What Crazy Egg and Hotjar Have in Common
Both Crazy Egg and Hotjar started as heatmap tools and evolved into broader user behavior analytics platforms. Both offer click maps, scroll maps, session recordings, and A/B testing features. Both require a JavaScript snippet to install. At their core, they're solving the same problem: helping you understand where users interact with your pages.
The differences that matter for decision-making are in pricing structure, A/B testing quality, user survey capabilities, and the specific analytics features each emphasizes.
Where Crazy Egg Has an Advantage
A/B testing: Crazy Egg's built-in A/B testing is more accessible and polished than Hotjar's. You can set up visual A/B tests without writing code directly from the Crazy Egg interface. For teams that want heatmaps and A/B testing in one tool, Crazy Egg handles this combination better.
Pricing structure: Crazy Egg's plans are based on tracked pageviews rather than sessions, which can be more cost-effective depending on your visit patterns. The Starter plan at $49/month covers 30,000 tracked pageviews. For sites with many short sessions (high pageview-per-session ratio), Hotjar can become more expensive.
Where Hotjar Has an Advantage
Surveys and feedback: Hotjar's in-product surveys, NPS tools, and feedback widgets are more sophisticated than Crazy Egg's. If collecting qualitative user feedback is important to you, Hotjar has a clear edge.
Session recording quality: Hotjar's session recording and filtering capabilities are generally considered more polished. The ability to filter by attributes like device type, URL, and custom tags makes analysis more efficient on larger session volumes.
Pricing Comparison
Crazy Egg: Starter $49/month (30,000 pageviews), Plus $99/month (75,000 pageviews), Pro $249/month (300,000 pageviews). Annual billing saves ~25%. Hotjar: Basic free (35 sessions/day), Plus $39/month (100 daily sessions), Business $99/month (500 daily sessions).
The pricing models make direct comparison complex because one is pageview-based and one is session-based. For most products, running both free tiers and comparing the quality of data before committing to a paid plan is the right approach.
The Recommendation
Choose Crazy Egg if you need built-in A/B testing and your primary analytics goal is visual testing of page variants. The A/B testing workflow is more accessible for non-technical marketers.
Choose Hotjar if you need in-product surveys, NPS measurement, and more sophisticated session filtering. Hotjar's qualitative research features are superior for teams that want both behavioral and survey data.