Microsoft Clarity Review: Pros and Cons [2026]

The Bottom Line: Microsoft Clarity is a genuinely free, surprisingly powerful behavior analytics tool that gives you 80% of what paid alternatives offer at 0% of the cost. For most websites, especially those starting with behavior analytics, Clarity is more than enough. The limitations—no surveys, 30-day retention, privacy concerns—matter for some use cases but won't affect the majority of users. See our Hotjar vs Clarity comparison, best free heatmap tools roundup, and best Hotjar alternatives.

Microsoft Clarity launched in 2020 and quickly became the go-to free alternative for heatmaps and session recordings. With Microsoft's backing, the tool has continued evolving, adding AI-powered insights through Copilot integration and expanding to mobile app support. Five years later, it's a legitimate option even for teams that could afford paid tools.

This in-depth review covers everything you need to know: features, limitations, ideal use cases, and honest assessment of when free isn't enough.

What is Microsoft Clarity?

Microsoft Clarity is a free user behavior analytics tool that provides heatmaps, session recordings, and AI-powered insights. It helps website owners understand how visitors interact with their sites—where they click, how far they scroll, where they get stuck, and what causes frustration. If you're new to these concepts, start with our beginner's guide to what heatmaps are.

Unlike most "free" analytics tools that impose strict limits designed to push upgrades, Clarity is genuinely unlimited. There's no credit card required, no trial period, and no artificial caps on usage.

Microsoft offers Clarity free as part of their broader ecosystem strategy—it integrates with Microsoft advertising products and helps them improve their machine learning models. The trade-off is clear: you get powerful analytics free, Microsoft gets anonymized behavioral data.

Clarity Features: Complete Overview

Heatmaps

Clarity offers three primary heatmap types:

Click Heatmaps: Visualize where users click on your pages. Color-coded overlay shows click density, helping identify which elements attract attention and which are ignored.

Scroll Heatmaps: See how far users scroll down your pages. Identify where most visitors stop scrolling and whether important content is getting seen.

Area Heatmaps: Group clicks by page regions to understand which sections drive the most engagement.

Conversion Heatmaps (Shopify): For Shopify stores, visualize where conversions happen and correlate clicks with purchases.

Attention Maps: Understand where visitors focus their time—not just where they click, but where they spend attention.

All heatmaps can be viewed by device type (desktop, tablet, mobile), making it easy to identify responsive design issues.

Soft Limits: Clarity caps at 100,000 pageviews per heatmap and 100,000 sessions per project per day. For 99% of websites, these limits are never reached.

Session Recordings

Clarity captures user sessions and lets you watch reconstructed videos of how visitors navigate your site. You'll see:

• Mouse movements and cursor position
• Clicks and taps
• Scrolling behavior
• Page navigation
• Form interactions (with PII masking)

Automatic Frustration Detection:

Clarity automatically identifies and flags problematic user behaviors:

• Rage Clicks: Rapid, repeated clicking indicating frustration
• Dead Clicks: Clicking on non-interactive elements
• Error Clicks: Clicks that trigger JavaScript errors
• Quick Backs: Users who immediately navigate away from a page
• Excessive Scrolling: Erratic scrolling patterns suggesting confusion

These filters surface problematic sessions without requiring manual review of every recording.

Recording Limits: Clarity doesn't impose recording limits. Every qualifying session is captured (some sessions are filtered out for quality, like very short visits or bot traffic).

Copilot AI Integration

This is where Clarity gets interesting. Microsoft has integrated their Copilot AI directly into the platform, adding capabilities that paid competitors charge premium prices for.

Session Summaries: Instead of watching 5-minute recordings, get AI-generated summaries of what happened. Copilot identifies key moments, frustration points, and notable behaviors in natural language.

Batch Processing: Generate AI summaries for up to 250 recordings at once. Instead of manually reviewing sessions, get a synthesized report of common patterns and issues.

Heatmap Insights: Copilot analyzes heatmaps across desktop, tablet, and mobile views and generates natural language summaries of key findings. Save time on cross-device analysis.

Chat Interface: Ask questions about your data in plain English. "Which pages have the highest rage click rates?" "What's the average scroll depth on my pricing page?" Copilot queries your dashboard and returns insights.

