Replayowl vs Microsoft Clarity
Clarity is free and Microsoft runs it. Replayowl is free and you run it. If cost is your only concern, use Clarity. If where the sessions go matters, read on.
Facts about other products on this page were last checked against their own websites on . Prices and limits change; follow the source links before you decide.
| Microsoft Clarity | Replayowl | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, no paid plan | Free, you pay your own hosting |
| Hosting | Microsoft Azure | Your Cloudflare account or your servers |
| Volume | Up to 100,000 sessions per project per day | Limited by your infrastructure |
| Retention | 30 days; favourites and a random sample up to 9 months | Until you delete it |
| Heatmaps | Yes | No |
| Data role | You and Microsoft are independent controllers | Only you; nothing is sent to us |
| Consent in the EEA, UK and Switzerland | Clarity requires a consent signal | Your decision, based on your use |
| Source code | Tracking script open source | Everything open source, AGPL-3.0 |
Sources: Clarity FAQ, Clarity terms.
Where Clarity is better
- It costs nothing and needs no hosting.
- It has heatmaps and a polished dashboard built by a large team.
- Its free volume is far beyond what most sites need.
Where Replayowl is better
- Control of the data. Clarity’s terms make Microsoft an independent controller of the data, not a processor acting on your instructions. Many B2B contracts, security questionnaires and internal policies rule that out for user sessions. With Replayowl, sessions go from the visitor’s browser to your server and nowhere else.
- Retention you choose. Keep recordings for as long as your policy allows, or delete them on a schedule.
- Debugging context. Console errors and exceptions with stack traces sit on the same timeline as the clicks that caused them, and you can find sessions by your own user ID.
- Page weight. The Replayowl recorder is about 8 KB gzipped with no dependencies. Some site owners report better performance scores after removing hosted replay scripts; measure on your own pages before and after.
Running both
Some teams run Clarity on the marketing site for heatmaps, and Replayowl inside the signed-in app where user data must not leave their infrastructure. The two do not conflict.
Try Replayowl’s player in the live demo, or go to deployment.