Is Microsoft Clarity Free? The Complete Honest Answer (2026)

The short answer: yes, completely. No credit card, no trial period, no session limits, no "freemium" catch. But "free" always deserves scrutiny. Here's what you actually get, what's genuinely missing, and the real trade-offs you should know before installing.

Yes — Microsoft Clarity is free. Here's exactly what that means.

Microsoft Clarity has been free since its public launch in 2020 and remains free in 2026. There is no paid tier. There is no Pro plan, Business plan, or Enterprise plan. The entire product — every feature — is available to every user at zero cost.

What "free" includes:

• Unlimited session recordings — every visitor session is recorded with no daily, monthly, or annual cap
• Unlimited heatmaps — click, scroll, and area heatmaps for any URL pattern you define
• Frustration signal detection — rage clicks, dead clicks, quick backs, excessive scrolling, error clicks — automatically detected and filterable
• AI Copilot — natural language queries on your behavioral data
• Google Analytics 4 integration — native overlay connecting Clarity sessions with GA4 metrics
• Custom tags — tag sessions with your own metadata
• Data Export API — programmatic access to your data (with limits, see below)
• Unlimited projects/websites — one account for multiple sites
• 90-day data retention — recordings and metrics kept for 3 months
• Team members — multiple users per account

None of these require a credit card. None are time-limited. None require you to upgrade to access them.

How Clarity's free compares to competitors' "free" tiers

Most tools advertise a "free" tier, but the comparison isn't close:

The difference is categorical. Hotjar free at 35 sessions per day captures 3.5% of traffic for a 1,000-visitor/day site. You're making decisions based on a tiny, potentially unrepresentative sample. Clarity captures everything — the frustrated user at 2am, the mobile visitor from an ad campaign, the returning customer who can't find their order. All of it, free.

The real catch: Why Microsoft offers Clarity for free

Nothing is free without a reason. Clarity's reason is explicit and disclosed in their terms of service: Microsoft uses aggregated, anonymized data from Clarity users to improve its AI models, advertising products, and understanding of web behavior at scale.

What this means concretely:

• Microsoft sees aggregate behavioral patterns across all Clarity-instrumented sites (not your specific site in isolation)
• Your individual users' personal data is not sold to advertisers
• Microsoft is not showing your users ads based on what they did on your site
• Clarity's data helps Microsoft train models and understand how people interact with the web broadly

This is a legitimate trade-off. You get a world-class behavioral analytics tool. Microsoft gets data that improves its AI and ad products. Both parties benefit.

For most businesses, this trade-off is completely acceptable. Your competitors are already doing it. The data Microsoft collects from Clarity is behavioral (click patterns, scroll rates, page paths) — not sensitive personal data.

What's genuinely missing from Clarity's free offering

Being honest about what Clarity doesn't offer is important so you know exactly what you're getting.

No surveys or user feedback

Clarity has zero qualitative research features. You cannot ask visitors a question, display an NPS survey, or show a feedback widget. If understanding why users do what they do (rather than just what they do) is critical, you'll need to add a tool like Hotjar or Typeform for surveys.

No funnel analysis

Clarity doesn't have a built-in funnel analysis feature. You can't set up "product page → add to cart → checkout → purchase" and see drop-off rates at each step. GA4 handles this better and is also free, so use GA4 funnels + Clarity recordings in combination.

No form analytics

Field-level form analytics — which fields take longest, which cause users to abandon — isn't available in Clarity. Mouseflow and Lucky Orange offer this. For lead gen and checkout optimization, it's a real gap.

API limits: 10 requests per day, 3 days max

The Clarity Data Export API is free but constrained:

• Maximum 10 API requests per day per project
• Data available via API: maximum 3 days back
• Maximum 1,000 rows per response
• Custom dimensions: not available via API
• Session-level data: not available (aggregate metrics only)

For programmatic data access and historical analysis, you need to collect data daily and store it yourself. Miss a day, and that day's data is gone from the API (though still viewable in the dashboard for 90 days).

No user identification

Clarity can't natively link session recordings to specific customer accounts. You can work around this with custom tags (tag sessions with user IDs), but it's not as seamless as tools like FullStory that handle user identification natively.

