Microsoft Clarity is the best free Crazy Egg alternative. Hotjar is the most popular paid swap. But if you’re leaving because Crazy Egg’s A/B testing wasn’t good enough, replacing it with another heatmap tool won’t fix that. You might need a dedicated testing tool instead.
Here’s the full breakdown: seven alternatives compared honestly, real pricing, and a question most guides skip entirely.
Quick comparison: Crazy Egg alternatives at a glance
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | Free plan? | Heatmaps | A/B testing | Session recordings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Clarity | Zero-budget teams | Free | Yes (unlimited) | Yes | No | Yes (unlimited) |
| Hotjar | Behavioral analytics + feedback | $39/month | Yes (limited) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Lucky Orange | Small business live engagement | $32/month | Yes (limited) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Mouseflow | Form analytics and funnels | $39/month | Yes (limited) | Yes | No | Yes |
| FullStory | Enterprise product teams | Custom pricing | Yes (limited) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Smartlook | Mobile + web in one tool | Free tier + paid | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Plerdy | Budget all-in-one | $29/month | Yes (limited) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Crazy Egg (for reference) | Simple heatmaps | $29/month | No | Yes | Yes (from $99/mo) | Yes (50/month on Starter) |
Notice something? None of the alternatives include A/B testing either. Crazy Egg is the only heatmap tool that does. Whether that’s a strength or a weakness depends on what you’re actually looking for. More on that below.
If you’re building a broader CRO tools stack, this comparison is a good place to start.
Why people leave Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg isn’t bad. It pioneered heatmaps. The confetti report (which shows exactly where clicks come from, broken down by traffic source) is still something nobody else replicates well. But the product hasn’t kept up with what’s free now.
The pageview pricing trap.
Crazy Egg counts pageviews, not sessions. That sounds minor until you do the math. One visitor lands on your homepage, clicks to pricing, then features, then signs up. That’s four pageviews from one person.
A site with 10,000 monthly visitors averaging four pages each burns through 40,000 pageviews. That blows past the Starter plan’s 5,000 pageview cap and pushes you to the Plus plan at $99/month. Hotjar and Mouseflow would count that same traffic as 10,000 sessions. Same visitors, very different bill.
Crazy Egg A/B testing is locked behind $99/month.
The Starter plan ($29/month) has no A/B testing at all. You need Plus ($99/month, billed annually) to unlock it. And even then, reviewers on G2 and Capterra flag real problems. Basic targeting options. No testing that runs behind the scenes (called server-side testing). And reports of the test version visibly swapping in the browser before the page loads.
If you searched for “crazy egg a/b testing” hoping to find out whether it’s any good, that’s your answer. It exists, but it’s basic. No testing multiple things at once. No advanced math working in the background. Fine for swapping a headline. Not enough for a real testing program.
Our take: Crazy Egg built A/B testing as an add-on to a heatmap tool. Dedicated A/B testing software builds it as the whole product. The difference shows up fast when you’re trying to run more than one test.
No free plan in a world where Clarity exists.
Microsoft Clarity launched in 2020. It offers unlimited heatmaps and unlimited session recordings for $0. No traffic caps. No sampling. According to W3Techs, Clarity now runs on roughly 3.7% of all websites. Crazy Egg sits at about 0.3%.
That’s a 10x gap in adoption. When a free tool covers 80% of what a paid tool does, the paid tool needs a very good reason to charge. Crazy Egg’s reason used to be “it’s the simplest option.” That’s harder to argue when Clarity is simpler AND free.
Annual billing only. Every Crazy Egg plan is billed annually. No month-to-month option. The cheapest plan costs $348 upfront. If you’re not sure the tool is right, that’s a big commitment.
The 7 best Crazy Egg alternatives
1. Microsoft Clarity: best free alternative
Free. Forever. No catch (well, one catch).
Clarity gives you unlimited heatmaps and unlimited session recordings. It also detects rage clicks (someone clicking the same spot over and over out of frustration) and dead clicks (clicks on things that aren’t clickable). No traffic cap. No sampling.
The catch: Microsoft uses your visitors’ behavioral data for advertising purposes. That’s how they keep it free. If you run an e-commerce store or handle sensitive data, read the terms carefully.
Compared to Crazy Egg, you get unlimited everything at $0 instead of pageview caps. AI-powered insights auto-surface frustration patterns. Native Google Analytics integration just works.
The trade-off: no A/B testing, no surveys, no form analytics, and data only lasts 30 days (Crazy Egg keeps data for 6-24 months depending on plan).
Anyone who wants heatmaps without paying should start here. Pair it with a dedicated testing tool and you’ve got a CRO stack that costs less than Crazy Egg’s Plus plan. If the advertising data trade-off is a concern, our guide to the best Microsoft Clarity alternatives covers privacy-friendly options.
2. Hotjar: best for behavioral analytics + user feedback
Price: Free plan available. Paid plans from $39/month (session-based pricing).
Hotjar is the biggest name in heatmaps, running on 1.3 million+ websites. It bundles heatmaps, recordings, surveys, feedback widgets, and user interviews. Unlimited heatmaps on every plan, including free.
