The 6 best session replay tools in 2025

Sports managers improve their teams by watching hours of replays, studying each play, and using that information to develop a winning strategy. While a website isn't an all-star basketball team, watching replays of your visitors' interactions with your platform can give you insights that'll help you improve user experience and conversion rates across pages.

When analytics aren't enough, session replay and heatmap software will let you see where your audience is struggling—and where you're doing everything right. It's as if you're looking over their shoulder as they click, scroll, or tap their way through your website or mobile app (but way less creepy).

I spent time researching and testing dozens of heatmap tools and session replay software options, and these are the ones that came out on top. 

The 6 best session replay apps

• Hotjar for an all-in-one session replay app

• Fullstory for AI-powered insights

• UXCam for a mobile session replay tool

• Zoho PageSense for conversion optimization 

• Lucky Orange for live session tracking

• Microsoft Clarity for the best free session replay tool

What makes the best session replay software?

The best session recording tools help you collect data that'll give you insights on how to improve the user experience on your website. They're easy to install, offer a clear interface to watch the session recordings, and include data analysis to help you make better decisions.

Session replays show you exactly how people use your website, from where and how much they click to how far they scroll down each page. You'll see where site visitors become frustrated or confused and where things go smoothly. This roundup is focused on session replay functionality, but every app I picked also includes heatmaps that visualize and color-code user interactions. 

While session recording and heatmaps are at the core of the software on this list, you'll see that each one offers a range of extras you can implement to drive more value from data. This includes things like A/B testing, user surveys, feedback collection, and website notifications, to name a few.

As I researched each app, here's what I looked for:

• All-in-one functionality: Stacking too many analytics apps on a single website can hurt performance (and your budget), so I looked at apps that offered more than just session replays, like reporting, insights, surveys, and live chat.

• Ease of use: Apps should offer easy, no-code integration with your website. Where this wasn't available, I considered apps that need you to just copy and paste a JavaScript snippet—but only as long as there was an informative guide to help do this.

• Performance impact: I excluded any session replay tool that adds more than 500 ms to website loading times.  

• Analytics and insights: The session replays should offer all the basic analytics, including, at the very least, a heatmap report. The dashboards should be easy to read, understand, and drive additional insights from.

• Value: While the pricing ranges quite a bit, I excluded any apps in the thousands-of-dollars-per-month segment. Most of these apps do almost everything you might need anyway, without breaking the bank.

It's hard to put session replay apps through their paces without a lot of real site traffic, but I was able to do some testing with sample data for most of these tools (on top of reading endless user reviews and watching demos). 

The best session replay tools at a glance

Best all-in-one session replay software

Hotjar (Web)

Hotjar pros:

• Lightweight, one-script tool

• Can conduct surveys and user experience research

• Heatmaps work for desktop and mobile sites

Hotjar cons:

• Limited free plan

Hotjar is a leading session replay app, and you might be here because you're looking for Hotjar alternatives. But if you're just starting out with this category, it's an extensive, snappy tool you should seriously consider. With a broad feature set built around session replays and heatmaps, Hotjar also lets you push surveys to your website to ask for visitors' opinions or get real-time feedback from user tests.

Once you implement Hotjar on your website, it'll run a single lightweight script that activates click tracking, session recording, menu analysis, and heatmaps for desktop and mobile. All the data Hotjar collects will be saved for a year, which gives you ample time to make site changes based on user experiences. Plus, one subscription gets you unlimited seats, meaning you can share access to this data with your entire team.

But Hotjar really distinguishes itself from other session replay tools by being a total user research platform. With surveys, you can quickly set up a Net Promoter Score or exit-intent pop-up on the page of your choice. If these aren't useful, you can browse templates for market research polls, user persona quizzes, price sensitivity questionnaires, and plenty of other surveys. When complete, the app's AI assistant can automatically categorize survey responses as positive, neutral, and negative and generate summary reports.

Hotjar lets you run full-fledged research projects, too, such as website tests where visitors interact with your website or one-on-one interviews. You can either invite users you already know or select from a pool of over 200,000 testers from around the world. As interview sessions are scheduled, you'll be able to query these testers over video call, giving you a more nuanced idea of the strengths and weaknesses of your website's UX.

While Hotjar's data dashboards are easy to navigate, you may want to bring your data to other platforms you use. For that, you can connect Hotjar to Zapier and integrate with thousands of apps, giving you access to no-code automations like sending Hotjar survey responses to other apps. Learn more about how to automate Hotjar, or get started with one of these Zap templates.

Hotjar pricing: Free plan available for 35 daily sessions; paid plans start at $39/month for the Plus plan

Best session replay app for AI-powered insights

Fullstory (Web)

Fullstory pros:

• Built-in AI functionality

• Provides actionable data insights

• Extensive free plan

Fullstory cons:

• Costly paid plans

Fullstory ticks all the key session replay boxes: full video playback of user actions, search and filter tools, data analytics dashboards, and a proactive customer support team. It also has some of the most impressive AI features for an app in this class.

