Comparison
Replayfy vs Microsoft Clarity
When 'free and unlimited' is the wrong trade.
Written by the Replayfy team at AppifyCommerce. Competitor facts last checked against their own pages on 2026-08-27. If something here has gone stale, tell us and we'll fix it.
We should start by being straight about this one: Clarity is free, has no traffic limit, does not sample, and includes heatmaps — which we do not have. For a great many sites that is simply the correct choice, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
There are two specific situations where it is not, and both are about what happens after the recording exists rather than how it was captured.
The first is deletion. Clarity's own FAQ states that to delete a user's data you need to delete the entire project, that you cannot delete data without deleting the project, and that you cannot delete or download specific recordings. If someone exercises a right of erasure against you, your only lever is to destroy every recording you have ever collected for that site. That is not a workable answer to give a regulator, and it is not a workable answer to give a customer.
The second is who else is in the room. Clarity is operated by Microsoft, which takes the role of an independent controller over what it collects from your visitors rather than acting purely as your processor — and Microsoft is an advertising business. The data is stored in Azure; EU customers contract with Microsoft Ireland under standard contractual clauses that permit transfer to the United States. None of that is hidden, and none of it is unusual. It is simply the price of free, and it is a price some businesses cannot pay.
| Microsoft Clarity | Replayfy | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, unlimited sessions | Free for 2,000 sessions/month; $9/month for 15,000 |
| Delete one recording | Not possible — delete the whole project | One recording, or every recording for one visitor, immediately |
| Recording history | 30 days, fixed, no upgrade path | 30 days free, up to 180 days on paid plans |
| Who processes it | Microsoft, as an independent controller | Us, as your processor, under a DPA |
| Heatmaps | Included | Not built yet |
Where Microsoft Clarity wins
- It is free with no volume cap at all, and it has heatmaps, funnels and AI summaries. We beat none of that on paper.
- Its scale means better browser coverage and a much larger body of documentation and community answers.
- If your traffic is very large and your compliance requirements are light, the economics are impossible to argue with.
Use Clarity if free and unlimited is what you need and you can live with project-level deletion. Use us if you need to delete one person's data without destroying everyone else's, or if 'an advertising company is a controller of my visitors' data' is a sentence you cannot put in a vendor review.
Other comparisons: Smartlook · Hotjar · Lucky Orange