Best Hotjar Alternatives for WordPress in 2026

Hotjar is one of the most well-known behavior analytics tools on the market. It offers heatmaps, session recordings, feedback widgets, and surveys — all designed to help you understand how visitors interact with your website.

But for many WordPress site owners, Hotjar is overkill. If you mainly want to know which links people click, you're paying $32/month (or more) for features you'll never open. That's $384/year for a tool where you use maybe 10% of the functionality.

In this guide, we'll compare the best Hotjar alternatives for WordPress sites, from free SaaS tools to self-hosted plugins. We'll be honest about what each tool does well and where it falls short, so you can pick the right one for your specific needs.

Why Look for a Hotjar Alternative?

There are several common reasons WordPress site owners look beyond Hotjar:

• Cost. Hotjar's free plan is extremely limited (35 sessions/day). The Plus plan starts at $32/month, and the Business plan goes up from there. For a single WordPress site, that's a significant recurring expense.
• Privacy concerns. Hotjar is a SaaS platform. All your visitor behavior data — including session recordings — is sent to and stored on Hotjar's servers. For GDPR-conscious site owners, this creates data residency and consent management overhead.
• Complexity. Hotjar does a lot: heatmaps, recordings, surveys, feedback, funnels. If you just want click data, navigating all of that is unnecessary.
• WordPress integration. Hotjar works via a JavaScript snippet. The heatmaps and recordings are viewed on Hotjar's website, not in your WordPress dashboard. There's no native WordPress integration.

Let's look at the alternatives.

1. Microsoft Clarity (Free)

Best for: Site owners who want full behavior analytics at zero cost and don't mind sending data to Microsoft.

Microsoft Clarity is a free analytics tool that offers heatmaps (click, scroll, and area maps) and session recordings. It's genuinely free with no traffic caps, which makes it the most generous option in terms of price-to-features. (See our detailed Clarity vs Linkyy comparison for a deeper look.)

Pros:

• Completely free with unlimited traffic
• Click heatmaps, scroll heatmaps, and session recordings
• Integration with Google Analytics for combined insights
• Dead click and rage click detection
• Good dashboard UX

Cons:

• All data stored on Microsoft's servers (SaaS)
• Requires an external account (Microsoft)
• Heatmaps are area-based, not link-specific — you see where people click on the page, not which specific link they clicked
• No WordPress-native dashboard (viewed on clarity.microsoft.com)
• Can conflict with some consent management platforms
• Data processing can have delays

When to choose Clarity: If you want session recordings and general heatmaps for free, and you're comfortable with a SaaS solution, Clarity is hard to beat on value. It's the closest free alternative to Hotjar's core features.

2. Crazy Egg ($29/month)

Best for: Marketing teams that want A/B testing alongside heatmaps.

Crazy Egg has been around since 2005 and offers heatmaps, scroll maps, confetti reports (which show individual clicks by referrer source), and A/B testing. It's a mature product with a focus on conversion optimization.

Pros:

• Click heatmaps with confetti view (click-level detail by source)
• Scroll maps and attention maps
• Built-in A/B testing
• Snapshot comparison over time
• Established, mature product

Cons:

• Starts at $29/month (comparable to Hotjar)
• SaaS — data stored externally
• No WordPress-native integration (snippet-based)
• Limited recordings on lower plans
• Heatmaps are still area-based snapshots, not real-time on your live page
• Can feel dated compared to newer tools

When to choose Crazy Egg: If you want heatmaps combined with A/B testing capabilities, Crazy Egg offers that combination. But at a similar price to Hotjar, it doesn't solve the cost problem.

3. Aurora Heatmap (Free WordPress Plugin)

Best for: WordPress users who want a basic free heatmap plugin that stores data locally.

Aurora Heatmap is a Japanese-developed WordPress plugin with about 10,000 active installs. It records click positions and displays them as dot heatmaps overlaid on your pages. The key advantage: it's self-hosted, storing data in your WordPress database. (For a full comparison of self-hosted options, see our guide to self-hosted heatmap plugins.)

Pros:

• Free version available
• Self-hosted — data stays in your database
• Click and scroll heatmaps
• No external account required
• WordPress-native (installed as a plugin)

Cons:

• Heatmaps show click dots, not link-specific data — a click near a link isn't the same as a click on a link
• No click count badges or link-level analytics
• Limited filtering (no device segmentation in free version)
• Japanese documentation (English translations can be rough)
• UI feels basic
• Pro version required for scroll heatmaps and some features

When to choose Aurora: If you want a free, self-hosted click dot heatmap and don't need link-specific data, Aurora is the main option in the WordPress plugin directory. Just be aware that dot-based heatmaps are less precise than link-specific tracking for understanding click behavior on interactive elements.

