Crazy Egg vs Hotjar
A source-aware comparison of pricing, documented capabilities and workflow fit.
Short answer
- Price: not directly comparable — Crazy Egg is pricing not verified, Hotjar is free tier available.
- How to start: Crazy Egg is pricing not verified, Hotjar is free tier available.
- Where they differ: only Hotjar has sso (saml); both offer public api.
These lines are generated from the pricing we track, not from a paid placement. How we score tools.
What Crazy Egg is
What Crazy Egg isCrazy Egg records how visitors scroll and click, producing heatmaps and session recordings. Heatmaps answer a specific question — where attention actually goes on a page — that a numbers dashboard cannot. It is a diagnostic tool rather than an analytics system, so it complements rather than replaces traffic reporting.
What Hotjar is
What Hotjar isHotjar is an analytics tool that visualizes user behavior, showing you how people truly experience your site. While Google Analytics tells you 'what' happened (number of visits), Hotjar explains 'why' (why they didn't click the button). Through heatmaps, you can see where users click most, and session recordings allow you to watch their journey like a video. It provides invaluable insights for product managers and UX designers aiming to increase conversion rates and improve user experience.
Side by side
| Crazy Egg | Hotjar | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Marketing | Marketing |
| How to start | Not verifiednot a monthly price | Free tiernot a monthly price |
| Public API | Yes | Yes |
| Mobile app | No | No |
| Open source / self-hostable | No | No |
| SSO (SAML) | No | Yes |
| Visit | Crazy Egg ↗ | Hotjar ↗ |
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What Crazy Egg is built to do
- Click and scroll heatmaps
- Visualises where visitors click and how far they scroll.
- Session recordings
- Replays individual visits to see where people struggle.
- A/B testing
- Runs simple page tests without developer involvement.
What Hotjar is built to do
- Heatmaps
- Visual maps showing exactly where users click, move, and scroll on any page.
- Session Recordings
- Watch real videos of how visitors navigate your site from start to finish.
- Feedback Widget
- Allow users to rate their satisfaction with your site in real-time.
- Conversion Funnels
- Visualize exactly where visitors are dropping off in your checkout or sign-up path.
Choose Crazy Egg if
- Small sites that want heatmaps without usage anxiety: Starter is $29/month billed annually for 5,000 tracked pageviews and 50 recordings a month, and Crazy Egg states there are no overages, ever
- Growing sites — Plus at $99/month covers 150,000 tracked pageviews and adds unlimited A/B testing, CTAs and error tracking with device-type targeting
- Teams that need audience-level testing: Pro at $249/month covers 500,000 pageviews and targets A/B tests by device, country, UTM and conversion
Skip Crazy Egg if
- You want monthly billing — every plan is billed annually
- Your traffic is the constraint rather than your team: pricing is driven by tracked pageviews and recordings, while team members and website domains are unlimited on every tier
- You need SAML single sign-on, which is Enterprise at $599/month
Choose Hotjar if
- Seeing where visitors click and where they give up, without a paid analytics contract
- Small sites that fit the free session allowance
- Teams that want recordings and heatmaps rather than a full analytics platform
Skip Hotjar if
- You have real traffic — the free Hotjar Basic plan captures 35 sessions a DAY
- You are planning long term: Hotjar is being folded into Contentsquare and the Plus, Business and Scale plans are being merged
- You want funnel and revenue analytics; this is behavioural recording
Evidence and freshness
Where a claim on this page comes from a vendor page, it is linked here.
Crazy Egg: pros & cons
- Heatmaps are easy to read and share
- Session recordings show real behaviour
- Simple A/B testing included
- Sampling limits on lower plans
- Recordings raise privacy questions
- Less depth than full analytics
Hotjar: pros & cons
- Visual Analysis: Interpret data through visual videos and maps rather than complex tables.
- Rapid Setup: Start collecting data in minutes with a single code snippet.
- Customer Feedback: Get instant responses from users via embedded on-site surveys.
- Bug Detection: Instantly see where users are getting stuck or 'rage clicking' on your UI.
- Site Slowdown: Can slightly impact page load speed if not configured correctly.
- Privacy Compliance: Requires careful masking settings to comply with GDPR and local laws.
- Free Tier Limits: The number of sessions recorded per day is quite low on the free plan.
Our verdict on Crazy Egg
Good for finding the obvious problem on a page. Make sure your privacy policy covers recordings.
Our verdict on Hotjar
A magnifying glass for your site: heatmaps and session recordings show what analytics numbers cannot.
Published plans, side by side
Every figure below was read from the vendor's own pricing page and is shown with the sentence it came from. Where a vendor publishes no plan prices, we say so rather than guess.
Crazy Egg
- Starter$29/mo
Starter $29/mo: 5,000 tracked pageviews/mo, heatmap reports, 50 recordings/mo, 6 months of recordings storage, unlimited website domains, unlimited team members, unlimited web analytics, unlimited conversion tracking and funnel reports, unlimited surveys, AI analysis for heatmaps and recordings
- Pro$249/mo
Pro $249/mo: 500,000 tracked pageviews, target A/B tests by device type, country, UTMs and conversions, export heatmaps and recordings to AI
- Enterprise$599/mo
Enterprise $599/mo: 1,000,000 tracked pageviews, target A/B tests by all available audience segments, SAML single sign-on
Crazy Egg vs Hotjar: common questions
- Does Crazy Egg or Hotjar have a free plan?
- We have not verified a free plan for Crazy Egg, while Hotjar has a free tier with limits.
- Which is cheaper once you start paying, Crazy Egg or Hotjar?
- Crazy Egg has the cheaper first paid step: Starter at $29/mo, against Business at $99/mo for Hotjar — 3.4× the price. Both figures come from the vendors' own pricing pages.
- What is the difference between Crazy Egg and Hotjar?
- On the criteria we check, only Hotjar has sso (saml); both offer public api. The table above lists every criterion side by side.