes, replays 5% of sessions (max 10k) | Teams that want replay, surveys and journeys together |
| FullStory | Quote-only | Yes, 30,000 sessions/mo | Product and engineering teams, complex apps |
| PostHog | Usage-based, from $0.005/recording | Yes, 5,000 recordings/mo | SaaS and app teams that want open source |
| Mouseflow | From $25/mo (5,000 sessions) | Yes, 500 sessions/mo | Small and mid-size sites wanting funnels and friction scoring |
| Lucky Orange | From $32/mo billed yearly (3,500 sessions) | 7-day trial | Shopify and small stores wanting replay plus chat and surveys |
| Smartlook | No longer sold | Existing users only, until Sept 2027 | No one new |
What session replay shows (and what it cannot)
A session replay tool records clicks, scrolls, mouse movement and page changes, then rebuilds the visit as a video-like playback.
Most tools also flag frustration signals such as rage clicks (repeated clicks in one spot) and dead clicks (clicks that do nothing).
That makes replay good at finding where people get stuck: a field that throws an error, a button that looks clickable but isn't, a coupon box that sends shoppers off to search for a code.
It's a research tool. It shows you the problem, then an A/B test tells you whether your fix actually helps.
What replay can't do is tell you why someone left, or prove that a change will lift conversions.
Ten recordings of people stalling on a form is a hypothesis, not a result.
Pair replay with surveys and interviews (see our guide to customer research for CRO), and then test.
The tests below show the pattern. Each one started from a problem that replay and heatmaps are good at surfacing, and each fix was then A/B tested:
- Qualicorp removed repeated fields from a quote form and got +19.31% completed quote requests (credited to VWO).
- Tinkoff Bank added a "Don't remember passport details?" option to an application form and saw +35.8% applications.
- Sq1 removed the coupon and gift card boxes from the Bionic Gloves cart, which lifted revenue by 24.7%.
Those write-ups don't say which research tool was used.
They're here to show the kind of friction that replay helps you find before you write a hypothesis.
@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederenMicrosoft Clarity (free)
Clarity offers session recordings, heatmaps and AI insights at no cost.
Microsoft's Clarity FAQ calls it "a free service forever," with no traffic limits and no sampling of your traffic.
The tracking code is open source on GitHub.
The trade-offs: recordings are kept for 30 days (favorites and a random sample up to 9 months), recording is capped at 100,000 sessions per project per day, and each heatmap covers up to 100,000 page views.
There are no funnels tied to revenue and no vendor support team to call.
In regions that require consent, Clarity limits what it collects until a visitor agrees.
Not for: teams that need a year of history or a support contract. Read our Microsoft Clarity review.
Hotjar (now Contentsquare)
Hotjar was the default replay and heatmap tool for years.
It's now part of Contentsquare, and Contentsquare's Hotjar page says it's no longer possible to create a new Hotjar account. New users sign up for Contentsquare instead.
On the Contentsquare pricing page, as of November 2026, the Free plan tracks up to 200k monthly sessions but replays only 5% of them (max 10k), with one month of data.
Growth starts at $39/month billed yearly ($49 monthly), replays 15% of sessions (min.
20k) and keeps 13 months of data. Pro and Enterprise capture up to 100% of sessions and are priced by quote.
The appeal is having replays, heatmaps, surveys and journeys in one account.
The downside is that lower plans replay only a share of your traffic, so a low-traffic page may yield few recordings.
Not for: anyone who only wants free, unsampled recordings, since Clarity covers that. See our Hotjar review.
FullStory
FullStory is built for product, engineering and support teams.
It autocaptures interactions so you can search past behavior without tagging events first, and it flags rage clicks, dead clicks and error clicks.
As of November 2026, every paid tier on FullStory's plans page says "Request pricing & demo," so expect a sales process.
The FullstoryFree plan includes 30,000 sessions a month, 10 seats and a year of replay retention.
It requires a business email and stops recording at the cap.
Under terms in effect since August 10, 2025, FullStory may use anonymized free-plan data for AI model training.
Not for: small marketing teams that just want to see where shoppers get stuck. Read our FullStory review.
PostHog
PostHog bundles product analytics, session replay, feature flags, experiments and surveys.
