Microsoft Clarity vs PostHog
We give Microsoft Clarity and PostHog the same GPA: 3.2 out of 4.0. Microsoft Clarity grades higher on the free plan and ease of use. PostHog grades higher on features. They get the same grade on value for money 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
PostHog
Open-source product analytics with replays, flags and surveys
How we grade them
| 3.2GPAMicrosoft ClarityVery good | 3.2GPAPostHogVery good | |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | AA site with 10,000 visitors a month fits in the free 1M events and 5,000 recordings, so the figure is $0. There's no base fee after that, just usage from $0.00005 an event. Boost, at $250 a month, is only for SSO, HIPAA and more projects. |
| 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. | BNo card and no time limit: 1M events, 5,000 recordings, 1M flag requests and 1,500 survey responses every month, with unlimited members. Usage stops at the limit, so no surprise bill. You get 1 project, and recordings are kept a month. |
| 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. | AAnalytics, web analytics, replays, flags, A/B tests, surveys, error tracking, logs and a data warehouse with pipelines in and out. Graded against Amplitude, Mixpanel and Heap, it covers the whole job, and none of them bundles errors, logs and a warehouse too. |
| 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. | CNo rating on record. The cloud version is a snippet and a sign-up, but there are a lot of products to learn and events to plan. The free self-hosted version is a Docker deploy PostHog doesn't officially support, which is a developer's job. |
| 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, so it can't reach an A. It pulls data in from Stripe, HubSpot, Salesforce and Postgres, sends events out to Braze, Klaviyo and others, and works with Snowflake, BigQuery and Zendesk. |
| Best for | free recordings and heatmaps, no traffic cap | a whole product toolkit on one free allowance |
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 PostHog. How we grade
Where they differ
- Microsoft Clarity is free. PostHog starts at $0.00005 per analytics event past the free 1M (pay-as-you-go).
- PostHog is open source and self-hostable, according to its own site.
- PostHog also covers surveys and a/B testing.
At a glance
| Microsoft Clarity | PostHog | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free | Free plan |
| Starts at | Free | $0.00005 per analytics event past the free 1M (pay-as-you-go) |
| 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. | Monthly allowance that resets: 1M analytics events, 5,000 recordings, 1M flag requests, 1,500 survey responses, 100K exceptions. Unlimited members, 1 project, 1-year retention. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Microsoft | PostHog |
| Price read from | clarity.microsoft.com | posthog.com |
| 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
PostHog
- Startups and developers who want many product tools under one bill
- Teams that want to cap spend with a billing limit per product
- Companies that prefer open-source software they can host themselves
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.
PostHog
- Usage is metered per product, so the monthly bill moves with traffic; billing limits can be set for each product to cap it.
- SSO enforcement, a HIPAA BAA and unlimited projects need the $250-a-month Boost package on top of usage; SAML sign-in needs Scale at $750.
- The free plan keeps recordings for 1 month and data for 1 year, allows 1 project, and drops events past its limits.
- Self-hosted PostHog is officially unsupported and has no tagged releases; PostHog recommends always running the latest image.
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.
PostHog
- Product and web analytics
- Funnels, trends, retention, user paths and a web analytics dashboard, built from events. The first 1M events a month are free.
- Session replay
- Recordings of real visits to see where people get stuck, linked to funnels and errors. 5,000 recordings a month are free; recordings are kept 90 days on pay-as-you-go.
- Feature flags and experiments
- Roll features out to chosen users and run A/B tests, billed together by flag requests, with 1M requests free each month.
- Surveys
- In-app surveys with 1,500 free responses a month, and white-labeled surveys on the Boost package.
- Error tracking and logs
- Captures exceptions (100K free a month) and ingests logs (10 GB free), so you can go from a replay to the error behind it.
- Data warehouse and pipelines
- Syncs data in from Stripe, HubSpot, Salesforce, Postgres and others, and sends events out to tools such as Braze and Klaviyo.
Plans
Microsoft Clarity
Clarity$0
Free forever with all features: recordings, heatmaps, rage and dead click insights, 40+ filters, Copilot and smart events.
PostHog
Free$0
Full free allowance on every product, unlimited team members, 1 project, community support. Usage stops at the limits, so no surprise bill.
Pay-as-you-go$0
plus usage above the monthly free allowance
No base fee. Analytics from $0.00005 an event and replays from $0.005 a recording, cheaper at volume. 6 projects, 7-year data, email support.
Boost$250
per month, plus usage
Platform package: unlimited projects, SSO enforcement, 2FA enforcement, white labeling, HIPAA BAA and 12 months of replay retention.
Scale$750
per month, plus usage
Everything in Boost plus SAML and OIDC sign-in, approval workflows, real-time alerts and priority support with an 8-hour target.
EnterpriseCustom
Sold through sales: role-based access, a dedicated account manager, training, and up to 5 years of replay retention.
Self-hosted (hobby deploy)$0
MIT-licensed Docker Compose deployment you host yourself. Officially unsupported, with no paid support plan.
Ways to pay less
Microsoft Clarity
No public discounts listed.
PostHog
- Startups
$50,000 in credits for early-stage startups
Companies under 2 years old that have raised less than $5M get $50,000 of PostHog credit for 12 months, plus partner perks. A company email domain is required.
- Nonprofit
Discount for nonprofits
PostHog says it gives nonprofits a discount in most cases: create an account, then contact sales with details of the organization.