Contentsquare acquired Hotjar in 2021, and the full merger completed in 2025. Pricing went up. Products got unbundled. Worth knowing if your Hotjar bill looks different lately. We’ve detailed Hotjar’s pricing tiers separately.
What it does better than Crazy Egg: surveys and direct user feedback built in. Session-based pricing (cheaper for most sites). Free plan with real features. Integrates with AB Tasty and Optimizely for A/B testing.
What it doesn’t do: no native A/B testing (unlike Crazy Egg). Survey product is now a separate subscription.
Best for: teams who need behavioral data AND direct user feedback in one tool. If you’re comparing all Hotjar alternatives, we have a full guide for that too.
3. Lucky Orange: best for live visitor engagement
Price: Free plan available. Paid from $32/month (session-based).
Lucky Orange’s standout feature is the live visitor view. You can literally watch someone browse your site in real time. It also has dynamic heatmaps (they update live), conversion funnels, and built-in live chat.
Real-time monitoring, live chat integration, and session-based pricing give it an edge over Crazy Egg. The dynamic heatmaps adjust to page changes without needing a new snapshot.
It’s not as deep as Hotjar or FullStory on the analytics side. No A/B testing. Heatmap data isn’t as granular.
Small businesses and ecommerce stores get the most out of this. Especially customer support teams doubling as conversion detectives.
4. Mouseflow: best for form analytics and funnels
Free plan available. Paid from $39/month (session-based).
Mouseflow has six types of heatmaps (click, scroll, attention, movement, geographic, and live). But the real star is form analytics. It shows you exactly where people abandon your forms, which fields take longest, and which ones make people leave.
Form analytics is where Mouseflow pulls ahead of everyone, not just Crazy Egg. Funnel tracking built in. 30+ filters for segmenting recordings. Friction scoring flags problematic sessions automatically.
No A/B testing. And the interface feels a bit dated compared to newer tools.
If people fill out forms on your site and you want to know why they stop halfway, this is the pick. Lead gen pages, checkout flows, registration forms. For a deeper look, see our Hotjar vs Mouseflow comparison.
5. FullStory: best for enterprise product teams
Price: Custom pricing (enterprise). Free tier available with limited sessions.
FullStory records pixel-perfect session replays and lets you search through them like Google searches the web. Type “show me sessions where users rage-clicked the checkout button” and it finds them. That’s the pitch.
It also includes error tracking, frustration detection, and integrations with engineering tools. Think of it as a heatmap tool that grew up and got a product analytics degree.
What it does better than Crazy Egg: much deeper analytics. Auto-detected frustration signals. Search-based session retrieval. Mobile app tracking (not just websites). If you’re comparing enterprise options, our VWO vs Optimizely guide covers that tier in detail.
What it doesn’t do: no A/B testing. Expensive. Overkill for a 10-page marketing site. If FullStory’s pricing is the issue, see our FullStory alternatives guide for cheaper options by use case.
Best for: product teams at mid-to-large companies who need deep behavioral data and can afford custom pricing. Also see our Adobe Target review if you’re comparing enterprise-tier options.
6. Smartlook: best for mobile + web in one tool
Free tier available. Paid plans scale with usage.
Most heatmap tools only work on websites. Smartlook tracks both your website and your native mobile apps (iOS and Android) in one dashboard. If you have both, that’s a big deal. You’d normally need two separate tools.
The killer feature: event-based analytics with retroactive data. Tag an event today, see historical data for it. Crazy Egg doesn’t track mobile apps at all.
Heatmaps are only on paid plans. No A/B testing. And it’s less known than Hotjar or Clarity, which means fewer community resources if you get stuck.
Best fit: teams running a website and a mobile app who want one tool for both.
7. Plerdy: best budget all-in-one
Price: Free plan available. Paid from $29/month.
Plerdy bundles heatmaps, session replay, SEO auditing, pop-up forms, and conversion funnels. The Swiss army knife of the group. Not the sharpest at any single thing, but wide coverage at a low price.
For the same $29/month as Crazy Egg’s Starter, you get more feature categories. SEO tools that Crazy Egg doesn’t touch. Pop-up forms built in.
No A/B testing. And “jack of all trades” means some features feel shallow compared to specialized tools. The heatmaps won’t wow you. The SEO audit won’t replace Ahrefs.
Budget-conscious marketers who want multiple tools in one and don’t mind trading depth for breadth.
The real question: do you need a heatmap or an A/B test?
Every article about Crazy Egg alternatives compares it to other heatmap tools. That makes sense on the surface. But it skips a question that matters more: what are you actually trying to do?
Heatmaps are observation tools. They show you where visitors click, how far they scroll, and where they get stuck. That’s valuable. But as NNGroup’s research points out, heatmaps show correlation, not causation. A big red blob on your pricing page doesn’t tell you why people are confused. It just tells you they clicked a lot there.
