Best Free Heatmap Software for 2026: 12 Options Compared by Use Case

Microsoft Clarity is the rare tool that is free without a catch: no paid plan exists, no session cap waits behind an upgrade, and the heatmaps, recordings, and Copilot AI are all switched on from the first install. You get five heatmap types — click, scroll, area, attention, and Shopify conversion — plus session recordings, funnels, and insights that flag dead clicks and rage clicks automatically.

The Copilot AI answers plain-language questions about what visitors did, and the Google Analytics integration means you can segment a heatmap by your GA traffic sources. The trade-off is retention: recordings stay for 30 days unless you favourite them, and Microsoft's terms make it an independent controller of the data it collects. If you run a small site and want real heatmap data without a subscription, start here.

Hotjar became the household name in heatmaps, and it still is — but new accounts now sign up through Contentsquare, which bought Hotjar in 2024. The free plan is unusually generous for a paid tool: 200,000 sessions a month with heatmaps, replays, funnels, and basic surveys, though data is kept for one month and only one project is allowed.

Growth, from $39 a month billed annually, adds zone-based heatmaps that filter maps by visitor segments, journey analysis, and Sense AI summaries. The catch is scale: Growth prices rise with session volume, so a growing site outgrows the $39 entry price. For most small teams the free plan alone covers their heatmap needs, and the upgrade path is clear when it does not.

Plerdy is the value pick of this list. Its Startup plan costs $21 a month billed annually — the cheapest paid entry here — and a permanent free plan covers 100 heatmaps a day with 500 video sessions a month. One script delivers click, scroll, and hover heatmaps, session replay, funnels, pop-ups, A/B testing, and an SEO checker, so a small ecommerce team can replace two or three subscriptions with one.

Unlimited A/B testing runs on every plan, including free, which no rival here offers. The limits are real: heatmap and recording counts are metered separately, so heavy sites hit caps sooner than the headline suggests, and the AI Analyzer is a paid add-on rather than included. If you want the most tools per dollar, Plerdy is the cheapest way to pay for heatmaps.

Mouseflow is the heatmap specialist: seven map types — click, scroll, attention, interactive, and more — built automatically from session recordings, with friction scoring that surfaces rage clicks and dead clicks without you watching every replay. Mina AI insights start on the Essential plan at €25 a month billed annually, and the free plan covers 500 sessions a month.

The friction data is the real draw: you see which forms fail, which buttons frustrate, and which pages lose people, then fix the worst one first. Two caveats: form analytics only unlocks on Premium at €319 a month, and 500 free sessions can disappear in a day on a busy store. Pricing is also in euros, so the dollar cost moves with the exchange rate. For ecommerce teams that live in their heatmaps, Mouseflow earns its place.

Lucky Orange gives you everything on every plan: heatmaps, recordings, funnels, surveys, live chat, and form analytics all ship from the $32-a-month Build plan billed annually, with unlimited team members included. Its dynamic heatmaps update as your pages change, so you are not looking at a stale screenshot of last month's design, and the live visitor view shows people browsing in real time.

The trade-offs: there is no free plan on the main pricing page — only a 7-day trial — so there is no way to run it free long term, and pricing is by session volume alone, so a traffic spike can push you into the next tier mid-month. Discovery AI is also sold as an add-on. If you want one subscription that covers heatmaps and live chat, Lucky Orange is the most complete option here.

Crazy Egg is the original heatmap tool — running since 2006 — and it still does the core job well: click, scroll, and overlay maps plus confetti reports that split clicks by traffic source, device, and campaign. Every plan includes unlimited domains, team members, and surveys, with no overage charges; tracking simply pauses when you hit your cap.

Starter costs $29 a month billed annually, with no monthly-billing option. The limits: Starter tracks only 5,000 pageviews and 50 recordings a month, A/B testing needs Plus at $99 a month, and pageview-based pricing means one visitor viewing five pages counts as five tracked pageviews. There is no free plan, only a 30-day trial. If you trust a tool that has been doing heatmaps longer than any rival, Crazy Egg is the safe veteran pick.

