Hotjar offers heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys to reveal how users interact with your site. See 2026 pricing, features, and alternatives.
Hotjar is a behavior analytics platform founded in 2014 in Malta by David Darmanin and a small founding team, built from the outset as a self-funded, fully remote company. It became one of the most widely recognized names in qualitative web analytics by combining visual heatmaps, session recordings, and on-site surveys into a single, easy-to-install product.
In September 2021, Hotjar was acquired by Contentsquare, a larger digital experience analytics company, in what was Contentsquare's sixth acquisition in two years. The combined organization now exceeds 1,000 employees, and while Hotjar continues to operate under its own brand and product experience, its pricing and platform are gradually being unified with Contentsquare's broader suite.
The product installs via a single JavaScript snippet and requires no engineering resources to configure basic heatmaps or recordings, which has made it a popular first analytics tool for marketing and product teams who want to see, not just measure, how visitors use their site.
Hotjar's Observe product includes click, move, and scroll heatmaps that visualize aggregate user attention on a page, alongside session recordings that let teams watch anonymized replays of individual visitor journeys, complete with filters for rage clicks, dead clicks, and u-turns that flag likely usability problems.
The Ask product covers on-site surveys, embedded feedback widgets, and external survey links, letting teams gather qualitative context behind the quantitative patterns seen in Observe, plus a recruiting panel feature for sourcing participants for user interviews and usability testing.
Supporting features include funnel and form analysis to pinpoint where visitors abandon a conversion flow, integrations with tools like Google Analytics, Slack, and various CMS and ecommerce platforms, and GDPR/CCPA-aligned data collection controls including IP anonymization and data retention settings.
Hotjar has historically sold Observe and Ask as two separate subscriptions, each with a free Basic tier. Observe's free tier includes 35 daily sessions, with paid Plus, Business, and Scale tiers priced roughly at $39, $99, and $213 per month respectively at monthly billing (lower with annual billing), scaling session volume up to 1,500 daily sessions. Ask's free tier includes 20 monthly survey responses, with paid tiers priced roughly at EUR 48, EUR 64, and EUR 128 per month for increasing response volumes.
Following the Contentsquare acquisition, Hotjar is being migrated toward a unified Contentsquare pricing model in 2026, introducing Growth, Pro, and Enterprise tiers, with Growth starting around $49 per month and Pro and Enterprise requiring a custom quote from sales. Existing self-serve customers are being transitioned gradually, so pricing may vary depending on when an account was created.
Yes, Hotjar offers a free Basic tier for both its Observe (heatmaps and recordings) and Ask (surveys) products, with limited daily sessions or monthly responses.
Hotjar was founded independently in Malta in 2014 by David Darmanin and co-founders, and was acquired by Contentsquare in September 2021.
Observe covers heatmaps and session recordings for visualizing user behavior, while Ask covers surveys and feedback widgets for collecting qualitative visitor feedback.
Hotjar's paid plans historically start around $39 per month for Observe Plus and EUR 48 per month for Ask Plus, with pricing migrating to a unified Contentsquare structure starting around $49 per month in 2026.
Hotjar can track single-page applications, but reviewers note it is somewhat less robust for fully dynamic apps compared to tools built specifically for SPA tracking.
Hotjar reports being used on more than 1.3 million websites, including large brands such as Nintendo, Adobe, T-Mobile, and HubSpot.