Even Hotjar’s founder publicly said that “heatmaps using isolation can be very dangerous because they’re pretty much open to interpretation.” The guy selling the world’s most popular heatmap tool is telling you not to rely on heatmaps alone. Worth listening to.
A/B testing is the action step. You take what the heatmap suggested, create a different version, and test it against the original. Then the numbers tell you which one actually wins.
Think of it like a doctor’s visit. The heatmap is the X-ray. The A/B test is the treatment. You need the X-ray to find the problem. But the X-ray alone doesn’t fix anything.
If you’re leaving Crazy Egg because the heatmaps weren’t detailed enough, any tool on this list will serve you well. But if you’re leaving because the A/B testing wasn’t good enough? Replacing Crazy Egg with another heatmap tool just gives you a better X-ray. Still no treatment plan.
In that case, you want a dedicated testing tool. Something like Kirro, which focuses entirely on A/B testing with built-in suggestions for what to test. Or one of the tools in our A/B testing tools comparison. Pair either with Microsoft Clarity for heatmaps (free), and you’ve got observation and action covered. For less than Crazy Egg’s Plus plan.
Our take: The smartest Crazy Egg replacement isn’t one tool. It’s two: a free heatmap tool for watching, and a dedicated testing tool for improving. Split testing software does the heavy lifting. Heatmaps point you in the right direction.
How to pick the right tool for your situation
Skip the feature matrices. Ask yourself three things instead:
1. What’s your budget?
- $0: Microsoft Clarity. Done. You get unlimited heatmaps and recordings. It’s genuinely good.
- $30-50/month: Hotjar, Lucky Orange, or Mouseflow. Pick based on what matters to you (surveys, live chat, or form analytics).
- Enterprise budget: FullStory. Or look at Optimizely alternatives if testing is your priority.
2. What are you actually trying to do?
- Watch visitor behavior: any heatmap tool works. Start with Clarity (free).
- Understand form abandonment: Mouseflow.
- Talk to visitors directly: Hotjar (surveys) or Lucky Orange (live chat).
- Test changes and measure results: you need an A/B testing tool, not a heatmap tool. Check our A/B testing best practices guide and set up a free test with Kirro.
3. Do you want one tool or a stack?
The all-in-one approach (one tool does heatmaps, recordings, surveys, testing) sounds simpler. But every all-in-one tool is mediocre at something. Crazy Egg’s A/B testing proves the point.
The stack approach: Clarity (free heatmaps) + a dedicated A/B testing tool (like Kirro) + Google Analytics. Three tools. Each one the best at its job. Total cost: less than Crazy Egg’s Plus plan in most cases.
Peep Laja, who built CXL into the go-to CRO training program, ranks mouse tracking as “one of the lesser important spokes” of his research model. Customer interviews and quantitative analytics come first. The heatmap tool matters less than what you do with the data.
FAQ
What is similar to Crazy Egg?
Microsoft Clarity, Hotjar, and Lucky Orange are the closest alternatives. All three offer heatmaps and session recordings. Clarity is free with unlimited traffic. Hotjar and Lucky Orange start around $32-39/month with session-based pricing (cheaper than Crazy Egg’s pageview model for most sites). For a deeper comparison of all the CRO tools available, we have a full guide.
What is the difference between Hotjar and Crazy Egg?
Two big differences.
Pricing: Hotjar counts sessions (one visit = one unit). Crazy Egg counts pageviews (each page loaded = one unit). Same visitors, higher cost on Crazy Egg.
Features: Hotjar includes surveys and feedback widgets but no A/B testing. Crazy Egg has built-in A/B testing (from $99/month) but no user feedback tools. Hotjar has a free plan. Crazy Egg doesn’t.
What is the difference between Convert and Crazy Egg?
Different tools for different jobs. Convert is a dedicated A/B testing platform ($299/month) built for teams that need strong statistical methods and privacy compliance. Crazy Egg is primarily a visual analytics tool with basic A/B testing added on. If testing is your priority, Convert (or any dedicated testing tool) will outperform Crazy Egg’s built-in option. If heatmaps are your priority, Crazy Egg or its alternatives are the right category.
Is Crazy Egg free?
No. Crazy Egg offers a 30-day free trial, but all plans require annual billing. The cheapest plan is $29/month ($348/year). For a genuinely free heatmap tool, Microsoft Clarity offers unlimited heatmaps and unlimited session recordings at no cost. AB Tasty and others in the enterprise tier don’t offer free plans either, but several tools on this list do.
Can I use Microsoft Clarity alongside an A/B testing tool?
Yes, and a lot of teams do exactly this. Clarity handles the behavioral analytics (heatmaps, recordings, frustration detection) for free. A dedicated A/B testing tool handles the actual improvements. This combo often costs less than Crazy Egg’s Plus plan ($99/month) while giving you better tools on both sides. You can try Kirro free alongside Clarity to see how the stack works.
Randy Wattilete
CRO expert and founder with nearly a decade running conversion experiments for companies from early-stage startups to global brands. Built programs for Nestlé, felyx, and Storytel. Founder of Kirro (A/B testing).
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