Hotjar Live View? What to Use Instead
Updated
TL;DR
Hotjar's own recordings are built after a session ends, giving "a retrospective view" (Hotjar help), and Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare, where new users sign up instead and which lists "Live browsing heatmaps and replays" on its paid plans (Contentsquare pricing). For a free view of who is on your site right now, add a live view such as whoisbrowsing (free, nothing stored) or Microsoft Clarity's live recordings (free, uses cookies).
How Hotjar recordings work, from Hotjar's own docs
Hotjar explains its recordings in three steps: it captures data during the visit, reconstructs the session, then plays it back to you (Hotjar help). In more detail:
- Capture. When a visitor opens a page with Hotjar installed, a WebSocket connection opens and Hotjar captures the page and the visitor's actions, which its docs list as "clicks, mouse movements, scroll behavior, and keystrokes". Hotjar says it automatically suppresses some personally identifiable information, and you can suppress more in your site settings.
- Session end. A session ends when the visitor leaves your site and does not return within 30 minutes, or does not interact for 30 minutes. The maximum session length is four hours (Hotjar help: What is a session).
- Reconstruction. "Once data is captured and the session has ended, Hotjar reconstructs the user session" into a recording you can replay (Hotjar help).
That design is good for reviewing visits later. It also means the recording of someone reading your pricing page right now is built after their session is over.
Hotjar is now Contentsquare
If you are choosing a tool today, this matters. Contentsquare's Hotjar page says "Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare", that "it's no longer possible to create a new account on Hotjar", and that "new users can sign up for free on Contentsquare" (Contentsquare). The old hotjar.com pricing address now redirects to Contentsquare's pricing page.
That page lists a Free plan at $0 forever with up to 200k monthly sessions, 1 month of data access, and replays, heatmaps and funnels; replay capture on Free is "5% sessions captured (max. 10k)". Paid Growth starts "from $39 / month". Its feature table also lists "Live browsing heatmaps and replays" on Growth and above, but not on Free (Contentsquare pricing). The pricing page does not explain what that feature does, so if live viewing is your main need, ask Contentsquare before you buy.
Ways to watch visitors live
| Hotjar (now Contentsquare) | Microsoft Clarity | whoisbrowsing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you see live | Recordings are built after the session ends (help); "Live browsing heatmaps and replays" listed on paid plans (pricing) | Live user count and live recordings of mouse movements, clicks and scrolls, with a Go Live button (docs) | Every current visitor drawn together on your real page: cursor, trail, click ripples, phone scroll band |
| What is kept | Replays, heatmaps and funnels; 1 month of data on Free (pricing) | Recordings and heatmaps (overview) | Nothing about visitors |
| Free option | Free plan, up to 200k monthly sessions (pricing) | "A free service forever" (overview) | Free, no credit card, no usage limits for now |
| Cookies on visitors | Not stated by vendor | First-party _clck and _clsk plus third-party cookies (cookies) |
None |
| Typing | Lists keystrokes among captured actions; suppresses some personal data automatically, with settings to suppress more (help) | Input boxes masked in all modes (masking) | Never keystrokes, form values or page text |
What whoisbrowsing shows instead
whoisbrowsing is a live-only view. You open your own site and see every current visitor on the page itself:
- a coloured cursor with a fading trail for desktop visitors, and clicks as ripples;
- a see-through band for phone and tablet visitors, over the part of the page they are looking at;
- arrows at the edge for anyone scrolled out of view;
- a side panel with live counts per page, busiest first, and one line per person.
Each line tells you the page, where the visitor came from (Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, another site's link, or direct), an approximate city such as "near Austin, TX", device, browser, operating system, time on site and pages this visit. It never identifies anyone. A browser notification can tell you when someone new arrives, naming the landing page, from the dashboard tab you keep open. See how it works.
When to keep Hotjar (or pick Contentsquare) instead
whoisbrowsing is not the right tool when:
- You need to look back. Replays, heatmaps, funnels and surveys answer "what happened and why". whoisbrowsing keeps no history, so if you were not watching, it is gone.
- You need to see what visitors typed or which fields they struggled with. whoisbrowsing never sends keystrokes or form values.
- Much of your traffic is from Europe. Visitors from the EU/EEA, UK and Switzerland, and browsers with Global Privacy Control, are never shown in whoisbrowsing.
- You run UX research, where kept sessions are the raw material.
If you want recordings and a live view in one free product, Microsoft Clarity is the honest answer; see Clarity live users vs whoisbrowsing.
Using both: "what happened" and "what is happening"
Many sites can run both. Keep Hotjar or Contentsquare for after-the-fact analysis, and add whoisbrowsing for the moments you care about now: a launch, a newsletter going out, an ad going live, or checking whether ChatGPT is sending you anyone today. The tag is one line:
<script src="https://live.whoisbrowsing.com/s.js" data-site="YOUR_SITE_ID" defer></script>
It is under 4 KB gzipped, loads with defer, sets no cookies on your visitors, and "nothing about your visitors is stored on our servers." Start without an account on /try, or see the install guides. Your own browser is never counted, so to test, open your site in a Chrome Incognito or Safari private window.
Related reading
- Live view vs session replay: what you actually need
- Lucky Orange alternative: free, live, no recordings
- Best live visitor tools in 2026
- How we handle visitor data: privacy. All comparisons: /compare. Home: whoisbrowsing
Frequently asked questions
- Does Hotjar have a live view?
- Hotjar's help center describes its recordings as compiled into a playback recording after the session ends, giving a retrospective view. Contentsquare, which Hotjar is now part of, lists 'Live browsing heatmaps and replays' on its paid plans without explaining that feature on the pricing page, so ask Contentsquare what it covers today.
- When does a Hotjar session end?
- Per Hotjar's help center, a session ends when the visitor leaves and does not return within 30 minutes, or does not interact for 30 minutes. The maximum session length is four hours. Hotjar then starts reconstructing the session into a recording.
- Can I still sign up for Hotjar?
- Contentsquare's Hotjar page says it is no longer possible to create a new account on Hotjar, and that new users can sign up for free on Contentsquare.
- Can I use whoisbrowsing and Hotjar together?
- Yes. They answer different questions: Hotjar or Contentsquare for what happened, whoisbrowsing for who is here now. whoisbrowsing is one deferred script tag under 4 KB gzipped and never changes how the page looks.