Top 5 Free Heatmap Analytics Tools for Websites (2026)

Searching for free heatmap analytics tools turns up the same problem everywhere: every vendor advertises a free option, but "free" can mean five very different things — from genuinely unlimited forever, to a teaser that stops working the week your traffic becomes worth analyzing. If you install the wrong one, you'll be redoing this research in a month with a paywall in your face.

So this list is a reality check, not a brochure round-up. For each of the top 5 free heatmap tools for websites in 2026, we spell out exactly what the free plan includes, the precise limit that will eventually bite, and the kind of site each one genuinely suits.

The five flavors of "free" in heatmap software

Understanding the business model behind a free plan tells you its real cost and lifespan:

• Free because your data has value — the tool is a data asset for its owner (Microsoft Clarity, Yandex Metrica). Truly unlimited, but read the data-use terms.
• Free as a teaser — a capped sliver of the paid product designed to convert you (Hotjar, Mouseflow). Fine for tiny sites, exhausted quickly on real ones.
• Free as a long trial — the complete product, free for an extended period, honest about eventually costing money (Clicktics: every feature free for up to 180 days).
• Free but time-boxed short — 14–30 day trials (Crazy Egg, FullStory). Not on this list; a month isn't a free tool, it's an evaluation window.
• Free core, paid heatmaps — open-source suites where the heatmap module costs extra (Matomo on-premise). Also excluded here for that reason.

Free heatmap tools at a glance

Tool	What's free	Heatmaps on free plan	Recordings on free plan	The limit that bites
1. Clicktics	Everything, for 60–180 days	Full — on the live page	All sessions, HD	Trial ends (then $13/site/mo)
2. Microsoft Clarity	Everything, forever	Click, scroll, area	Unlimited	Shallow analysis; data feeds Microsoft
3. Hotjar (free plan)	Capped sliver	Yes, limited history	35/day, sampled	Caps hit within days on real traffic
4. Yandex Metrica	Everything, forever	Click maps + scroll	Included (Webvisor)	Data on Yandex servers; governance concerns
5. Mouseflow (free plan)	Starter sliver	Yes, 1 website	500/month	Single site, small quota, 1-month storage

1. Clicktics — the most complete free option (for up to 180 days)

Let's be upfront about the model: Clicktics isn't free forever — it's the entire platform free for 60–180 days (length assigned when your application is reviewed), with no credit card and nothing that auto-converts to paid. During that window you get more than any free-forever tool offers at all: dynamic heatmaps rendered over the real recorded page with a per-element click table and month-over-month comparison, HD recordings of every session, conversion funnels, UTM attribution, JavaScript error capture, live chat with notifications, a scored lead pipeline, Discovery AI, and Search Console integration — across 2 websites, 10,000 sessions each, with 2 team seats.

Why rank a long trial above free-forever tools? Because for the job most people download a heatmap tool to do — find and fix what's costing conversions — six months of a complete toolkit beats an indefinite subscription to a partial one. And at a flat $13/site/month afterwards, continuing costs less than lunch.

Free-tier verdict: the strongest working set of heatmap analytics you can get for $0 — with a calendar attached. Best for any site that's serious about acting on the data. Full details on the features page.

2. Microsoft Clarity — the free-forever standard

If "free" must mean permanently free, Clarity is the undisputed pick. The free plan is the whole product: click, scroll, and area heatmaps, unlimited session recordings, frustration signals (rage clicks, dead clicks, quick-backs), Copilot AI summaries, and no traffic ceiling of any kind. For a no-budget site, that's a remarkable deal.

The honest trade-offs: analysis stays shallow (limited segmentation, short retention, no funnels worth the name), there's nothing to act with (no chat, no lead capture, no testing), and the reason it's free is that your behavioral data strengthens Microsoft's advertising and AI ecosystem — acceptable to most, disqualifying for some.

Free-tier verdict: the best permanent free heatmap tool, period. Install it if the price must stay zero forever and observation is all you need.

3. Hotjar free plan — a taste, not a tool

Hotjar's free tier exists to show you what Hotjar feels like: you get its polished heatmaps and recordings, but capped at 35 sessions per day, with sampled capture and limited heatmap history. On a site doing a few hundred daily visits, the quota is gone by breakfast — and the heatmaps you build from a 35-session sample of a 500-visit day describe a minority of your audience.

