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Hotjar vs PostHog - Comparison 2025

Hotjar vs. PostHog

Last updated on

Reviewed by Camin McCluskey

Stackfix Co-Founder & CTO

CM

Hotjar and PostHog represent two distinctly different approaches to product analytics. Hotjar excels as a specialized tool focused on visual behavior analytics, making it ideal for marketing teams and UX researchers who need intuitive access to qualitative insights. Its streamlined interface and superior session replay functionality make it perfect for non-technical teams.

In contrast, PostHog is a comprehensive, developer-centric platform better suited to technical teams needing deep quantitative analysis alongside qualitative data. With its extensive integration options, robust API, and broad functionality including cohort analysis and A/B testing, it's ideal for technology companies requiring a full-featured analytics suite.

Hotjar Product Logo

Advantages of Hotjar

Hotjar is significantly more intuitive and easier to use than PostHog
While PostHog can be overwhelming with its breadth of functionality, Hotjar's interface is purposefully streamlined and focused. This makes it particularly valuable for non-technical team members who need quick access to user behavior insights without extensive training.
Hotjar offers superior session replay functionality compared to PostHog
While PostHog includes session replay as a feature, Hotjar's implementation is notably more sophisticated with intelligent categorization of user behaviors like rage clicks and u-turns. This helps teams quickly identify and prioritize the most important user sessions to review.
Hotjar provides a cleaner, more visually appealing interface than PostHog
While PostHog's interface can feel complex, Hotjar's design prioritizes visual clarity with fast-loading heatmaps and smooth playback. This makes it easier for teams to quickly interpret and act on user behavior data.
PostHog Product Logo

Advantages of PostHog

PostHog offers vastly superior functionality breadth compared to Hotjar
Unlike Hotjar's focused approach, PostHog provides comprehensive analytics capabilities including cohort analysis, A/B testing, and advanced event tracking. This makes it ideal for teams needing deep quantitative insights alongside qualitative data.
PostHog has significantly better integration capabilities than Hotjar
While Hotjar offers basic integrations, PostHog provides extensive integration options with data warehouses, CRMs, CDPs and customer support tools, plus a robust API. This makes it much more flexible for teams with complex tech stacks.
PostHog provides superior data export capabilities compared to Hotjar
Unlike Hotjar's basic export options, PostHog offers comprehensive data export functionality through both its web app and API, making it easier to analyze data in external tools.
PostHog offers superior customer support compared to Hotjar
While Hotjar's support is average with slow response times, PostHog provides best-in-class documentation and a thriving developer community for quick problem resolution.

Hotjar is best for

  • Businesses with strong emphasis on understanding user behavior through visual insights
  • Who need an intuitive, fast-loading platform requiring minimal technical expertise
  • And/or who need intelligent session replay categorization for efficient UX research

PostHog is best for

  • Businesses with technical teams seeking a comprehensive open-source analytics platform
  • Who need comprehensive automatic event tracking without manual setup
  • And/or who need advanced visualization tools like heatmaps and session replays in one platform

Hotjar is less good for

  • Businesses with complex quantitative analytics needs who require deep event tracking and cohort analysis
  • Who need comprehensive data warehouse integration with platforms like BigQuery or Snowflake
  • And/or who need advanced quantitative features like cohort analysis and A/B testing capabilities

PostHog is less good for

  • Businesses with non-technical teams who need simple, non-developer focused analytics
  • Who need simplified form analytics and conversion tracking
  • And/or who need a streamlined, simplified interface without technical complexity

Gallery

Hotjar logoHotjar
Hotjar screenshot
PostHog logoPostHog

Pricing, features & ratings

Hotjar logo

Hotjar

Starting at

$0

Billed monthly

Pricing calculatorVisit Website
PostHog logo

PostHog

Starting at

$0

event / month

Billed monthly

Pricing calculatorVisit Website
Stackfix Verdict
Functionality
6

Functionality

6/10

<p>Hotjar dominates in visual analytics with industry-leading heatmaps and session recordings. While purposely narrower than full-spectrum analytics platforms, its specialized tools for click/tap tracking, scroll depth, mouse movement, and rage clicks provide unmatched visual behavior insights. It's best used alongside a more quantitative, events centric tool.</p>
10