4. Linkyy (Free / Pro from $29)

Best for: WordPress site owners who specifically want to know which links get clicked, with a visual overlay on their live pages.

Linkyy takes a different approach from the tools above. Instead of recording mouse movements and rendering area-based heatmaps, Linkyy specifically tracks clicks on links (<a> tags) and displays the data as color-coded count badges directly on your live pages.

Pros:

• Tracks clicks on every link on every page automatically
• Visual heatmap overlay with click count badges on your live site
• Link-specific data — not area-based approximations
• Self-hosted — all data in your WordPress database
• No cookies, no external accounts, no JavaScript snippets to configure
• Device and visitor type segmentation (desktop/mobile, logged-in/anonymous)
• WordPress-native dashboard with sortable data tables
• CSV and JSON export
• One-time purchase — no monthly fees
• GDPR-friendly by design

Cons:

• No session recordings (by design — it's a link click tracker, not a full analytics suite)
• No scroll heatmaps or mouse movement tracking
• No A/B testing
• Newer product (smaller install base than established tools)

When to choose Linkyy: If your primary question is "which links on my page do people click?" and you want a self-hosted, privacy-friendly answer without a monthly subscription, Linkyy is purpose-built for that question. It's not trying to replace Hotjar — it's solving the specific problem that Hotjar's most-used feature (click heatmaps) only partially addresses.

5. Clicky Analytics

Best for: Users who want real-time analytics with some heatmap functionality.

Clicky is an independent analytics platform that includes basic heatmap functionality alongside traditional web analytics. It positions itself as a privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics.

Pros:

• Real-time analytics dashboard
• Basic heatmap functionality
• Privacy-focused (GDPR compliance options)
• Individual visitor tracking
• Uptime monitoring included

Cons:

• Heatmaps only available on paid plans ($9.99/month+)
• SaaS — data stored on Clicky's servers
• Heatmaps are area-based, similar to Hotjar
• Interface feels dated
• Limited WordPress integration (snippet-based)
• Not primarily a heatmap tool — it's analytics with heatmaps added on

When to choose Clicky: If you want an all-in-one analytics platform that happens to include heatmaps, and you prefer it over Google Analytics. It's not the best choice if heatmaps are your primary need.

Comparison Table

Here's how these alternatives stack up on the features that matter most for WordPress click tracking:

Which Alternative Should You Choose?

The right tool depends on what question you're trying to answer:

"I want to see what visitors do on my site — scrolling, clicking, mouse movements, form interaction." Use Microsoft Clarity. It's free, comprehensive, and the best general-purpose alternative to Hotjar.

"I want heatmaps AND A/B testing in one tool." Use Crazy Egg. It's the only option here that combines both, though the price is similar to Hotjar.

"I want a free, self-hosted click heatmap for WordPress." Use Aurora Heatmap. It's the closest free self-hosted option, though the data is dot-based rather than link-specific.

"I specifically want to know which links people click on my pages." Use Linkyy. It's the only tool that gives you link-level click counts with a visual overlay on your live pages, stored entirely in your WordPress database.

"I want a full Google Analytics replacement that includes heatmaps." Use Clicky as part of a broader analytics migration, though heatmaps aren't its strongest feature.

You Might Not Need to Choose Just One

Here's something worth considering: these tools aren't mutually exclusive. A practical setup for many WordPress sites would be:

• Clarity for free session recordings and general behavior analysis
• Linkyy for self-hosted, link-specific click tracking with a visual overlay

Clarity tells you what visitors do on the page (where they scroll, where they hesitate, where they rage-click). Linkyy tells you which links they actually interact with. Together, they cover most of what Hotjar offers — without the monthly cost.

Getting Started

If you've decided that link-level click tracking is what you need, Linkyy is free on WordPress.org for the core dashboard. Upgrade to Pro (from $29, one-time) for the visual heatmap overlay and data export — no subscription, 14-day money-back guarantee. For a step-by-step walkthrough, see our guide to tracking link clicks in WordPress.

If you need the full behavior analytics suite (recordings, scroll maps, surveys), start with Microsoft Clarity. It's free and does an impressive job for the price of nothing.

Either way, you don't need to spend $32/month to understand how people use your website.