The question arrives in our inbox in the same words every month: “Is Microsoft Clarity really free, or is there a catch?” The short answer, as of September 2026, is that Clarity has no paid tier at all. There is no traffic cap that quietly switches you to a plan, no sampling once you pass a threshold, no limit on the number of websites you can add. Microsoft pays for it and says so plainly.
That answer is true and it is also incomplete. A tool with no price still has a cost: the time to install it properly, the consent work it triggers, and, above all, the hours somebody has to spend watching recordings and acting on them. This article gives you the whole bill, so you can decide whether Clarity, Hotjar, or nothing at all is the right call for a business your size.
Microsoft Clarity is free with no paid plan, no traffic limits and no sampling: heatmaps, session recordings, rage-click and dead-click detection, funnels and AI summaries, on unlimited sites. Recordings are kept for a limited window, so you have to review them regularly. The real cost is one to two hours of setup, a consent line in your privacy policy, and two to four hours a month of somebody reading the recordings and fixing what they show. Hotjar charges once you pass its free session cap; for most small and mid-size businesses that money is better spent on the person doing the reviewing.
Want the recordings read for you? Our Microsoft Clarity setup and review service installs it, configures the tags and turns the first month of data into a fix list.
What “free” means in Clarity’s case
Clarity is free in the plain sense: there is nothing to buy. The features below are all included at no charge, for any traffic volume, on as many sites as you add to the account.
- Session recordings of real visits, with the page, device, country and referrer attached.
- Heatmaps for clicks, scroll depth and page areas, per page and per device.
- Frustration signals: rage clicks, dead clicks, quick-backs and excessive scrolling, each filterable.
- Funnels and filters built from URLs, events and custom tags.
- AI summaries of recordings and of what a page’s visitors did, so you do not have to watch every session.
- Integrations with Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager, and a JavaScript API for custom tags.
Why does Microsoft give this away? The public reason is that Clarity is part of the Bing and advertising ecosystem and the aggregated, anonymized behavior data is valuable to Microsoft. You are not the customer of a paid product; you are a user of a free one whose data, anonymized, feeds a much larger business. For most companies that trade is fine. If your privacy policy or your industry says otherwise, that is the first “cost” to weigh.
The limits that do exist
Free does not mean unlimited in every direction. Three constraints matter in practice.
Recordings expire
Clarity keeps session recordings for a limited window, currently measured in weeks rather than months, while dashboard metrics and heatmap data are retained longer. Microsoft adjusts these windows from time to time, so check the current figure in the Clarity documentation. The practical consequence is simple: recordings are a stream, not an archive. If nobody looks at them this month, this month’s evidence is gone.
Recording is on their terms
You cannot buy longer retention, higher fidelity or a dedicated account manager, because there is nothing to buy. Support is documentation and a community forum. For a marketing team that is fine; for an enterprise that needs a contract and a data-processing agreement, it may not be.
You still owe your visitors consent
Clarity masks sensitive input by default and lets you mask more, but a recording of a visit is personal data in most jurisdictions. Your privacy policy has to say you use it, and if you run a consent banner, Clarity should load only after consent. That is not a Clarity limitation so much as a cost of using any recording tool, and it is the step most small businesses skip.
What it actually costs to use Clarity well
Here is the bill we quote clients when they ask. None of it goes to Microsoft.
| Item | Time or money | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Install through Google Tag Manager | 30–60 minutes | Faster than editing theme files, and it survives a site redesign. |
| Masking, custom tags, GA4 link | 1–2 hours | Tag the pages and events that matter (quote form, phone click, checkout step) so filters mean something. |
| Privacy policy and consent wiring | 1 hour, plus legal review if you have it | A sentence in the policy; Clarity loads after consent if you use a banner. |
| Reading recordings and heatmaps | 2–4 hours a month | This is the real cost. Filter to rage clicks and dead clicks first; ten recordings usually reveal the top three problems. |
| Fixing what you find | Varies | A broken mobile form or a hidden phone number is often a one-hour developer fix with a large payoff. |
Add it up and a small business spends four to six hours in month one and two to four hours a month after that. If that time does not exist inside the company, the honest options are to pay somebody for it or not to install the tool at all. A recording nobody watches is a privacy liability with no upside.
