Microsoft Clarity vs Sematext Experience (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Microsoft Clarity grades higher than Sematext Experience: 3.2 against 2.2 out of 4.0.
Checked Oct 18, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 · graded Oct 18, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA
Microsoft Clarity grades higher on value for money, the free plan, ease of use and platforms. They get the same grade on features.
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
Sematext Experience
Real user monitoring for front-end speed and page-load problems
Which one is for you
Pick Microsoft Clarity if
- Fits if you run a small site or blog and want recordings without paying
- Works for Google Analytics users who want to watch the visits behind the numbers
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you need recordings kept longer than 30 days
- Not for you if you'd rather your visitors' behavior didn't feed Microsoft's models
- Tight if you get data deletion requests, as removing one user means deleting the whole project
- Watch out: sites serving the EEA, UK and Switzerland must pass visitor consent to Clarity, or recordings and funnels may suffer
- Too light for anyone who wants product analytics beyond recordings and heatmaps, or an app to view them in
Pick Sematext Experience if
- Fits if you care about how fast pages load for real visitors
- Works for teams that already use Sematext for logs or servers
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you want visitor or marketing analytics, as it only measures performance
- Tight if traffic spikes, because data stops being accepted when the page-view limit is hit
- Watch out: the pricing page shows only the $9 entry price, and higher tiers depend on page views and retention
- Watch out: each Experience app has its own plan and limit
How we grade them
| 3.2GPAMicrosoft ClarityVery good | 2.2GPASematext ExperienceFair | |
|---|---|---|
| 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, none costs less. | B$9 a month ($8.10 billed annually), inside the cheaper quarter of analytics tools, which starts at $13. |
| Free plan and trial | AEverything is free: unlimited sites, team members and traffic, always-on recordings, heatmaps and Copilot. There's no paid plan. The one limit is that data is kept for 30 days. | CA 14-day trial with no card. No free plan. |
| 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. | CCore Web Vitals, session timelines, alerts and URL groups cover the job of speed monitoring completely, but it is a smaller job than analytics and is not product or marketing analytics. |
| 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 once the code is in and heatmaps build from them. | CNo store rating on record. You add a script and set up an app, thresholds and alerts. |
| 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. | CWeb only. Framework guides for React, Vue.js, Angular and Ember, and it joins with Sematext backend logs. |
| Best for | free recordings and heatmaps, no traffic cap | real-user speed monitoring from $9 |
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 Sematext Experience. 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. Sematext Experience starts at $9 a month and scores 2.0.
Microsoft Clarity scores higher and starts $9 a month lower. Of the other website and product analytics tools on the chart, none scores higher than Microsoft Clarity for less, and 7 score higher than Sematext Experience 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 also covers web analytics and session replay.
- Sematext Experience also covers reports, dashboards, page speed and log file analysis.
At a glance
| Microsoft Clarity | Sematext Experience | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free | Free trial |
| Starts at | Free | $9 per month, billed monthly ($8.10 billed annually) |
| 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. | None |
| Free trial | None listed | 14-day free trial, no credit card needed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Microsoft | Sematext |
| Price read from | clarity.microsoft.com | sematext.com |
| Checked | Oct 18, 2026 | Nov 13, 2026 |
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.
Sematext Experience
- The pricing page renders only the entry price ($9 a month); tier prices for Standard and Pro depend on page views and retention.
- When a plan's page-view limit is passed, data stops being accepted until the daily or monthly limit resets.
- It measures performance; it is not a product analytics or marketing analytics tool.
- The page-view limit is chosen per Experience app, and each app can have its own plan.
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.
Sematext Experience
- Frontend and Core Web Vitals metrics
- Collects page load times, HTTP requests, resources and UI interactions, plus Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay and Cumulative Layout Shift.
- Session timelines
- Individual user sessions are shown as page loads, transactions and requests in a timeline or table, with slow-loading elements and memory trends.
- Alerts and anomaly detection
- Alerts can be set on any performance metric and apdex, and anomaly detection flags irregular spikes without hand-written rules.
- Front-end and backend in one view
- Front-end metrics can be combined with backend logs and monitoring data in the same Sematext account for troubleshooting.
- URL groups and custom measurements
- URL Groups bundle page patterns into sections of a site, and custom measurements with thresholds can be collected.
Plans
Microsoft Clarity
Clarity$0
Free forever with all features: recordings, heatmaps, rage and dead click insights, 40+ filters, Copilot and smart events.
Sematext Experience
Experience$9
per month and up, billed monthly ($8.10 billed annually)
Starting price shown on the pricing page. The page lists Startup (25k page views a month), Standard and Pro tiers, priced by page views and retention.
Ways to pay less
Microsoft Clarity
No public discounts listed.
Sematext Experience
- Annual discount
10% off with annual billing
The pricing page has a Monthly/Annually switch that shows 10% off, taking the Experience starting price from $9 to $8.10 a month.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Microsoft Clarity or Sematext Experience?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Microsoft Clarity is cheaper to start with: it is free, against $9 a month for Sematext Experience. Microsoft Clarity is free, and Sematext Experience starts at $9 per month, billed monthly ($8.10 billed annually).
Which has a free plan, Microsoft Clarity or Sematext Experience?
As of Nov 13, 2026, only Microsoft Clarity has a free plan. Sematext Experience does not, though it has a free trial.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.