Two families, two questions
Behavioural heatmaps record what visitors did: where they clicked, how far they scrolled, where the mouse moved. They need a script on the site and traffic to aggregate. Predictive heatmaps estimate where attention is likely to go from the image alone. They need no script and no traffic, and they record nothing.
A free plan in one family is not a substitute for the other. Pick by the question you need answered, then by the free allowance. The table summarises the four tools this guide could verify on the vendor's own page.
| Tool | Family | Needs a script | Needs traffic | Free tier as stated by the vendor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Clarity | Behavioural | Yes | Yes | Free forever, no traffic limits, recordings and heatmaps included |
| Plerdy | Behavioural, with a predictive extension | Yes for the behavioural part | Yes | Free tier with daily limits, including 100 heatmaps and 500 video sessions, one month of storage |
| Hotjar, now Contentsquare | Behavioural | Yes | Yes | Pricing moved to Contentsquare; free allowance not verifiable when writing |
| Heatpoints | Predictive | No | No | Initial free use with usage limits; Chrome extension asks for email verification after first scans; no paid plan on sale |
Microsoft Clarity
Microsoft describes Clarity as free forever with no traffic limits, and session recordings and heatmaps are part of the product. It is a behavioural tool: it needs the Clarity script on your pages and visitors to record. The recordings come with the consent obligations of any session-recording tool, which is your responsibility, not Microsoft's.
Use it once a page is live and you want to see actual clicks, scrolling and recordings on a site you control. It cannot help before launch, on a client's site you cannot touch, or on a design that only exists as a frame.
References: Microsoft Clarity
Plerdy
Plerdy's pricing page lists a free tier with daily limits, including 100 heatmaps and 500 video sessions, and one month of storage. Its UX Prediction feature is a separate product; the pricing page does not state that it is part of the free tier, so check before relying on it.
Plerdy is mostly a behavioural suite with a predictive extension on the side. If you want one vendor for both kinds of map, it is worth a look, with the caveat that the two maps still answer different questions and should not be compared to each other.
References: Plerdy pricing · Heatpoints vs Plerdy
Hotjar, now part of Contentsquare
Hotjar's pricing page now redirects to Contentsquare's pricing. The free allowance changes over time and we could not verify its current limits when writing this guide, so read the plan on their page before comparing. This guide will not repeat a number it could not check.
Like Clarity, it is behavioural: script, traffic, recordings, plus surveys and feedback widgets that Clarity does not have.
References: Contentsquare pricing · Heatpoints vs Hotjar
Heatpoints
Heatpoints is predictive. Upload an image, or use the Chrome extension on a page you are browsing, and get a map computed by UNISAL with no script and no visitors. The initial use is free with usage limits; the Chrome extension asks for email verification after its first scans, and no paid plan is on sale today. Images are processed on the server, and the account library keeps the twelve most recent analyses.
It answers a different question from the tools above: what is likely to stand out on this image, before anyone has seen it. It does not measure clicks, and a warm region is not a conversion. How well its predictions agree with real fixations is a published benchmark question, covered in a separate guide.
References: Current access conditions · Free image tool · How accurate are AI attention heatmaps?
Tools this guide does not rank
Attention Insight, EyeQuant, Brainsight, Dragonfly and expoze are predictive tools with trials or paid plans rather than a lasting free tier, so they are outside a list of free tools. Each has a comparison page on this site with its official sources. Crazy Egg, Mouseflow, Smartlook and the larger analytics suites are behavioural and paid, with trials of varying length; their pages say more than a second-hand list would.
If a tool is missing here, it is because its free tier could not be verified on the vendor's page at the time of writing, not because it is worse.
References: How to choose an AI attention heatmap tool
How to choose
Live page with traffic, and you want facts about behaviour: a behavioural tool, and Clarity's free offer is the most generous we could verify. Design, ad, thumbnail or unlaunched page, and you want to review the hierarchy: a predictive tool. Many teams use one of each, at different moments of the same project.
- Before launch or on a design: predictive, from a screenshot or frame.
- After launch with traffic: behavioural, with consent handled.
- Never read a predictive score as a click rate, or a click map as attention.
- Re-check the vendor's page before you commit; free tiers change.