Replayly vs Microsoft Clarity

Replayly and Microsoft Clarity both let you watch how people use a website. They are not priced or hosted the same way. Clarity is a free Microsoft-hosted product for recordings and heatmaps. We built Replayly as a privacy-first session replay product: input masking and Do Not Track are on from the first snippet, there is a free plan, and the paid prices are public. This comparison includes the cases where you should stay on Clarity.

A shorter product-level version lives on Replayly vs Microsoft Clarity. Our prices and limits always come from the fact sheet and pricing page.

Who is each tool for?

Microsoft Clarity is for teams that want session recordings and heatmaps at no cost, are comfortable with a Microsoft account and Microsoft-hosted data, and do not need a paid support or retention catalog. Microsoft's own pricing page is blunt about this: Clarity is free forever, and you are not forced onto a paid version.

Replayly is for teams that want a Clarity-style way to watch real sessions, with conservative privacy defaults already on, and a public price list if they outgrow the free tier. That usually means product and UX teams, agencies who need to show a client what happened on a site, and privacy-conscious teams who want masking and Do Not Track on before anyone opens a settings screen. The product-teams, agencies, and privacy-conscious teams pages go into those jobs.

If you already have a free heatmap tool and nothing about hosting or defaults has changed, Clarity is still the simpler answer.

How do Replayly and Clarity compare side by side?

The clearest differences are hosting, price, retention, heatmaps, and privacy defaults. The table uses our published catalog and Clarity's official documentation. We checked both on 13 November 2026.

Clarity wins on price, and on heatmaps being free. Replayly wins if you want Do Not Track on by default, a paid retention and support path you can point to, or a smaller product with a public catalog. Neither one is a survey platform or a general analytics suite.

How do the privacy defaults differ?

The useful difference is in the details, not in a cartoon where "Clarity captures everything." Clarity's masking documentation says sensitive content is masked by default, the default mode is Balanced, and content in input boxes is masked in all modes and cannot be customized. Drop-down menus are masked in every mode too. Masked content is not uploaded to Clarity. You can switch to Strict (mask all content) or Relaxed (inputs and dropdowns still masked).

We also mask input values by default. A password, a typed name, or an address should not show up as plaintext in a recording. Replayly respects Do Not Track unless you explicitly opt out with dnt=0 on a test snippet. On Starter and above you can enable consent mode (window.replayly('consent')), mask all visible text, and block CSS selectors. The install guide documents rr-block and rr-mask classes as well.

Both products treat input values as sensitive when you leave the defaults alone. Where we differ: Do Not Track is on unless you turn it off, and consent mode plus selector blocking sit on paid plans. Clarity stores data in Microsoft US data centers. If your rule is "no form values in the replay," both can meet it. If your rule is "honor DNT without hunting through project settings," our default is the clearer documented behavior.

For the longer product explanation, see Privacy defaults, not privacy settings and the GDPR session recording checklist. Those pages are product documentation. They are not legal advice.

How does pricing and retention compare?

The comparison is uneven because Clarity does not sell a paid plan. Microsoft's FAQ calls it a free service forever. The recordings overview says recordings are kept for 30 days, after which Clarity keeps 1% of recordings or 10 recordings per day, whichever is higher, for up to nine months. Favorites last up to nine months. The FAQ also says you currently cannot delete or download specific recordings.

We publish four monthly USD list prices:

• Free: $0, 1,000 sessions, 7-day retention, 1 project, sampling after the limit.
• Starter: $29, 10,000 sessions, 30-day retention, 3 projects, filters and advanced privacy controls. New recordings block when the quota is reached.
• Pro: $79, 50,000 sessions, 90-day retention, 10 projects, plus heatmaps and AI session summaries.
• Business: $199, 200,000 sessions, 365-day retention, unlimited projects, team roles, priority support, and white-label branding.

If you need 90 or 365 days of retention, or you want to delete sessions you no longer need, that catalog is built for it. If 30 days of free recordings and Microsoft's later sampling are enough, Clarity is cheaper. It is free. There is no honest way to claim Replayly costs less than $0.

Microsoft also explains, on the Clarity pricing page, why the product is free: it processes anonymous user-behavior data to improve machine learning models, and Clarity is one way it gathers that data. Microsoft says it will never share your data with third parties. Read that explanation yourself and decide whether it fits your policy. We are not restating Microsoft's full privacy statement here.

Do both tools include heatmaps and session replay?

Both include session replay. Heatmaps are where the plans split. Clarity includes click and scroll heatmaps on the free product. We generate click and scroll heatmaps from the same recordings you already collect, and only on Pro and Business. They are a summary view, not a second tracker, so the privacy defaults you set for replay also shape the heatmap.

If heatmaps have to work on day one and $79 a month is off the table, Clarity is the more complete free option. If you can start with session replay on Free or Starter (watch visits, skip inactivity, and on Starter filter by rage clicks, dead clicks, or console errors) and add heatmaps later, Replayly still fits.

Our player reconstructs the page from an event stream. It is not a camera or a screen-recording file. Clarity describes its recordings the same way: a reconstruction of DOM content and user actions, not a video stream. That model is normal for this category.

When should you stay on Clarity, and when should you try Replayly?

Stay on Clarity when a free Microsoft-hosted recording and heatmap tool already answers your questions. Try Replayly when you want privacy defaults that include Do Not Track, a paid plan with longer retention or filters, or a public price you can take to finance without a sales call.

A practical way to decide:

1. List the sessions you actually watch today. Checkout errors, onboarding, a campaign landing page. Be specific.
2. Check whether Clarity's 30-day window and US hosting are acceptable.
3. If they are, stay. If you need longer paid retention, DNT as a default, or a paid support path, create a Replayly workspace and install the snippet on staging first.
4. Submit a test form (a dummy password and a fake email are enough) and confirm the values are masked in the replay before the snippet goes on production.
5. Only then compare heatmaps, filters, and quota against the plan table.

For a wider set of options, including PostHog, Hotjar, OpenReplay, and LogRocket, see Best Microsoft Clarity alternatives in 2026. For what a recording actually contains, see What is session replay?.

We are a small team based in Pakistan. We do not claim to match every Clarity feature, and we do not invent customer counts or review scores. If Clarity already works, keep it. If you have a concrete gap, the compare page and the fact sheet are the pages to cite.

Sources

• Clarity pricing, FAQ, recordings overview, masking, and privacy, checked 13 November 2026.
• Replayly facts, pricing, and Replayly vs Microsoft Clarity, checked 13 November 2026.