Visitant vs Hotjar
Hotjar became part of Contentsquare, and its pricing page now redirects there: the product is now Contentsquare Experience Analytics with the Hotjar tools inside (replays, heatmaps, funnels, surveys). Visitant is a cookie-free traffic dashboard that counts people and AI: crawlers, assistant referrals and the conversions they bring. Honest verdict: Hotjar shows you why a page does not convert; Visitant shows you where visitors come from, including AI, and what they buy. They overlap on funnels and little else.
- Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare (hotjar.com redirects to a Contentsquare page that says so). The free Experience Analytics plan lists 200k monthly sessions, 10k replays, 1 project, replays, heatmaps and funnels.
- Paid Growth starts at 49/mo for 7,000 monthly sessions and 13 months of data access, rising to 339/mo at 75,000 sessions; annual payment gets 20% off (pricing page).
- Hotjar sets first-party cookies (
_hjSessionUserfor 365 days,_hjSessionfor 30 minutes) and stores data in AWS Ireland (help center). Visitant sets 0 cookies, hosts in Poland. - Visitant logs 44 AI crawlers server-side and groups referrals from 21 assistants; Hotjar has neither. Hotjar has replays, heatmaps and surveys; Visitant has none.
- In our view the two are complementary rather than rivals; the shared ground is funnels, which both offer.
Prices and features checked 2026-09-25 at www.hotjar.com. If something changed, tell us: promptowy@gmail.com
Features
| Visitant | Hotjar | |
|---|---|---|
| Cookie-free, no consent banner | yes0 cookies, no IP stored | nofirst-party cookies; the help center says users with cookies disabled are not tracked |
| Free plan | yes5,000 events/mo, 2 sites, 13 months of data | yes200k monthly sessions, 10k replays, 1 project |
| EU hosting | yesPoland | yesAWS eu-west-1, Ireland |
| Vendor use of your data | yesyour data is yours; no ads business | yeshelp center: not used unless an account admin consents |
| Script size (vendor's own number) | yes1.9 KB gzipped | n/ano number on the vendor site on the checked date |
| Data retention | yes13 months on Free, 5 years on Pro | partialGrowth: 13 months of session data, 2 months of replays (pricing page); help center: 365 days |
| Session recordings | no | yes10k replays on Free, from 7k on Growth |
| Heatmaps | no | yeszone-based heatmaps on Growth |
| Surveys and feedback widgets | no | yes100 responses/mo free, Voice of Customer Growth from 99/mo |
| Goals and custom events | yesevery plan | yesevents |
| Funnels | paid extraPro and up | yeson the free plan |
| Revenue per source | paid extraPro and up | paid extra"Revenue goals and tracking" on Pro, custom price |
| Core Web Vitals | paid extraPro and up | partialerror and performance monitoring |
| Stats API and export | yesCSV on every plan, API on Pro and up | partialAPI listed for survey responses on Voice of Customer Pro |
| Public share links | yesevery plan | n/anot found on the pricing page |
| Team seats | yes1 / 3 / 15 / 100 by plan | n/anot stated on the pricing page |
| Sites / projects | yes2 / 20 / 100 / 1,000 by plan | partial1 project free, 3 on Growth, up to 6 on Pro |
| AI assistant referrals as a channel | yes21 assistants | nonot found in the docs |
| AI crawler log (server-side) | yes44 crawlers, checked against published IP ranges | no |
| Connect an LLM to your data | paid extra"Ask" box in English and Polish, Business and up | yesMCP connector on the free plan |
Pricing
| Free | $0/mo | 5,000 events |
| Pro | $12/mo | 100,000 events |
| Business | $39/mo | 1,000,000 events |
| Scale | $149/mo | 10,000,000 events |
AI crawler hits never count toward the limit. Going over the limit never locks the dashboard.
| Experience Analytics Free | 0 | 200k monthly sessions, 10k replays, 1 project, replays, heatmaps, funnels, 100 survey responses |
| Growth, 7k sessions | from 49/mo | 7,000 monthly sessions, 13 months of data access, 3 projects |
| Growth, 15k sessions | 99/mo | 15,000 monthly sessions |
| Growth, 30k sessions | 159/mo | 30,000 monthly sessions |
| Growth, 75k sessions | 339/mo | 75,000 monthly sessions |
| Pro | custom | from 1M+ monthly sessions, up to 6 projects, revenue goals |
| Enterprise | custom | custom sessions, unlimited projects, SLAs |
| Voice of Customer Growth | from 99/mo | 500 survey responses/mo; Free has 100 |
Numbers copied on 2026-09-25 from the plan data on contentsquare.com/pricing/ (Experience Analytics, the plans marked as Hotjar plans). The page shows the currency for your location, so the figures are given without a symbol; write-ups from 2026 show them as USD in the US. Annual payment in-app gets 20% off. The legacy Hotjar Observe plans (Basic free with 35 daily sessions, Plus $39/mo, Business $99/mo, Scale $213/mo, monthly billing) were read from search results, not the vendor page.
The AI loop
Hotjar shows you a person struggling with a form. Visitant shows you that the person came from Perplexity, which cited a page that PerplexityBot read 3 weeks earlier. A server snippet records fetches by 44 known AI crawlers, split into training, AI search and user-fetch, each hit checked against the IP ranges the operator publishes and spoofed ones flagged. The browser script groups referrals from 21 assistants into one AI channel, adds a "likely AI" estimate from text-fragment landings, and keeps AI agents (Signature-Agent, webdriver) out of human counts. Goals, funnels and revenue can be split per assistant. Contentsquare's AI features (Sense, MCP) analyse the sessions you already record; they do not see crawlers or group assistant traffic. Crawler hits never count toward the Visitant plan limit, and going over the limit never locks the dashboard.
- You want to watch replays and heatmaps to fix a checkout or a landing page; Visitant cannot do that.
- You need on-site surveys and feedback widgets; the free plan includes 100 responses a month.
- A consent banner is already on the site, so cookies cost you nothing extra.
- You want Contentsquare's journey analysis and impact quantification; both are listed on Growth from 49/mo.
- You do not want cookies or a consent banner: 0 cookies, 0 IP addresses stored.
- You publish content that AI assistants quote and want the crawler log (44 crawlers) and assistant referrals (21) tied to revenue.
- You want traffic sources, goals, revenue and Web Vitals in a $12/mo plan with 3 seats, not a behaviour suite.
- You want 5 years of history on Pro instead of 13 months of session data and 2 months of replays on Growth.
Questions
Is Hotjar still a product?
The tools are, under the Contentsquare brand: hotjar.com redirects to a Contentsquare page that says "Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare", and hotjar.com/pricing redirects to contentsquare.com/pricing/. The Experience Analytics plans there are marked as the Hotjar plans.
Can I use Hotjar and Visitant together?
Yes. Hotjar for replays, heatmaps and surveys; Visitant for cookie-free traffic, goals and the AI loop. Hotjar's cookies still need consent in the EU.
Does Hotjar need a cookie banner?
Hotjar's help center says it stores first-party cookies to process data about a visit, so in the EU that normally means consent. Visitant sets 0 cookies by design.
How long does Hotjar keep data?
The help center says recordings and heatmaps are kept 365 days from capture on all accounts; the same page lists 1 month for Basic, 6 months for Plus and 12 months for Business, and the Growth plan on the pricing page lists 13 months of session data and 2 months of replays.
Does Hotjar show traffic from ChatGPT?
We found no AI channel in the docs on the checked date. Visitant groups referrals from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and others into one channel and logs the crawlers on the server.