Hotjar alternative
Hotjar made heatmaps and session recordings easy, and it's now part of Contentsquare: new accounts are created on Contentsquare's plans instead. Datasense is a lighter alternative if you want session replay and short on-site surveys next to your traffic, goals and revenue, from one small script.
Free up to 5k events a month. No card.
Contentsquare (formerly Hotjar) is the better tool if you want heatmaps, AI summaries of sessions and deep UX research. Datasense is the better tool if you want every recorded session tied to its source and revenue, simple flat pricing, and analytics in the same place.
Side by side, on the things people ask about most. Checked against Hotjar's own site in October 2026.
| Feature | Datasense | Hotjar |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 5k events a month, 1 site | 200k sessions a month, 5% of them replayed |
| Paid plans from | $9/month for 50k events | From $49/month on Growth |
| No cookie banner needed | Cookies by default; switch any site to cookieless | First-party cookies; a cookieless mode is available |
| Realtime visitors | Updates every second | Not clearly documented |
| JavaScript error tracking | Last 100 errors per site, with stack and browser | JavaScript errors on Free and Growth |
| Revenue by traffic source | Stripe, Dodo Payments or any provider | Channel revenue attribution on Pro, custom price |
| Goals and custom events | One line of code or a data attribute | Custom variables and page events |
| Proxy to get past ad blockers | Recipes for Next.js, Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare, Nginx | Not clearly documented |
| AI crawler and bot tracking | See which AI crawlers read your pages, on paid plans | AI agent and LLM traffic on Pro |
| Visitor profiles and journeys | Each visitor's pages, visit by visit | Journeys on Growth; user view is a Pro add-on |
| Raw data export | CSV and JSON, any date range, on paid plans | APIs on Pro and up |
| Script size | Under 4 KB | Small loader, then a much larger runtime |
| Open source / self-host | ||
| Session replay | On Pro and Team, 5k recordings a month on Pro | Sampled: 5% on Free, 15% on Growth |
| On-site surveys | Up to 2 questions, on every plan | 100 responses a month on Free |
Contentsquare's free plan replays 5% of sessions and Growth 15%. Datasense records every session on Pro and Team, up to 5k or 50k recordings a month, so the visit you're looking for is more likely to be there.
In Datasense, each recording links from the visitor's profile with their source, pages, goals and payments, from every recorded JavaScript error and from every form answer. You start from a problem and go straight to the session.
The Datasense script is under 4 KB. The replay recorder (about 36 KB) and the form widget (about 9 KB) only load when you use them, after the page. Contentsquare's small loader pulls in a much larger runtime.
Contentsquare's free plan covers 200k sessions a month with 5% replayed. Growth starts at $49 a month billed monthly, or $39 billed yearly, and Pro is quote-only. Datasense is free up to 5k events without replay, $9 a month for 50k events and 5k recordings, and $49 a month for 200k events and 50k recordings.
It takes about five minutes, and you don't have to turn anything off on day one.
Create a free account and paste one script tag into your site's <head>. Leave Hotjar where it is for now.
Compare visitors, top pages and sources. Datasense often shows more visitors once the proxy is on, because ad blockers stop blocking it.
When you're happy, delete the Hotjar snippet. Export your old data from Hotjar first if you want to keep it.
Or see all web analytics tools on one page.
Add one script tag, compare the numbers, then keep the one you like. The free plan is enough to test it.
Add your siteHotjar is a trademark of its owner. Facts checked October 2026; if something changed, tell us at [email protected].