Functionality

10/10

<p>PostHog's functionality range is the best on the market. It excels in richness in nearly every category from automatic event capture to heatmaps to session replay recordings.</p>
Ease of Use
8

Ease of Use

8/10

<p>Hotjar excels in user experience with an exceptionally intuitive interface that makes complex behavioral data accessible through visual representations. The tool requires virtually no training even for non-technical users, with self-explanatory visualizations and intelligent filtering options that simplify analysis.</p>
5

Ease of Use

5/10

<p>PostHog’s web app can feel overwhelming due to the sheer number of controls and limited in-product guidance (e.g. tooltips or hints). Less experienced users often end up a bit lost. For example, on the Web Analytics tab, there are ~50 controls - most of which are undefined, and some (e.g. 'Paths' and 'Correlation Analysis') which even confused even fairly experienced users.</p><p>That said, inside specific areas - like session replays - controls and charts are much easier to use.</p>
Look and feel
8

Look and feel

8/10

<p>Hotjar's interface is clean, visually appealing and purpose-built for clarity. The design prioritizes visual understanding with intuitive heat overlays and user recordings that require minimal interpretation. Navigation is straightforward and focused, with remarkably fast load times (&lt;1s) for heatmaps and smooth playback for session recordings.</p>
7

Look and feel

7/10

<p>PostHog's design aesthetic is warm and quirky. Given the sheer breadth of functionality, they do a good job of presenting information clearly, though we would have preferred a touch more simplicity. When tested, pages and charts were extremely fast to load (&lt;1s).</p>
Customisability
3

Customisability

3/10

<p>While less customizable than comprehensive analytics platforms, its focused approach means most needed adjustments are readily available without overwhelming complexity.</p>
8

Customisability

8/10

<p>PostHog is one of the most customizable tools on the market. Everything from reports, to custom metrics to self-hosting is possible with this tool.</p>
Ease of Setup
8

Ease of Setup

8/10

<p>Hotjar offers remarkably simple implementation requiring only a single JavaScript snippet installation. The platform begins delivering valuable insights immediately after installation with no additional configuration required. Given the lack of functionality depth, there's little additional configuration needed.</p>
7

Ease of Setup

7/10

<p>PostHog offers a self-serve product with a very generous free tier. Additionally, it was one of the first products to pioneer automatic event capture, meaning it's pretty simple to get value from the product after installing a simple script. That being said, the onboarding process is very developer centric so is best suited to technical team members.</p>
Customer Support
5

Customer Support

5/10

<p>Hotjar's documentation is middle-of-the-road. We would have preferred a more developer centric layout instead of providing articles in a help centre format which can be harder to navigate. Beyond this, email support replies take 24-48 hours in our testing.</p>
9

Customer Support

9/10

<p>As with the majority of tools in the space, the primary means for support will come from developer documentation. PostHog's docs are best in class. Additionally, thanks to a thriving open-source developer ecosystem, its forums are lively and a great way to get answers to technical questions in less than 24 hours.</p>
Integratability
6

Integratability

6/10

<p>Hotjar offers a number of native integrations with popular ticketing tools such as Jira/Linear, automation platforms like Zapier and analytics tools like Google Analytics/Mixpanel. It's integration range is somewhat limited when compared to larger, all-in-one product analytics tools though.</p>
10

Integratability

10/10

<p>PostHog offers one of the widest arrays of integrations we've tested covering everything from data warehouses, to CRMs, to CDPs and even customer support tools. They also offer a great API through which you can interact with the product programatically.</p>
Ease of Migration
6

Ease of Migration

6/10

<p>Hotjar provides straightforward exports for heatmaps, recordings, and feedback data. Users can download recordings, export heatmap data as CSV files, and access feedback responses through the dashboard or API. While not as extensive as enterprise analytics platforms, the export capabilities align well with the qualitative nature of the data collected.</p>
9

Ease of Migration

9/10

<p>PostHog offers self-serve export functionality within its web app. It also offers a very robust and well documented API through which you can interact with data from the product directly.</p>
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