Ad Campaign Insights: For sites running Microsoft or Google ads, Copilot combines campaign performance with behavioral data to explain how ad traffic behaves after clicking through.

Important caveat: Copilot is generative AI with the standard limitations. Insights should be verified before acting on them. Microsoft explicitly notes outputs shouldn't be treated as expert recommendations.

Smart Events

Clarity automatically tracks certain interactions without any configuration:

• Button clicks
• Link clicks
• Form submissions
• Image interactions
• External link clicks
• Page navigation

You can also define custom events using CSS selectors or JavaScript—no developer required for basic tracking.

Dashboard and Metrics

The Clarity dashboard provides:

• Total sessions and users
• Pages per session
• Scroll depth metrics
• Click patterns
• Frustration signals summary
• Popular pages
• Entry/exit page analysis
• Device and browser breakdowns
• Geographic distribution

While not as sophisticated as dedicated analytics platforms like Google Analytics, Clarity provides enough context to understand basic user behavior patterns.

Integrations

Google Analytics 4: Clarity integrates directly with GA4, linking session recordings to your existing analytics. See Clarity data within GA4 context, or jump from GA4 segments to relevant Clarity recordings.

Shopify: Native Shopify integration with one-click installation. Special features include conversion heatmaps and checkout tracking for Shopify Plus accounts.

WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Weebly: Standard platform integrations for easy installation.

Google Tag Manager: Install and configure via GTM for more control over deployment.

MCP Server Integration: For advanced users, connect Clarity to tools like Cursor, Claude, or VS Code via Model Context Protocol for automated reporting and analysis.

Notable absence: Clarity doesn't integrate with most marketing and sales tools (HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack, etc.) the way paid alternatives do.

Mobile App Support

Unlike most competitors (including Hotjar), Clarity supports mobile app analytics. Track user behavior in iOS and Android apps with the same heatmaps and recordings available for websites.

Current limitation: Copilot heatmap insights aren't available for mobile apps yet.

Clarity Limitations: What's Missing

No tool is perfect, and Clarity's free price comes with real trade-offs.

No Surveys or Feedback Tools

This is Clarity's biggest limitation. You can see what users do, but you can't ask them why.

There's no way to:

• Deploy on-site surveys
• Collect NPS or satisfaction scores
• Add feedback widgets
• Ask exit-intent questions
• Gather qualitative feedback

If understanding user intent through direct feedback is important, you'll need a separate tool (Hotjar, Lucky Orange, Typeform, etc.).

30-Day Data Retention

Clarity only retains session recordings and heatmap data for 30 days. After that, data is permanently deleted.

This matters if you:

• Need to reference historical user behavior
• Run seasonal businesses and want year-over-year comparisons
• Need to show stakeholders data from months ago
• Want long-term trend analysis

Paid alternatives like Hotjar retain data for up to 365 days.

Limited Privacy Controls

Clarity has drawn criticism for its privacy approach:

No Do Not Track support: Clarity doesn't respect browser DNT signals. If a user has enabled DNT, Clarity tracks them anyway.

No individual data deletion: Under GDPR, users have a "right to erasure." If someone requests their data be deleted, Clarity doesn't provide a way to remove individual user records.

Microsoft data usage: By using Clarity, you grant Microsoft rights to use anonymized data to improve their advertising systems and machine learning models. This is disclosed in their terms, but it concerns privacy-conscious users.

Consent management: Clarity relies on your site's existing consent mechanisms. There's no built-in consent banner or GDPR-compliant opt-in flow.

For companies in regulated industries or those prioritizing privacy, these limitations are significant.

Industry Restrictions

Clarity cannot be used on:

• Healthcare websites
• Financial services sites
• Government-related websites

These restrictions stem from data handling concerns in sensitive industries. If you operate in these sectors, Clarity is not an option.

No Guaranteed Support

Free tool means free support. Microsoft provides:

• Community forums
• Documentation and help articles
• Blog posts and tutorials

There's no support team to contact, no live chat, no guaranteed response times. If something breaks or you need help, you're on your own.

