Hotjar review

Hotjar is not a usability testing platform, but many product and design teams use it as the first step of research because it shows how people actually behave on a live site. Every plan includes session replays, heatmaps, funnels and surveys, and the free plan adds error and performance monitoring with 1 month of data and 1 project. Growth costs $39 a month billed yearly, or $49 monthly, and adds 13 months of data, 3 projects, zone-based heatmaps, path analysis across sessions, impact quantification and AI summaries of replays and heatmaps. Larger on-site surveys come through the Voice of Customer product, priced separately. Pro and Enterprise plans on the wider experience platform add cross-device analysis, A/B testing analysis and more, priced through sales. It ranks low here because it cannot run moderated interviews, recruit participants or test prototypes, which are the core of this list's brief.

Who it is for

Teams that want to see how people behave on a live site before deciding what to test or ask.

Price

Free plan; Growth from $39 per month billed yearly ($49 monthly).

$49 $39 / month Get started Get started Build a plan Everything in Free and: 13 month data access
Quoted from the vendor pricing page on November 9, 2026.

Key features

• Session replays, heatmaps and funnels on every plan
• Basic surveys on the free plan, with Voice of Customer surveys sold separately
• Zone-based heatmaps and user path analysis on Growth
• AI session replay and heatmap summaries on Growth
• MCP connection to LLMs

Strengths and weaknesses

• Strength: Permanent free plan with replays, heatmaps and funnels
• Strength: Low published USD entry price
• Strength: Free plan includes AI features and an MCP connection to LLMs
• Weakness: No moderated interviews or prototype tests
• Weakness: Free plan keeps only 1 month of data
• Weakness: Larger surveys need the separate Voice of Customer product

Key facts

• Free plan: 1 month data access, 1 project
• Growth: 13 month data access, 3 projects
• Billing: Save 20% on yearly billing

Where it ranks

Hotjar is No. 9 in our Best UX Research Tools verdict.