Inspectlet's edge is that its heatmaps render on the live page instead of a static screenshot, so they stay accurate on React, Vue, and Angular apps where other tools show a broken or outdated layout. AI Session Insights and Ask AI are included on every plan, including the free plan, which covers 2,500 recorded sessions a month with every feature switched on — heatmaps, A/B testing, error logging, and surveys.

Micro costs $33 a month billed annually for 10,000 sessions. The weak spot is social proof: only 26 G2 reviews back its 4.1 score, the thinnest base in this list. Form analytics and API access also start on Growth at $149 a month. If your site is a single-page app and your current heatmap tool shows broken layouts, Inspectlet is built for exactly that problem.

Yandex Metrica is the second completely free option here: traffic analytics, click and scroll heatmaps, session replay, and form analytics with no paid plan and no traffic limits. Setup is a single tracking snippet, and it works alongside Google Tag Manager, so you can run it next to Google Analytics and compare the two.

The heatmaps are straightforward — click and scroll only, no attention maps — but the form analytics and replay quality are genuinely useful, and data retention is generous even without paying. The downsides: the interface feels crowded and dated next to Clarity and Hotjar, support is thinner outside Russian-speaking markets, and being a Yandex product carries data-residency questions regulated teams should check first. For a free all-in-one analytics suite, it is hard to argue with $0.

Matomo is the privacy pick, and the only tool here you can host entirely yourself: open-source analytics with 100% data ownership, GDPR-friendly by design, with data hosted in Europe and no sampling. Cloud Business costs €29 a month and bundles heatmaps, session recordings, funnels, and A/B testing, plus an official Google Analytics importer.

Self-hosting the free core is genuinely free, but heatmaps are not in the core — they need a premium plugin bundle from €275 a year. Cloud pricing is also per 50,000 hits, so €29 is the priciest hosted starting point here. And self-hosting needs a PHP and MySQL stack plus ongoing maintenance. If data ownership is a requirement rather than a preference, Matomo is the only option on this list that truly delivers it.

Zoho PageSense is the best free heatmap option inside the Zoho ecosystem. Its Forever Free plan includes heatmaps, session recordings, funnels, and form analytics for 5,000 monthly tracked users — more than most free plans here — and Professional adds polls, push notifications, and pop-ups from $17 a month billed annually.

Zoho CRM and Zoho Sites users get one login and shared visitor data, which is the real reason to pick it over a standalone tool. The limits: A/B testing and personalization sit on Enterprise, the free plan covers one project and one month of retention, and the pricing page renders prices in JavaScript — we confirmed the $17 figure against Zoho's own Marketplace listing. If your business already runs on Zoho, PageSense is the obvious heatmap add-on.

FullStory is the enterprise replay tool on this list, and its free plan is the most generous replay tier here: 30,000 sessions a month, 12 months of retention, and 10 seats. Five frustration signals — rage clicks, dead clicks, error clicks, thrashed cursor, and more — rank your worst sessions for you, and StoryAI agents summarize sessions and answer questions across thousands of replays, with Jira and Slack handoffs.

The catch is the price: no paid prices are published, every paid plan runs through a sales conversation and a custom quote, and third-party purchase data puts real contracts at $10,000 to $25,000 a year for small teams. The free plan covers replay and basic analytics, while heatmaps, funnels, and StoryAI sit on the paid plans. Use the free plan; expect a sales call if you outgrow it.

Clickmap.app takes a different approach from every other tool here: it has no tracking script of its own. It builds click heatmaps from the GA4 data you already collect, so your click data stays inside your own Google Analytics account and nothing is sent to another vendor.

The free tier covers 3 sites and 1,000 clicks a month, and Pro is $14.99 a month with unlimited sites and 50,000 clicks. The limits are real: click maps only — no scroll maps, no attention maps, and no session recordings at any price — and maps lag GA4 processing, so they are not live. There is also no public review base on G2. If you already run GA4 and only need to see where people click, Clickmap.app is the lightest, cheapest way to get that answer.