Limited Segmentation and Filtering

While Clarity captures all traffic, segmentation options are basic compared to paid tools:

• Device type
• Browser
• Geographic location
• Frustration signals

You can't segment by:

• Traffic source/UTM parameters (limited)
• Custom user attributes
• User identification
• Advanced behavioral filters

Deep analysis often requires exporting to other tools.

No Funnel or Conversion Tracking

Clarity doesn't offer funnel visualization. You can't:

• Track multi-step conversion processes
• Identify specific drop-off points in checkout flows
• Visualize user journeys through defined paths

For conversion optimization, you'll need separate funnel analytics.

Basic Collaboration Features

Sharing is limited to:

• Link sharing of recordings
• Email sharing

There's no team workspace, no commenting on recordings, no Slack integration for sharing insights with teammates. For teams that collaborate heavily on UX insights, this matters.

What Clarity Does Well

Despite limitations, Clarity excels in several areas:

Truly Unlimited (and Free)

This can't be overstated. Clarity offers:

• Unlimited heatmaps
• Unlimited session recordings
• Unlimited websites/projects
• No session caps
• No pageview limits (within soft caps that 99% never hit)

No credit card. No trial. No upgrade pressure. This makes it accessible to everyone from side projects to enterprise sites.

Excellent Frustration Detection

Clarity's automatic detection of rage clicks, dead clicks, and error clicks is genuinely useful. These signals surface problems you might never notice otherwise, without any configuration.

AI-Powered Insights (Copilot)

The Copilot integration puts Clarity ahead of some paid tools in AI capabilities. Automatic session summaries, heatmap analysis, and natural language queries save significant time.

Microsoft reports generating over a million AI insights per month across Clarity users.

Live Heatmaps

Unlike Hotjar (which requires waiting for data collection), Clarity offers a browser extension that visualizes click data on your live site in real-time. Useful for quick analysis without logging into the dashboard.

Real-Time Monitoring

Clarity captures and displays user behavior in near real-time. You can see what visitors are doing right now, not just historical data from hours ago.

Mobile App Support

Tracking mobile app behavior with the same toolset as your website is valuable, especially since major competitors like Hotjar don't offer this.

Performance

Clarity's tracking script is lightweight and loads asynchronously. Performance impact is typically negligible—most sites see less than 100ms additional load time. Core Web Vitals are rarely significantly affected.

Who Should Use Microsoft Clarity?

Ideal Users

Small businesses and startups: Limited budget? Clarity delivers 80% of what paid tools offer at zero cost. Start here.

Side projects and personal sites: No reason to pay for analytics on hobby projects. Clarity is perfect.

Developers and designers: Quick, free way to understand how users interact with your builds.

Agencies managing multiple clients: Unlimited projects means no per-client costs. Great for agencies offering basic analytics as part of their services.

Teams already in Microsoft ecosystem: If you use Microsoft tools (Power BI, Azure, Microsoft Ads), Clarity fits naturally.

Mobile app developers: One of the few free options for mobile app behavior analytics.

Anyone starting with behavior analytics: Learn the category without financial commitment. Upgrade to paid tools later if needed.

Who Might Need More

E-commerce sites focused on conversion: The lack of funnels and limited segmentation makes detailed conversion optimization harder.

Teams needing qualitative feedback: No surveys means you're only seeing what users do, never why.

Regulated industries: Healthcare, finance, and government sites can't use Clarity.

Privacy-conscious organizations: Data handling concerns may be disqualifying for companies prioritizing user privacy.

Teams requiring long-term data: 30-day retention isn't enough for seasonal analysis or historical reference.

Enterprise organizations: Limited collaboration, no SLAs, no guaranteed support may not meet enterprise requirements.

Clarity vs. Paid Alternatives

Clarity vs. Hotjar

| Aspect | Clarity | Hotjar | |--------|---------|--------| | Price | Free | $32-171+/month | | Session limit | Unlimited | 35-unlimited (plan dependent) | | Data retention | 30 days | 365 days | | Surveys | No | Comprehensive | | Funnels | No | Yes (paid) | | AI features | Copilot (strong) | Basic | | Mobile app | Yes | No | | Support | Community only | Dedicated team |

Verdict: Use Clarity for free heatmaps/recordings. Add Hotjar only if you need surveys, funnels, or long-term retention.