That's not a criticism of the product — paid Hotjar is a capable suite, especially once its surveys enter the picture (we've compared it in depth in our Hotjar vs Crazy Egg vs Clarity breakdown). It's a criticism of calling the free plan a working tool for a real website.

Free-tier verdict: right for hobby sites under ~1,000 visits/month, or as a pre-purchase test drive. Outgrown almost immediately by anything commercial.

4. Yandex Metrica — the free giant nobody talks about

Yandex Metrica is the most complete free-forever analytics package most Western teams have never evaluated: full traffic analytics (a genuine Google Analytics rival), click maps, scroll maps, and link maps, plus Webvisor — built-in session replay — all free with no volume caps. Feature-for-feature on the free axis, it out-muscles everything here except Clarity, and it bundles the traffic-analytics layer the others assume you get elsewhere.

The elephant: Metrica is operated by Yandex, and your visitor data is processed on its infrastructure. For many organizations — especially in the EU, and any business with data-governance review — that's a non-starter in the current environment, and GDPR data-transfer analysis is your homework before installing. Documentation and community support also skew Russian-language.

Free-tier verdict: immense free functionality if — and only if — your data-governance position allows it. Evaluate with eyes open.

5. Mouseflow free plan — a specialist's starter kit

Mouseflow's free tier covers one website and 500 recordings a month, with heatmaps (including click and scroll) on that site and one month of data storage. What makes it worth a slot despite the small numbers is that its trademark strength — form analytics, the field-by-field drop-off reporting — is available to sample on the free plan, which no other free tier here offers.

The limits are real: 500 recordings is a day or two of traffic for a mid-sized site, a single website rules out agencies, and the one-month retention means insights expire quickly. Paid plans start around $31/month and meter by session.

Free-tier verdict: pick it if a leaking form is your specific problem and your traffic is modest; the free form-analytics sample may be all the diagnosis you need.

Which free heatmap tool should you install?

• Zero budget, forever, observation only: Microsoft Clarity.
• Zero budget now, and you want the full toolkit (funnels, chat, leads) while you fix things: Clicktics' 60–180-day free trial.
• Hobby site under 1,000 visits/month: Hotjar free is fine.
• Data governance permits it and you also need free traffic analytics: Yandex Metrica.
• One site, one suspicious form: Mouseflow free.

Two closing cautions that apply to all five. First, free tools still carry compliance obligations — consent, masking, and disclosure rules apply whether or not money changes hands (our session recording GDPR guide covers the checklist). Second, resist the temptation to stack multiple free tools: two heatmap scripts double the page-weight tax and split your evidence across dashboards. Pick one, learn from it, and act.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best completely free heatmap tool?

Microsoft Clarity — unlimited heatmaps and session recordings, free forever, no caps. Its trade-offs are shallow analysis and your data contributing to Microsoft's ecosystem. If you want deeper capability free for a limited time instead, Clicktics includes its entire platform — heatmaps, recordings, funnels, chat, leads — free for up to 180 days.

Does Google Analytics have heatmaps?

No. GA4 reports traffic and events but has no native heatmap or session replay capability — which is exactly why heatmap tools exist as a category. The standard setup pairs GA4 (or another traffic tool) with a behavior tool from this list.

Is Hotjar actually free?

There's a permanent free plan, but it's capped at roughly 35 sessions per day with sampled recordings and limited heatmap history — enough to evaluate the product, rarely enough to run a commercial site on. Paid plans start around $32/month.

Are free heatmap tools safe and GDPR compliant?

They can be, but the responsibility is yours regardless of price: gate the script behind consent where required, ensure input masking is on, disclose recording in your privacy policy, and check where each vendor processes data — the key differentiator among free tools, since "free because your data has value" is the most common model.

What's the catch with free heatmap software?

One of three things, always: your data is the product (Clarity, Metrica), the quota is the product demo (Hotjar, Mouseflow free tiers), or the clock is running (trials). None of these is bad — you just want to know which deal you're taking before you build your workflow on it.

Get the full toolkit free — then decide

Free-forever tools show you what's wrong; a complete platform helps you fix it. Clicktics gives you live-page heatmaps, every-session HD recordings, funnels, UTM attribution, error capture, live chat, and lead management in one ~24 KB script — all of it free for 60–180 days, no credit card, nothing auto-converts. If it hasn't paid for its $13/month by the time the trial ends, don't keep it.

Start your free trial → or browse everything that's included.