Hotjar vs Crazy Egg: Which Landing Page Analytics Tool Wins?

Short answer: Hotjar wins if you want session recordings, surveys, and a generous free tier. Crazy Egg wins if you want cleaner heatmap reports, built-in A/B testing, and you don't care about watching individual sessions.

Both tools have been around since the early 2010s and both still do the same core job: show you where people click, scroll, and rage-quit on your landing page. But they've drifted in different directions. This guide breaks down what each tool actually does in 2026, what it costs, and which one fits your stage.

What each tool actually does

Hotjar is a behavior analytics suite. The core features:

• Heatmaps (click, move, scroll)
• Session recordings
• Surveys and feedback widgets
• Funnel and trend dashboards (on higher tiers)
• Integrations with Google Analytics, Slack, HubSpot, and most CDPs

Crazy Egg is more focused on visual analytics and testing:

• Heatmaps (called Snapshots), Scrollmaps, Confetti, Overlay reports
• Session recordings
• A/B testing built in
• Traffic analysis by source
• Surveys (added more recently)

The overlap is real. Both show you heatmaps. Both record sessions. The difference is in the depth and the workflow.

Heatmaps: Crazy Egg has the edge

Crazy Egg's Snapshot reports are the cleanest in the category. You get five views from a single recording: heatmap, scrollmap, confetti (click data segmented by source, device, or campaign), overlay (raw click counts on each element), and a list report. Switching between them is one click.

Hotjar's heatmaps are good but more basic. You get click, move, and scroll in three separate views. No confetti-style segmentation by traffic source unless you filter manually.

If your job is to look at a landing page and figure out which CTA gets clicked from paid versus organic traffic, Crazy Egg gets you there faster. If you want heatmaps as one input among many, Hotjar is fine.

For more on what heatmaps can and can't tell you, see our guide to the best heatmap tools for landing page UX.

Session recordings: Hotjar wins

Hotjar's session recordings are the feature most teams keep paying for. The player is fast. You can filter by rage clicks, dead clicks, error clicks, U-turns, and custom events. Tagging and sharing clips with teammates works without friction.

Crazy Egg has recordings too, but the player feels older and the filtering is thinner. If you plan to spend hours watching how users move through your funnel, Hotjar is the better tool. If you'll watch maybe ten sessions a month to sanity-check a hypothesis, Crazy Egg is enough.

A/B testing: Crazy Egg has it built in

This is the biggest functional difference. Crazy Egg includes a visual A/B testing tool in its core plans. You can edit headlines, swap images, change CTAs, and split traffic without touching code. Results tie back to the same dashboard as your heatmaps.

Hotjar doesn't do A/B testing. You'd need a separate tool like Google Optimize's successors, VWO, or Optimizely.

For a small team running one landing page, Crazy Egg's bundled testing is genuinely useful. You can read changes, watch where users actually click on the new variant, and decide what to test next without exporting data between tools.

That said, built-in testing tools tend to be lighter than dedicated ones. If you're running serious experimentation with sequential testing, MDE calculations, and audience targeting, you'll outgrow it. Our guide to A/B testing landing pages covers what to look for.

Surveys and qualitative feedback: Hotjar

Hotjar's survey tool is one of the best in the category. You can trigger surveys on exit intent, after scroll depth, after time on page, or after specific clicks. The widget designs are clean and don't look like a 2014 SurveyMonkey embed.

Crazy Egg added surveys more recently and they work, but the trigger options and design flexibility are thinner.

If qualitative input matters to your CRO process (and it should), Hotjar pulls ahead here.

Pricing as of this writing

Pricing for both tools changes regularly, so check their sites before committing. As of this writing:

Hotjar has a free Basic plan that includes 35 daily sessions, unlimited heatmaps, and basic recordings. Paid plans (Plus, Business, Scale) start around $32/month billed annually and scale based on daily sessions captured.

Crazy Egg has no permanent free plan, only a 30-day trial. Paid plans start around $29/month billed annually for the Basic plan, with limits on pageviews tracked, recordings, and A/B tests.

The pricing model is different in a way that matters:

• Hotjar charges per session (a session is one user visit)
• Crazy Egg charges per pageview tracked

For a single landing page with high traffic, Crazy Egg can get expensive fast. For a multi-page site with moderate traffic, Hotjar usually costs less.

Setup and ease of use

Both tools install with a single JavaScript snippet. Both have WordPress, Shopify, and Webflow integrations. Both take about ten minutes to get running.

Crazy Egg's interface is more focused, which makes it easier to learn. You pick a page, take a Snapshot, and look at the reports. That's the workflow.

Hotjar has more surface area: heatmaps, recordings, surveys, funnels, feedback widgets, integrations. New users can get lost in the dashboard for a while.

If you want to hand the tool to a non-technical teammate and have them produce a report by Friday, Crazy Egg is faster to onboard.

Privacy and data handling

Both tools are GDPR-compliant and offer EU data hosting. Both let you mask sensitive form inputs by default and exclude specific elements from recordings.

Hotjar has more granular controls for IP anonymization, user identification, and consent management. If you operate in regulated industries or have a privacy-conscious user base, Hotjar's documentation and controls are more mature.

Which one should you pick?

Pick Hotjar if:

• You want a free tier to start
• Session recordings are your primary use case
• You need surveys and qualitative feedback tools
• You already have an A/B testing tool (or don't need one yet)
• Your traffic is spread across many pages

Pick Crazy Egg if:

• You're optimizing one or two specific landing pages
• You want heatmaps and A/B testing in one tool
• You care more about visual reports than watching recordings
• You want a simpler interface for non-analysts

Pick neither (yet) if:

• Your conversion rate problem is obvious from the page itself

This last point matters. Most landing pages that "need analytics" actually need a clearer headline, a single CTA, and a faster load time. Tools like Hotjar and Crazy Egg show you symptoms, not always causes. Before paying for either, walk through the basics: read our breakdown of what to fix first when your landing page conversion rate is too low and the UX problems to fix before buying more traffic.

If your hero section is unclear or your CTA is buried, no heatmap will save you. Fix the obvious stuff first. Then use Hotjar or Crazy Egg to find the non-obvious stuff.

The honest verdict

For most SaaS founders and indie hackers I talk to, Hotjar is the better starting point. The free tier lets you validate that you'll actually use the tool before paying. The session recordings give you the "watch a real person use my page" experience that changes how you write copy.

Crazy Egg is the better choice for marketers who already know what they want: clean heatmap reports across traffic sources, with A/B testing bundled in. It's a more focused tool for a more focused job.

Neither wins on every dimension. Pick the one that matches how you actually work.

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Before you spend money on either tool, get a fast read on what's broken with your page. Run your landing page through PagePulse for a UX audit that flags the conversion killers a heatmap would take weeks to surface, in under a minute.