Amplitude vs Hotjar

Amplitude is a digital analytics platform from San Francisco, founded in 2012 by Spenser Skates, Curtis Liu and Jeffrey Wang and listed on Nasdaq (AMPL) since its 2021 direct listing. It started as event-based product analytics for mobile apps and now helps product, growth and marketing teams see how people use their apps and websites and what drives conversion and retention.

The platform combines product and web analytics (funnels, retention, cohorts, journeys), session replay and heatmaps, feature flags and A/B testing, in-app guides and surveys (from the 2024 Command AI acquisition) and audience syncing to ad and messaging tools. AI agents can monitor dashboards, explain metric changes and answer questions, and an MCP server exposes Amplitude data to AI tools. Free covers 2 million events a month; Plus is usage-based; Growth and Enterprise are custom-priced through sales.

It fits product-led companies that need self-serve analysis for non-technical teams. Mixpanel is the closest rival with simpler pricing; PostHog is cheaper and open source with an engineering focus; Pendo is stronger on in-app guidance for B2B software; Google Analytics is free but built for marketing attribution.

In July 2026 Amplitude dropped the fixed 49 dollar Plus tier based on monthly tracked users for event-based pricing from 0 dollars, and the Free plan now includes session replay, guides and AI agents. Startups with under 20 employees and under 10 million dollars raised can apply for a free year of Growth.

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.