Rather than tack it on as a bonus feature, Fullstory leverages AI for pretty much every part of its platform. This means that as soon as Fullstory starts tracking a site visitor, AI begins tagging, indexing, and organizing their interactions. And when a session ends, it can generate time-saving session summary notes with a single click.

Fullstory's AI is also built directly into its data reporting suite, Metric Insights. Once engagement data from user sessions has been logged, Fullstory provides actionable, AI-driven insights on KPIs, trends, anomalies, and areas for improvement—all of which can then be used to optimize your user experience.

The best part? Nearly all of these AI-powered tools come standard even on the free plan, which nets you 10,000 sessions per month, 10 user seats, and one full year of data analytics retention. If you choose to upgrade to a paid plan, pricing is by request, but be aware that most users say it's pretty expensive.

Out of the box, Fullstory integrates with around 30 apps, including Google Analytics, Salesforce, and Trello. But if you want to sync with other tools in your tech stack, you can connect Fullstory with Zapier and get access to no-code integrations for thousands of other apps. Here are a few pre-made workflows to give you an idea of what's possible.

Fullstory pricing: Free plan available; pricing by request 

Best mobile session replay tool

UXCam (Web)

UXCam pros:

• Designed for mobile apps

• Includes heatmaps and analytics dashboards

• Tracks mobile-specific actions and gestures

UXCam cons:

• Requires some dev expertise

Most session replay tools are designed around desktop websites, but generally, mobile sites tend to get more traffic. People love their phones and tablets, so why not use a session replay tool built from the ground up for mobile devices? I asked myself the same question, and that led me to UXCam.

UXCam bills itself as the leader in mobile app analytics, and honestly, it's earned the right. You can use it to record and analyze user interactions like swipes, taps, presses, scrolls, and zooms. Tagless autocapture lets you monitor real user experiences, so you can see when someone rage taps or closes your app in frustration. 

Heatmaps are also a major selling point, as they'll show you exactly which UX elements people are (and aren't) using. On a mobile app with limited screen real estate, this can be a massively helpful tool to help you refine your interface based on user data. 

To get started, you'll integrate UXCam with your mobile app using an SDK and a few lines of code. The ins and outs of this process will change depending on your platform and dev environment, but users generally find it painless to set up as long as you follow the tutorial. (The support team is there if you have any trouble.) 

Once you've recorded some sessions, you can start exploring your data using UXCam's analytics suite. You'll be able to generate reports automatically with AI and create custom, shareable data dashboards in minutes using templates and widgets. 

While you're able to connect UXCam with a number of external apps, integrations aren't this software's strong suit. There's not much info out there on app compatibility, and you'll need some level of dev knowledge to even enable third-party integrations. UXCam also doesn't work with Zapier, but you can always try the free plan to see if the lack of integrations is a deal-breaker.  

UXCam pricing: Free plan available; pricing by request

Best session replay app for conversion optimization

Zoho PageSense (Web)

Zoho PageSense pros:

• Powerful A/B and split URL testing

• Content personalization options

• Works seamlessly with other Zoho apps

Zoho PageSense cons:

• Maximum monthly site visit limits

PageSense is one of the many apps in Zoho's software suite—or Zohoverse, as I like to call it. It's a flexible session replay tool with a whole slew of conversion rate optimization (CRO) features not included in most apps in its class. 

On top of the expected session recordings, heatmaps, and analytics, PageSense offers A/B testing for webpages, site layouts, and individual elements like CTA buttons. You can even duplicate pages of your site and use split URL testing to host and compare two separate URL structures. Plus, you'll get access to variation-specific heatmaps for any A/B testing you do.

PageSense also offers content personalization based on traffic source. For example, let's say your traffic comes primarily from LinkedIn and Instagram, but these target audiences have slightly different needs. With PageSense's content personalization features, you can change text and images on landing pages based on where your visitor is coming from, boosting relevance and (hopefully) improving your conversion rate.

You can use PageSense to personalize session replays, too. This could mean using recordings to target a specific customer segment—like people who visit your site from social media—or getting super granular and tracking sessions based on unique identifiers like email addresses. With the latter approach, you'll then be able to target specific users with personalized offers and discounts.

Features like these let you tackle conversion optimization from a few more angles than most apps on this list. But if your website gets a lot of traffic, be aware that PageSense's pricing changes depending on how many site visitors you receive per month. Each plan starts with a maximum of 10,000—any visits past that limit simply won't be tracked.

It's also worth noting that this app is built for teams who use other tools in Zoho's software suite, as native integrations are limited to OpenAI, Google Ads and Analytics, Intercom, and a handful of others. But if you connect PageSense with Zapier, you'll be able to integrate with thousands of additional apps, like Slack, Blueshift, HubSpot, and Mailchimp, just to name a few. Get started with a pre-made workflow, or build your own automated system with PageSense and all the other apps you use.