No alerts or monitoring

Clarity doesn't send alerts when rage clicks spike, when a new error appears, or when conversion drops. You have to check manually. For autonomous monitoring, you need either a custom solution or a complementary tool.

90-day data retention only

Dashboard data is retained for 90 days. If you need to look back at behavior from 6 months ago, it's gone. For long-term trend analysis, accumulate data via the API daily into your own database.

Privacy considerations: What Clarity records (and what it masks)

Clarity is designed to be privacy-safe by default:

What Clarity masks automatically

• Text fields in forms (input values are replaced with * characters)
• Password fields (always masked)
• Credit card numbers and payment fields
• Social Security or national ID number fields (pattern-matched)

What Clarity records

• Mouse clicks and tap positions
• Scroll behavior and depth
• Page navigation paths
• Device type, browser, operating system
• Geographic location (country/region, not precise GPS)
• Session duration and page time
• Rage clicks, dead clicks, and other frustration signals

What Clarity doesn't record

• Text typed into masked form fields
• Audio or video from the user's device
• User credentials
• Payment information

GDPR compliance

Clarity complies with GDPR requirements when properly configured. You need to:

1. Add Clarity as a data processor in your privacy policy
2. Include Clarity in your cookie consent banner (it uses cookies)
3. Sign Clarity's Data Processing Agreement (available in settings)
4. Configure any additional PII masking required for your specific use case

Clarity provides documentation and consent integration guides for major consent management platforms (Cookiebot, OneTrust, Axeptio, etc.).

Is Clarity free for agencies?

Yes. You can use Clarity across unlimited client sites. There's no per-domain fee, no agency plan, and no restrictions on commercial use. Add Clarity to client websites through their own Clarity accounts (recommended for proper data ownership) or through your account with access granted to clients.

One Clarity account supports multiple projects (one per website). Each project is free with no caps.

Will Microsoft ever start charging for Clarity?

Microsoft has made no announcements about charging for Clarity since its 2020 launch, and the economic model (data for improvements) doesn't require monetization from users. There's no guarantee Clarity remains free forever, but there's no signal it will change either.

The risk of dependency on a free tool is real — any free product can change its model. To mitigate this, export your data via the API regularly (or use a service that does this for you). Then your historical data lives in your own database, and switching tools doesn't mean losing history.

How to make the most of Clarity's free offering

Clarity's data has value only if you act on it. The most common failure mode is installing Clarity, looking at the dashboard once, and then ignoring it for months.

The key is a systematic weekly review process:

1. Weekly: Check top pages by rage click rate — pages above 5% need investigation
2. Weekly: Watch 10 session recordings filtered by dead clicks — identify broken interactions
3. Monthly: Review scroll depth on key pages — what content is never seen?
4. Monthly: Check quick-back rate by landing page — which pages fail to match expectations?

Or automate this process entirely with a tool that pulls your Clarity data, analyzes trends, and emails you a weekly prioritized report — so you get insights without manual dashboard checking.

Frequently asked questions

Is Microsoft Clarity completely free?

Yes. Microsoft Clarity is 100% free with no paid tiers, no credit card required, no session limits, and no trial period. Every feature is available to all users at no cost.

Will Microsoft start charging for Clarity?

Microsoft has made no announcements about charging for Clarity. The tool has been free since its 2020 launch. Microsoft's business model is using aggregated data to improve its AI products — not charging users.

What's the catch with Microsoft Clarity being free?

Microsoft uses aggregated, anonymized behavioral data from Clarity users to improve its products. This is disclosed in their terms. Your individual users' data is not sold. For most businesses this is acceptable.

Is Microsoft Clarity free for commercial use?

Yes. Clarity is free for any website — personal, commercial, ecommerce, SaaS, agency use. There are no restrictions on the type of site or commercial use.

How does Clarity compare to Hotjar free?

Hotjar's free tier limits session recordings to 35 per day. For a site with 1,000 daily visitors, that's 3.5% of sessions captured. Clarity captures 100% of sessions with no daily limit. Clarity's free offering is vastly more capable than Hotjar's free tier.

Does Microsoft Clarity collect personal data?

Clarity automatically masks text fields and sensitive form inputs in session recordings. It collects behavioral data (clicks, scrolls, page paths) but not personal data entered into forms. You should still disclose Clarity in your privacy policy and cookie consent.