Per PostHog's session replay page, the first 5,000 recordings each month are free, then pricing starts at $0.005 per recording and drops with volume.
It records web plus iOS and Android apps, with automatic and manual masking.
It's also the main answer to "open source session replay."
The PostHog pricing page notes an MIT-licensed open source version alongside the cloud product.
Free-plan recordings are kept for 1 month, and pay-as-you-go recordings for 90 days.
You can set billing limits so usage never surprises you.
For CRO, the plus is that you can watch replays of people in a specific experiment variant in the same tool that ran the test.
The minus is setup: PostHog assumes a developer will install and configure it.
Not for: a Shopify marketer who wants a one-click app. See our PostHog review.
Mouseflow
Mouseflow combines recordings, heatmaps, funnels and friction detection.
As of November 2026, Mouseflow pricing runs from a free plan (500 sessions/month, 1 month of data) to Essential at $25/month (5,000 sessions), Advanced at $109/month (25,000) and Premium at $319/month (100,000), billed monthly.
Annual billing saves up to 35%, and there's a 14-day trial with no credit card.
Its strength is clear tiers and friction scoring that point you to recordings worth watching.
Its weakness is that session caps fill quickly on a busy site, and data retention depends on your plan (3 to 12 months).
Not for: high-traffic sites on a tight budget. Read our Mouseflow review.
Smartlook
Smartlook was a popular choice for web and mobile app replay, but it's winding down.
Its pricing page now says Smartlook has joined Cisco.
No new subscriptions have been sold since May 31, 2026, and the platform will be decommissioned on September 30, 2027, when remaining data will be deleted.
Its replay features move into Digital Experience Analytics in Splunk Observability Cloud, without historical data.
If you're an existing user, export what you need through the Smartlook APIs and plan a move.
For mobile app replay, PostHog and FullStory are the closest options here. More in our Smartlook review.
Contentsquare
Beyond the self-serve Growth plan, Contentsquare's Pro and Enterprise tiers are its enterprise product: up to 100% session capture, multi-session AI replay summaries, attribution analysis and dedicated support.
Pricing for those tiers isn't public; you book a demo.
This fits large retailers and brands with an analytics team that will use zone-based heatmaps and journey analysis every week.
For a store doing a few thousand sessions a day, it's more platform than you need.
Two other options are worth a look for ecommerce.
Lucky Orange starts at $32/month billed yearly for 3,500 sessions, with every feature on every plan and a 7-day trial.
Heatmap.com ties revenue to page elements and recordings, so you see which clicks lead to money. Our heatmap tools roundup covers both.
Privacy and sampling
Replay tools record what's on screen, so privacy settings matter before you go live.
Clarity masks input boxes in all modes, and that can't be turned off.
PostHog and FullStory offer automatic masking, and FullStory's configurable form privacy is a paid feature.
Check that card numbers, emails and addresses are masked on your checkout and account pages before you install.
Consent is the second issue. In consent-required regions, Clarity limits collection until a visitor opts in, and other tools depend on your consent banner too. Expect fewer recordings from EU traffic.
Sampling is the third. Contentsquare's lower tiers replay a share of sessions, and Mouseflow and Lucky Orange stop at your monthly cap.
If your key page gets little traffic, a sampled or capped plan may give you too few recordings to see a pattern.
Clarity's no-sampling policy is a real advantage there.
How to review recordings fast
Nobody has time to watch every session. A simple routine:
- Start with a question. "Why do mobile visitors leave the cart?" beats "let's see what people do."
- Filter hard. Pick one page, one device and one outcome (for example, reached checkout but didn't buy).
- Sort by frustration signals. Rage clicks, dead clicks and errors point to the recordings worth watching.
- Watch 10-20 sessions at 2x speed and write down every stall. Count how often each one repeats.
- Check against heatmaps and analytics. One odd session is noise. A pattern that shows up in the funnel numbers is a lead.
- Write a hypothesis and test it. Replay finds the problem; the test proves the fix.
Dave Diederen's tests show the last step in practice.
Heatmaps showed where shoppers focused, and the A/B-tested changes that followed included above-the-fold USPs rewritten around those points (+7.28% revenue per visitor) and a countdown timer placed where attention clustered (+20.65% revenue per visitor).
Browse more in our test database or the wider customer research tools list.