Microsoft Clarity vs Plausible
We give Microsoft Clarity a 3.2 GPA and Plausible a 2.4, out of 4.0. Microsoft Clarity grades higher on value for money and the free plan. They get the same grade on features, ease of use and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Microsoft Clarity
Free session recordings and heatmaps from Microsoft, no traffic cap
Plausible
Cookie-free, privacy-first website analytics made and hosted in the EU
How we grade them
| 3.2GPAMicrosoft ClarityVery good | 2.4GPAPlausibleFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | A$0 at any size, so $0 for a 10,000-visitor site too. Recordings, heatmaps, Copilot summaries and the Google Analytics link are all free, for unlimited sites and team members. Graded against Fullstory and Contentsquare, nothing here costs less. | C100,000 pageviews puts Starter at $19 a month billed monthly; the $7.50 yearly price only covers 10k. That lands mid-category, and it climbs to $69 at 1M. The free Community Edition only counts if you run your own server. |
| Free plan and trial | AEverything is free: unlimited sites, team members and traffic, always-on recordings, heatmaps and Copilot. There's no paid plan to push you towards. The one real limit is that data is kept for 30 days. | CThere's no free hosted plan, just a 30-day trial with no card. The free Community Edition is yours to keep, but you host it yourself, and it leaves out funnels, ecommerce revenue and SSO. |
| Features | CRecordings, heatmaps, rage and dead click flags, 40+ filters, Copilot summaries and mobile SDKs. It does the recording and heatmap job fully, but that's a smaller job than the suites do, and data is gone after 30 days. | CVisitors, sources, pages, goals, campaigns, Search Console queries and visits from AI tools, all on one page. It does the page counting job fully, and it's a smaller job: no recordings or per-visitor profiles, and funnels wait for Business. |
| Ease of use | BNo rating on record, but there's nothing to set up beyond a tracking code, or a plugin on WordPress, Shopify or Wix. Recordings start straight away and heatmaps build themselves. | BNo rating on record, but the hosted version is a small script and one dashboard page, with nothing else to configure. The free Community Edition is a different story: your own server and your own updates. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb, plus SDKs that record native iOS and Android, React Native and Flutter apps. It connects to Google Analytics, Tag Manager, WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix and Squarespace. There's no desktop or phone app to view it in. | BWeb only, no desktop or phone app. It works with Google Search Console, WordPress, Tag Manager, Google Data Studio and Slack, imports old Google Analytics data, and has an API. |
| Best for | free recordings and heatmaps, no traffic cap | simple visitor counts without a cookie banner |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Microsoft Clarity and Plausible. How we grade
Price against what you get
Microsoft Clarity has no paid plan and scores 2.7 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. Plausible starts at $7.50 a month and scores 2.7.
They score the same, and Microsoft Clarity starts $7.50 a month lower. Of the other website and product analytics tools on the chart, none scores higher than Microsoft Clarity for less, and none scores higher than Plausible for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
- Microsoft Clarity is free. Plausible starts at $7.50 per month for up to 10k pageviews, billed yearly ($9 billed monthly).
- Plausible is open source and self-hostable, according to its own site.
- Microsoft Clarity also covers session replay.
At a glance
| Microsoft Clarity | Plausible | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free | Free plan |
| Starts at | Free | $7.50 per month for up to 10k pageviews, billed yearly ($9 billed monthly) |
| Free plan | Everything is free: unlimited sites, team members, heatmaps and traffic, always-on recordings, Copilot summaries and the Google Analytics integration. Data is kept 30 days. | Plausible Community Edition: the free, AGPL-licensed release you host yourself. It leaves out funnels, ecommerce revenue goals, SSO and the sites API, and has community support only. |
| Free trial | None listed | 30-day free trial of the cloud plans, no credit card required |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Microsoft | Plausible Analytics |
| Price read from | clarity.microsoft.com | plausible.io |
| Checked | Oct 18, 2026 | Oct 18, 2026 |
Who each one suits
Microsoft Clarity
- Small sites and blogs that want recordings and heatmaps at no cost
- High-traffic sites that would pass other tools' session caps
- Google Analytics users who want to watch the sessions behind the numbers
Plausible
- Site owners who want traffic numbers without a cookie banner
- Bloggers, publishers and small businesses moving off Google Analytics
- EU organizations that want visitor data kept in the EU
Worth knowing
Microsoft Clarity
- Recordings and data are kept only 30 days from the time of recording.
