Hotjar vs Umami
Side-by-side comparison to help you pick the right tool.
| Hotjar | Umami | |
|---|---|---|
| Tagline | Heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys for understanding user behaviour. | Simple, self-hostable analytics with no tracking scripts. |
| Category | Analytics | Analytics |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| Skill Level | Beginner | Developer |
| Platforms | Web, Browser | Web, Browser, Api Headless |
| Use Cases | Small Team, Solo Indie, Client Work | Solo Indie, Side Project |
| Traits | Has Free Tier, Fast To Set Up | Self Hostable, Privacy Friendly, Eu Gdpr Compliant, Active Development, Open Source |
| Best For | Best for product teams and UX researchers who want to understand why users drop off, not just where. | Best for developers who want full control over analytics data with zero dependency on third-party services. |
Hotjar
Hotjar is a product experience analytics tool available via web browser that captures where users click, scroll, tap, and move through heatmaps and individual session recordings. Feedback widgets embedded on pages collect open-ended user responses, while survey tools ask structured questions at key moments in the user journey. The Funnels feature visualises where users drop off in multi-step flows. The free tier includes 35 daily sessions recorded and basic heatmaps. Paid plans lift the session limits and add advanced filtering. Hotjar is used by product teams, UX researchers, and marketers who need qualitative user behaviour data to understand why metrics like bounce rate and conversion rate look the way they do, complementing quantitative tools like Google Analytics or Plausible.
View detailsUmami
Umami is a free, open-source web analytics tool designed to be self-hosted on your own server, providing a privacy-respecting alternative to Google Analytics. It collects pageviews, referrer sources, device types, browser information, and custom events without using cookies or storing personally identifiable information. The dashboard is fast, clean, and fits on a single screen. Umami can be deployed via Docker in minutes and runs on Node.js with a PostgreSQL or MySQL database. A managed cloud version is available for teams who do not want to self-host. It supports multiple websites per installation with separate dashboards. Umami is widely adopted by developers and open-source project maintainers who want complete control over their analytics data.
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