Zoho PageSense pricing: Paid plans start at $20/month for the Analyze plan

Best session replay software for live session tracking

Lucky Orange (Web)

Lucky Orange pros:

• Real-time session tracking

• Start live chats with site visitors

Lucky Orange cons:

• Can't opt out of customer service features

Don't let its cutesy name fool you—Lucky Orange brings some serious session replay and heatmap firepower to the table, including a Live View mode that lets you see exactly what users are doing on your site in real time. 

When you enter Live View mode for a specific visitor, you'll see a tab with a timeline of all the actions they take on your site: mouse moves, scrolls, rage clicks, and even cursor shaking. While most session replay apps track these kinds of actions, Lucky Orange lets you monitor them as they happen. It's pretty cool. (And it'll automatically mask sensitive user information like credit card numbers.)

And you can do more than just watch: Lucky Orange also lets you start a one-on-one chat with any site visitor directly from the Live View mode. So, if you see someone struggling to navigate your site or hovering over a product, you can push an Available to Chat notification directly to their screen.

Of course, no one can spend all day watching site visitors. To help you find optimal times of the day to be online, the dashboard includes information about your website's peak hours so you can sync your schedule with your visitors'. If that doesn't generate many conversations, you can set up announcements and surveys and even configure chat invites that'll alert visitors when you're available.

On top of real-time tracking, Lucky Orange offers what you'd expect as far as session replays, heatmaps, and data dashboards go. The Live View and live customer service features are definitely the unique selling points here, so if those don't seem useful to you, you may want to consider a more straightforward session replay app like Microsoft Clarity.

Like most of the apps on this list, Lucky Orange has a fairly limited range of native integrations (although you can access all of them even on the free plan). If you want to integrate with the other apps in your workflow, connect Lucky Orange with Zapier, and you'll get access to automations like sending notifications based on Lucky Orange events. Get started with one of these templates.

Lucky Orange pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $39/month for the Build plan

Best free heatmap and session replay tool

Microsoft Clarity (Web)

Microsoft Clarity pros:

• 100% free with no paid version available

• No site traffic limits

• Unlimited heatmaps 

Microsoft Clarity cons:

• Only retains data for 30 days

Microsoft Clarity may not be an all-in-one tool like the others on this list, but it's one of the only free apps to offer session recording, heatmaps, and data analytics without any kind of catch. Once you sign up, it's free forever, and there are no limits on site traffic or how many domains you can track.

This kind of value is pretty much unheard of in the SaaS space. Just be aware that Microsoft will use anonymous data collected from your website(s) to train machine learning models (but they won't share it with third parties). 

When site sessions start rolling in, you'll be able to access them on Clarity's dashboard, which is one of the most detailed I've seen. It lists the core stats you'd expect, along with a few unique metrics:

• Scroll depth percentage helps you judge which pages get seen all the way through to the bottom.

• Excessive scrolling helps you identify confusing or low-performance pages.

• Quick backs help troubleshoot buttons users click by mistake (either because they're small, lack adequate spacing, or the button copy doesn't match the expected target page).

When you click to view a session recording—either a live visit or a previously recorded one—you can monitor user actions through an annotated video. It'll show mouse movement, clicking, device analytics, and the scroll map. There's also an Areas view, displaying the click percentages over each element to give you a sense of what's attracting attention and what's not.

Clarity won't let you do things like push surveys or chat with live site visitors, and it doesn't have the AI-driven data insights of apps like Hotjar or Fullstory, but it's a no-brainer pick if you need a lightweight, functional session replay and heatmap tool. And, of course, not many things can beat free, so you'll have more budget to tackle other needs.

Clarity integrates seamlessly with Google Analytics, allowing you to see your Analytics dashboard directly in Clarity without having to switch between apps. You can even add Clarity to your browser as a Google Chrome extension to see live heatmaps and recordings for any page. 

Beyond this, you can connect Clarity with Zapier and automate tasks like creating rows in Google Sheets for updates to Clarity metrics or storing Clarity data as new items in Notion. Here are some pre-made workflows to show you more possibilities.

Microsoft Clarity pricing: Free

Automate session replay with Zapier

There's no better way to learn how visitors interact with your website than by literally watching their every move. (I promise, it's not as weird as it sounds.) There's also the part where you collect tons of user data and gain actionable insights from it, which is what all the monitoring is really for. 

Depending on the session replay tool you choose, you can use Zapier to connect it with the other apps in your workflows and start automating repetitive tasks like porting data into your CRM or email marketing software. Or you can send all your session replay data into a database like Zapier Tables and kick off automated workflows based on that data whenever you're ready.

Related reading:

• A guide to conversion rate optimization (CRO) for eCommerce

• How to optimize your sales page for conversions

• What is Hotjar–and how does it work?

• Guide to data analytics automation

This article was originally published in March 2023 by Miguel Rebelo. The most recent update was in March 2025.