Clarity vs Hotjar pricing
Hotjar is the tool most people compare Clarity with, and the comparison is mostly about money.
| Microsoft Clarity | Hotjar | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, no paid plan | Free plan with a monthly session cap; paid plans priced by daily sessions |
| Traffic limits | None, no sampling | Free plan is capped; paid tiers raise the cap |
| Recordings and heatmaps | Included | Included, volume depends on plan |
| Surveys and feedback widgets | Not included | Included on paid plans, a real advantage if you need on-page surveys |
| Retention | Limited window for recordings | Longer on paid plans |
| Support | Docs and community | Email and, on higher plans, priority support |
Hotjar’s prices move, so we do not print them here; check the current page before you decide. The pattern has been stable for years, though: Hotjar charges as your traffic grows, Clarity does not. If you need surveys or longer retention, Hotjar earns its fee. If you need to see where visitors get stuck, Clarity does that job for nothing. Our longer Clarity vs Hotjar comparison goes feature by feature.
Who should use Clarity, and who should not
- Use it if you have a website that is supposed to produce calls, forms or orders and you can commit a couple of hours a month to reviewing what visitors do. That describes most Dallas–Fort Worth service businesses we work with.
- Use it with care if you handle health, financial or legal information on the site. Masking and consent are not optional, and your policy has to be explicit.
- Skip it if nobody will look at it. Install it the month you plan to fix the site, not the month you plan to think about it.
A ten-minute setup that avoids the common mistakes
- Create the project at clarity.microsoft.com and add the site.
- Install the tag through Google Tag Manager, firing after consent if you use a banner.
- Turn on masking for form fields and any element that could show personal data.
- Add custom tags for the events you care about: quote form submitted, phone number clicked, checkout step reached.
- Link GA4 so Clarity segments line up with the traffic sources you already report on.
- Put a monthly 30-minute review in the calendar: filter to rage clicks, dead clicks and quick-backs on your money pages, watch ten recordings, write down three fixes.
Two of those fixes usually pay for the whole exercise. The rage clicks guide and the dead clicks guide show what to look for once the data is in.
What to do next
If you have a website and no recording tool, install Clarity this week; it costs nothing to try and the first ten recordings are usually an education. If you already have Hotjar and you are paying for volume rather than for surveys, run both for a month and decide with the data. And if the two-to-four hours a month are the problem, that is the part to buy, not the software: a conversion optimization engagement is mostly somebody reading the recordings and fixing what they show.
- Clarity has no paid plan in 2026: unlimited traffic, unlimited sites, no sampling, recordings and heatmaps included.
- The limits are retention (recordings expire after a limited window), no paid support, and the consent work any recording tool triggers.
- The real cost is time: four to six hours in month one, two to four hours a month after that, spent reading and fixing.
- Hotjar charges as traffic grows and adds surveys; if you only need to see where visitors get stuck, Clarity does it for free.
Most Dallas–Fort Worth service businesses we audit have a recording tool installed and nobody reading it. The install happened during a website project; the reviewing never did. That is the pattern to avoid, and it is why we treat the monthly review as part of the service rather than a tool the client owns.
The businesses that get value from Clarity here are the ones whose sites are supposed to ring a phone: contractors, clinics, law and accounting firms, home services. Ten recordings of mobile visitors trying to call or fill in a form tell you more than a month of Google Analytics reports.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. There is no paid plan, no traffic cap and no sampling. Microsoft funds it and uses anonymized, aggregated behavior data across the ecosystem; you should say in your privacy policy that you use it.
No. You can add as many sites as you like and record as many sessions as your traffic produces. The constraint is retention: recordings are kept for a limited window, so they have to be reviewed regularly.
A limited window, currently measured in weeks, while dashboard and heatmap data are kept longer. Microsoft changes the figures occasionally, so check the current documentation and treat recordings as a stream to review monthly rather than an archive.
For heatmaps and recordings at no cost, yes. Hotjar adds surveys, feedback widgets, longer retention and support on its paid plans. If you need those, Hotjar is worth paying for; if you need to see where visitors get stuck, Clarity does the job for free.
Clarity provides masking and can be loaded only after consent, which is what compliance requires of you. Compliance itself is your responsibility: disclose the tool in your privacy policy, mask personal data, and honour consent choices.
Setup is one to two hours; ongoing review is two to four hours a month. We include both in our Clarity service and in conversion optimization engagements, where the recordings are the evidence for every change we make.
Want the recordings read for you?
We install Clarity through Tag Manager, set up masking, tags and consent, and turn the first month of recordings into a prioritized fix list for your money pages. You pay for the hours, never for the tool.
See the Clarity setup and review service
