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Inspectlet Live Alternative Without Keystroke Capture

Updated

TL;DR

If you want Inspectlet Live's "who is on my site right now" view without streaming what visitors type, whoisbrowsing is a free alternative: it draws every current visitor's cursor, trail and clicks on your real page, and never sends keystrokes, form values or page text. If you need to see typing, form behaviour or recordings, Inspectlet does those and whoisbrowsing does not.

What Inspectlet Live does

Inspectlet's Live page is specific about what you get (Inspectlet Live):

  • "A running count of every active visitor on your site, updated every few seconds."
  • "A live-sorted list of the pages being viewed most."
  • Live visitor cards you can filter by URL path. "Click any live visitor card to open their screen in a new window."
  • "See their cursor, their scroll, their typing", streamed "straight from their browser to yours with sub-second latency."

The page frames it well: "Session replay is great for after the fact. Live is for right now." Inspectlet is also a session recording product. Its plans page says the free plan gives "2,500 recorded sessions per month across up to 3 websites", with no credit card and no time limit, and data retention "from 1 month on the free plan up to 24 months on Enterprise". The plans page lists Live View ("See who's on your site right now") as a feature, but does not say which plans include it (Inspectlet plans).

Inspectlet's privacy controls, to be fair

Seeing "their typing" does not mean Inspectlet sees everything. Its privacy guide says (Inspectlet privacy guide):

  • "Password fields are automatically excluded by Inspectlet's tracking script and can never be captured."
  • The inspectlet-sensitive class replaces an element's content with X characters, and inspectletIgnore excludes an element entirely.
  • The dashboard has a Censor All Inputs toggle for each site.
  • Form interactions are captured, including "which fields were focused, typed into, or submitted (content can be masked)".

So with Inspectlet, typing outside password fields is captured unless you mask it or censor all inputs. With whoisbrowsing, there is nothing to mask, because typing is never sent.

Inspectlet Live vs whoisbrowsing

Inspectlet Live whoisbrowsing
Active visitor count Running count, updated every few seconds (Live) Live counts per page, busiest first
Most-viewed pages Live-sorted list (Live) Side panel, busiest page first
How you watch Open one visitor's screen in a new window (Live) Every current visitor drawn together on your real page
Cursor and scroll Yes, sub-second latency (Live) Cursor with a fading trail and click ripples; phones and tablets as a scroll band
Typing Streams "their typing" (Live); passwords always excluded, other inputs maskable (privacy guide) Never keystrokes, form values or page text
Recordings Yes; free plan 2,500 recorded sessions a month (plans) None
Data kept 1 month on free, up to 24 months on Enterprise (plans) "Nothing about your visitors is stored on our servers."
Free option Free plan, up to 3 websites, no card (plans) Free, no credit card, no usage limits for now
Cookies on visitors Not stated by vendor None

What whoisbrowsing sends, word for word

This is the whole list, as it appears on our privacy page:

"Your visitors' browsers send the page, pointer position, clicks, scroll, device type, source, browser and operating system, and time on site. Never keystrokes, form values or page text."

Two more rules apply. Query strings never leave the browser, and URL tokens in a path (UUIDs, long hex strings and long random tokens) are sent as :id. And visitors from the EU/EEA, UK and Switzerland, and browsers with Global Privacy Control, are never shown.

What you see instead of a single screen

Inspectlet opens one visitor at a time. whoisbrowsing puts everyone on the page you are looking at:

  • desktop visitors as coloured cursors with fading trails, clicks as ripples;
  • phone and tablet visitors as a see-through band over what they are reading;
  • arrows at the edge for visitors scrolled out of view;
  • one line per person with their page, source (Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, another site's link, or direct), approximate city, device, browser, operating system, time on site and pages this visit.

It never identifies a visitor. "Near Austin, TX" is as specific as it gets. More on the drawing in live cursor tracking for your own website and how it works.

When to pick Inspectlet instead

Inspectlet is the better tool when:

  • you need to see how people fill in forms: which fields they focus, skip or abandon;
  • you want recordings to replay later, or one visitor's full screen while they browse;
  • you are debugging a specific problem where typed input matters, in fields you have chosen not to mask;
  • much of your traffic is from Europe, where whoisbrowsing shows nobody.

Pick whoisbrowsing when you only want to know who is here and what they are pointing at, with nothing typed sent and nothing kept.

Try it in a minute

Add one tag to your pages:

<script src="https://live.whoisbrowsing.com/s.js" data-site="YOUR_SITE_ID" defer></script>

It is under 4 KB gzipped, loads with defer, and never changes how the page looks. Start on /try with no account, or pick a platform from the install guides. Your own browser is never counted; to test, open your site in a Chrome Incognito or Safari private window while you watch.

Frequently asked questions

What does Inspectlet Live show?
Inspectlet's Live page describes a running count of active visitors updated every few seconds, a live-sorted list of the most-viewed pages, and live visitor cards that open a visitor's screen, showing 'their cursor, their scroll, their typing' with sub-second latency.
Does Inspectlet have a free plan?
Yes. Inspectlet's plans page says the free plan gives 2,500 recorded sessions per month across up to 3 websites, with no credit card and no time limit, and 1 month of data retention. The page does not say which plans include Live.
Does whoisbrowsing capture what visitors type?
No. Your visitors' browsers send the page, pointer position, clicks, scroll, device type, source, browser and operating system, and time on site. Never keystrokes, form values or page text.
When is Inspectlet the better choice?
When you need to see form behaviour, recordings or a single visitor's full screen, including typing in fields you have not masked. whoisbrowsing is live only and keeps nothing.