Plerdy vs Hotjar: how each counts usage, what happened to Hotjar accounts and who should pick which

Plerdy vs Hotjar: the first thing to know is that Hotjar moved

Contentsquare's Hotjar page says Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare and that it is no longer possible to create a new account on Hotjar. New users sign up on Contentsquare instead, and existing users log in with the same credentials. The page adds that features and availability may be modified at Contentsquare's discretion.

So this guide compares Plerdy with the product people still search for as Hotjar, using Contentsquare's current pages. Both vendors' pages were read on October 30, 2026.

The differences side by side: meters, free plans and cost

• Meter: Plerdy counts daily heatmap page views plus a running total of video sessions, set per plan. Contentsquare counts monthly sessions.
• Free plan: Plerdy Free lists 100 daily heatmap page views, 500 video sessions and one month of storage. Contentsquare Free lists up to 200,000 monthly sessions, one project and one month of data access, and its pricing table shows session replays captured for 5 percent of sessions up to a monthly maximum.
• Old Hotjar free plan: Contentsquare's comparison says it captured 35 sessions a day and allowed 20 survey responses a month.
• Trial: Plerdy offers a 14-day free trial with the Scale plan's limits. Contentsquare says every new account starts with a 15-day trial of its Growth plans and no payment details are needed.
• Paid ladder: Plerdy runs Startup, Scale, Thrive and three Enterprise plans sized by daily heatmap views and video sessions. Contentsquare runs Growth, sized by monthly sessions, then Pro and Enterprise by custom quote through a demo.
• When a limit is reached: Contentsquare says Free and Growth accounts get no new heatmap or funnel data until the monthly reset. Plerdy's FAQ says there are no automatic additional charges at a limit.

A worked example of the two meters

Take a store with 12,000 visits in its busiest month, and a promotion day that sends 2,000 of them at once. This is an illustration, not a forecast.

A monthly session meter counts all 12,000 visits against the month's allowance, so the promotion day matters only as part of the month. A daily page-view meter counts each day separately, so the promotion day can use up that day's heatmap allowance early, and Plerdy's FAQ says clicks record until the daily limit is reached. Run the same sum with your own analytics for your busiest day and your busiest month before you choose.

What the vendors' own comparisons cover

Plerdy's pricing page includes a one-line comparison with a Hotjar package for access to funnels, and Contentsquare's Hotjar page compares Contentsquare Free with the old Hotjar Free plan. Both are short sales comparisons written by the vendor and favor their author, so this guide builds its comparison from each vendor's own plan, pricing and help pages instead. Where figures are quoted, they are the vendors' own.

Which to choose

• Choose Plerdy if you want heatmaps, replays, funnels, error tracking and a free A/B testing tool in one account, and your key pages fit inside a daily heatmap limit. Read the Plerdy pricing guide first.
• Choose Contentsquare, the Hotjar successor, if you want a large monthly session allowance on a free plan. Weigh that free replays are sampled and data access is one month.
• Choose neither yet if Microsoft Clarity covers the job: its FAQ describes it as free forever with no traffic limits and no sampling. The best heatmap tools for a website lines up seven options.

Questions to ask before you pay

• Which count will I hit first, daily page views or monthly sessions, using my own busiest day?
• Are my replays sampled, and how long is the data kept on the plan I am considering?
• What happens to collection when a limit is reached: a pause, an upgrade prompt or an extra charge?
• Does the plan I need name my site count, project count and team members in its limits?