- Sites serving the EEA, UK and Switzerland must pass visitors' consent to Clarity; without it, recordings and funnels may be affected.
- Microsoft uses the anonymous behavior data it collects to improve its own products and machine learning models.
- Deleting one user's data means deleting the whole project.
Plausible
- There is no free hosted plan, only a 30-day trial; the free option is the Community Edition you run yourself.
- Stats are aggregate only: there are no session recordings or per-visitor profiles.
- Funnels, ecommerce revenue attribution, custom properties and the Stats API start on Business; SSO is Enterprise only.
- Prices rise with monthly pageviews, and sites above 10M pageviews a month need a custom Enterprise quote.
Key features
Microsoft Clarity
- Session recordings
- Always-on recordings of real visits, with highlights of key moments and filters to find sessions where people got stuck.
- Heatmaps
- Click, scroll, area and conversion heatmaps for every page, generated instantly, with comparisons across page versions.
- Rage and dead click insights
- Flags frustrated repeated clicks and clicks that do nothing, and segments sessions with more than 40 filters.
- Copilot summaries and chat
- AI summaries of sessions, groups of sessions and heatmaps, plus a chat that answers questions about your data.
- Mobile app SDKs
- SDKs for native Android and iOS, React Native and Flutter (Cordova and Ionic on Android) bring recordings to mobile apps.
Plausible
- No cookies or personal data
- Counts visits without cookies, persistent identifiers or cross-site tracking, so the vendor says no cookie banner or GDPR consent is needed.
- One-page dashboard
- Visitors, sources, pages, locations and devices on a single page, with a real-time view that updates every 30 seconds and a consolidated view of all sites.
- Goals, revenue and funnels
- Codeless goals for pages, file downloads, form completions and outbound links; revenue tracking, funnels and user journeys come with Business.
- Search and campaign data
- Connects to Google Search Console for search queries, groups UTM campaigns into channels, and shows traffic arriving from AI tools such as ChatGPT.
- Lightweight script
- The tracking script is much smaller than Google Analytics', with automatic scroll depth tracking and built-in bot and referrer spam filtering.
- Google Analytics import
- Brings in historical Google Analytics stats so older data sits beside new Plausible numbers.
Plans
Microsoft Clarity
Clarity$0
Free forever with all features: recordings, heatmaps, rage and dead click insights, 40+ filters, Copilot and smart events.
Plausible
Starter$7.50
per month for up to 10k pageviews, billed yearly ($9 billed monthly)
One site, 3 years of data, email and Slack reports, goals and custom events. Rises with traffic: $19 a month at 100k pageviews and $69 at 1M, billed monthly.
Growth$11.67
per month for up to 10k pageviews, billed yearly ($14 billed monthly)
Up to 3 sites and 3 team members, shared links, embedded dashboards and shared segments. $104 a month at 1M pageviews, billed monthly.
Business$15.83
per month for up to 10k pageviews, billed yearly ($19 billed monthly)
Up to 10 sites and members, 5 years of data, funnels, ecommerce revenue, custom properties, Stats API. $139 a month at 1M pageviews, monthly.
EnterpriseCustom
More than 10 sites or 10M pageviews: SSO, sites API, managed proxy, scheduled raw data exports and priority support.
Community Edition$0
Free AGPL release you host yourself, updated twice a year. No funnels, ecommerce revenue, SSO or sites API; community support only.
Ways to pay less
Microsoft Clarity
No public discounts listed.
Plausible
- Annual discount
2 months free with yearly billing
Yearly billing costs 10 times the monthly price: Starter is $90 a year instead of $108, or $7.50 a month instead of $9.