Clarity vs. Mouseflow

| Aspect | Clarity | Mouseflow | |--------|---------|-----------| | Price | Free | $39-399+/month | | Friction detection | Good | Excellent (Friction Score) | | Form analytics | Basic | Advanced | | Heatmap types | 3-4 | 6 | | Data retention | 30 days | 3-12 months | | JavaScript errors | Yes | Yes |

Verdict: Clarity handles basics well. Mouseflow for advanced form analytics and comprehensive friction scoring.

Clarity vs. Lucky Orange

| Aspect | Clarity | Lucky Orange | |--------|---------|--------------| | Price | Free | $39-179+/month | | Live chat | No | Yes | | Real-time monitoring | Yes | Yes | | Form analytics | Basic | Advanced | | Surveys | No | Basic |

Verdict: Clarity for pure behavior analytics. Lucky Orange if you need live chat and real-time customer engagement.

Getting Started with Clarity

Installation

1. Create a free Microsoft Clarity account at clarity.microsoft.com
2. Add your website as a new project
3. Copy the tracking code snippet
4. Add to your site's <head> section (or via GTM)
5. Wait 1-2 hours for data to start appearing

Platform-Specific Setup

Shopify: Use the official Microsoft Clarity app from the Shopify App Store for one-click installation.

WordPress: Install the official Microsoft Clarity plugin or add code manually to your theme.

Wix, Squarespace, Weebly: Native integrations available through platform settings.

Best Practices

1. Set up masking: Configure Clarity to mask sensitive form fields and personal information
2. Enable Google Analytics integration: Link GA4 for richer context
3. Review frustration signals daily: Check rage clicks and dead clicks regularly
4. Use Copilot for batch analysis: Generate summaries instead of watching every recording
5. Create multiple projects for different sites: Keep data organized

Final Verdict

Microsoft Clarity is excellent for what it is: a free, powerful behavior analytics tool that punches above its weight class.

For most websites—especially those starting their analytics journey—Clarity provides everything needed to understand user behavior. The combination of unlimited heatmaps, session recordings, and AI-powered Copilot insights delivers genuine value that many paid tools don't match.

The limitations are real but predictable trade-offs for a free product. No surveys means you're seeing behavior without context. Short data retention limits historical analysis. Privacy handling may concern some users.

My recommendation:

1. Start with Clarity. It's free, powerful, and sufficient for most needs.
2. Add paid tools selectively. If you need surveys (Hotjar), advanced form analytics (Mouseflow), or live chat (Lucky Orange), add them for specific capabilities—not to replace Clarity.
3. Run Clarity alongside paid tools. Its unlimited usage makes it perfect as a baseline, even if you're paying for other solutions.

Microsoft Clarity democratized behavior analytics. Five years in, it remains one of the best free tools in any software category.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Microsoft Clarity really free?

Yes. Clarity is completely free with no traffic limits, no credit card required, and no trial period. Microsoft subsidizes it through their broader ecosystem—they use anonymized data to improve advertising and ML products. This trade-off is disclosed in their terms.

Does Microsoft Clarity slow down my website?

Impact is minimal. The tracking script is lightweight (under 20KB) and loads asynchronously after page content. Most sites see less than 100ms additional load time. Google Core Web Vitals are rarely affected significantly, but always test after installation.

Is Microsoft Clarity GDPR compliant?

This is complicated. Clarity doesn't respect Do Not Track signals and doesn't provide individual data deletion. You're responsible for obtaining user consent before Clarity tracks visitors. For strict GDPR compliance, you may need additional consent management.

Can I use Clarity on Shopify?

Yes. Clarity has an official Shopify app with one-click installation. Shopify Plus merchants get additional features including checkout page tracking through Shopify's Pixel.

How does Clarity compare to Google Analytics?

They serve different purposes. Google Analytics tracks traffic, conversions, and user demographics. Clarity shows behavior through heatmaps and recordings. They complement each other—use both via the GA4 integration for the fullest picture.

Can I export Clarity data?

Export options are limited. You can share recording links and take heatmap screenshots, but there's no bulk data export or API access for raw data. For teams needing data portability, this is a limitation.

Last updated: February 2026. Features may change. Visit Microsoft Clarity for current information.

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