Adjust vs Hotjar

Adjust is a mobile measurement partner (MMP) founded in Berlin in 2012 and acquired by AppLovin in 2021 in a deal valued at about $1 billion. It tells app marketers which ad networks, campaigns and creatives drove installs, in-app events and revenue, so budget can move to the channels that actually pay back. Its SDK runs inside iOS, Android and Unity apps.

The platform covers attribution and deep linking, Datascape dashboards and cohort reporting, a Fraud Prevention Suite that blocks click spam and fake installs, and support for Apple's SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit privacy frameworks. Add-on modules include InSight for incrementality testing with synthetic control groups, Audience Builder, CTV AdVision for connected-TV campaigns and SpendWorks for ad-spend mapping. The free Base plan covers up to 1,500 attributions per month; Core and Enterprise are custom-priced annual contracts.

Adjust suits app publishers, games studios and fintech or ecommerce apps with real paid user-acquisition budgets. AppsFlyer is its biggest rival with a larger partner ecosystem, while Singular leans harder into cost aggregation. Northbeam and Rockerbox, also in our catalog, solve web and DTC attribution rather than app installs, so they are not like-for-like replacements.

In May 2025 Adjust launched Growth Copilot in beta, an AI assistant that answers reporting questions in plain language and, with Pulse, can publish scheduled AI reports. When negotiating, ask for fraud prevention to be bundled, since it is often quoted as a separate add-on.

Hotjar is a behavior analytics tool founded in Malta in 2014 that shows how people actually use a website. It joined Contentsquare in 2021 and now operates as part of that group. Heatmaps reveal where visitors click, move and scroll, session recordings replay real visits, and on-site surveys and feedback widgets capture what users think in their own words.

The product combines Observe, for heatmaps and recordings, with Ask, for surveys and feedback, and is priced by monthly sessions. Funnels and trends tie behavior to conversion, filters find recordings with rage clicks or errors, and integrations send data to tools such as Google Analytics, HubSpot, Slack and Optimizely. AI features generate surveys and summarize responses. The free plan covers up to 200,000 monthly sessions with one month of data, the Growth plan is priced by session volume and keeps 13 months of data, and Pro and Enterprise are custom priced. Hotjar's pricing page now redirects to Contentsquare, which has folded Hotjar into its Experience Analytics plans.

Hotjar fits marketers, UX designers and product teams that need qualitative insight into why users hesitate or drop off. Session limits make it costly for high-traffic sites, and recordings require careful consent management under GDPR and similar laws. Microsoft Clarity offers similar heatmaps and recordings for free, PostHog combines replay with product analytics, and Contentsquare itself serves enterprises with deeper digital experience analytics.