Happy Valley

Microsoft Clarity vs Salience

Microsoft Clarity and Salience are both analytics tools. Microsoft Clarity is aimed at small businesses and E-commerce, while Salience is aimed at agencies and small businesses. Both have a free plan.

Microsoft Clarity

Free heatmaps, session recordings and AI insights from Microsoft

Salience

Log analytics that shows how bots, AI crawlers and users hit your site

PricingFreeFreemium · $19
Starting priceNot published$19/mo
Free planYesYes
Free trial——
Built forSmall businesses, E-commerce, Developers, Agencies, EnterpriseAgencies, Small businesses, E-commerce, Developers, Enterprise
Platformsweb, ios, androidweb
CountryUS · 2020GB · 2026
Rating——

Choose Microsoft Clarity if

Websites and apps of any size that want free heatmaps and session recordings with AI summaries.

  • Completely free with no traffic or session caps
  • Quick setup through a tag, plugin or Google Tag Manager
  • AI summaries save hours of watching recordings

Look elsewhere if: Teams that need surveys, in-depth product analytics or long data retention (Hotjar, PostHog, Mixpanel).

Choose Salience if

Technical SEO teams and agencies that want continuous log analysis of search and AI crawler traffic.

  • Shows real crawler behaviour that JavaScript analytics never sees
  • Free plan includes the API and MCP server
  • Works on Cloudflare's free plan through a Worker

Look elsewhere if: Marketers who only need visitor analytics or a site crawler (Plausible, Screaming Frog SEO Spider).

Microsoft Clarity vs Salience pricing

Microsoft Clarity

  • Free$0No traffic limits; recordings kept 30 days, heatmaps 13 months

Salience

  • Free$01 site, 500K requests/mo, 30 days of history
  • Solo$19/mo1 site, 1 user, 5M requests, 6 months history; 2 months free yearly
  • Starter$49/mo5 sites, 20M requests, 1 year history, webhooks; 2 months free yearly
  • Growth$149/mo15 sites, 100M requests, 2 years history; 2 months free yearly
  • Pro$499/mo50 sites, 500M requests, 4 years history, shared Slack support

Microsoft Clarity · Key features

  • Session recordings with AI highlights of key moments
  • Click, scroll and area heatmaps with page version comparison
  • Automatic rage click, dead click and quick back detection
  • Copilot summaries and chat over your recordings and heatmaps
  • Bot Activity and Citations reports on AI crawlers and AI answers
  • Mobile app SDK for Android, iOS, Flutter and React Native

Cons

  • Recordings are deleted after 30 days unless favorited or labeled
  • No built-in surveys, feedback widgets or user interviews
  • Funnel and product analytics are basic next to PostHog or Mixpanel

Salience · Key features

  • Analysis of every request from CDN or server logs, with no sampling by Salience
  • Crawler verification against official IP ranges to expose spoofed user agents
  • Recognition of 200+ bots, with AI crawlers grouped by training, search or user fetch
  • Requests linked to paths, status codes, sitemaps, robots.txt rules and index state
  • Alerts checked every minute; Slack from Solo, webhooks from Starter
  • REST API, CLI and MCP server on every plan, including Free

Cons

  • Company incorporated in August 2026, so there is little track record
  • Core data is hosted in AWS London (eu-west-2), with no other region offered
  • Vercel needs a Pro or Enterprise team and Netlify works only on Enterprise

Microsoft Clarity vs Salience: FAQ

Do Microsoft Clarity and Salience have a free plan?

Yes, both Microsoft Clarity and Salience have a free plan; paid plans add more usage and features.

Not sure yet?