7 Best Session Replay Tools (2023) for UX, Dev & Product Teams

There are plenty of session replay tools available out there, but not all work for everyone. Many users frequently experience the same problems:

• Making sense of session recording data: Most tools can capture lots of session data but lack good filtering tools, user segmentation, and funnel analysis features that help you make sense of it. What good is a mountain of data if you can’t get actionable insights from it? 
• Manual event tracking: Most session replay tools require you to manually define which events and user actions you want to track — great for filtering out irrelevant data, but not so great for analyzing unpredictable user behavior. Tools with tagless autocapture, on the other hand, automatically collect all visitor interaction information.

If you’re one of those users, this article is for you. We’ve found the best platforms that provide solutions to the mentioned pain points. Read on for our list of the 7 best session replay tools!

Best Session Replay Tools at a Glance

• SessionStack — Best for over-the-shoulder user behavior analysis.
• Hotjar — Best for collecting user feedback.
• Crazy Egg — Best for visualizing user activity on web pages.

Best Overall		Runner-Up	Third-Best Alternative
SessionStack		Hotjar	Crazy Egg
Best for session recordings and in-depth session data analysis.		Best for user feedback through surveys, forms, and live interviews.	Best for visual user activity reports like heatmaps, scroll maps, confetti reports, and overlay reports.
Visit SessionStack		Visit Hotjar	Visit Crazy Egg

Best Session Replay Tools: Executive Summary

Before exploring each tool in-depth, here’s an overview of all of their features, strengths, limitations, and ratings.

	SessionStack Best for pixel-perfect session recordings that provide an over-the-shoulder perspective of user actions.
	Ease of Use: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	Features: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	Heatmaps & Reporting: ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Affordable*: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
	Hotjar Best for collecting user feedback through surveys, suggestion boxes, and live interviews. Offers a free plan for conducting up to 35 daily sessions and 60 yearly interviews.
	Ease of Use: ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Features: ⭐⭐⭐	Heatmaps & Reporting: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	Affordable: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
	Crazy Egg Best for heatmaps and advanced visualization tools. Offers A/B testing to help you understand what works on your website and what doesn’t.
	Ease of Use: ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Features: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	Heatmaps & Reporting: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	Affordable: ⭐⭐⭐
	Mouseflow Best for analyzing session recordings with custom tags, variables, and filters. Allows you to layer recordings on top of one another to directly compare them.
	Ease of Use: ⭐⭐⭐	Features: ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Heatmaps & Reporting: ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Affordable: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
	Lucky Orange Best for conversion rate optimization with live chats, pop-up announcements, user segmentation tools, and conversion funnels.
	Ease of Use: ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Features: ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Heatmaps & Reporting: ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Affordable: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
	Log Rocket Best for error tracking and performance monitoring. Offers state-of-the-art dev tools for logging errors and identifying technical issues.
	Ease of Use: ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Features: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	Heatmaps & Reporting: ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Affordable: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
	FullStory Best for session recording on mobile apps. It uses a proprietary approach to capture user actions and events without impacting performance on mobile devices.
	Ease of Use: ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Features: ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Heatmaps & Reporting: ⭐⭐⭐⭐	Affordable: ⭐⭐⭐

1. SessionStack — Best for session analysis

Ease of Use	Features	Heatmaps and Reporting	Affordability
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

As a software engineer at Progress, Alexander Zlatkov built products and resolved customer issues with their apps. He noticed that there weren’t any good tools that help developers understand how users interact with online apps. That’s the story of how he founded SessionStack in 2016.

Top SessionStack Features:

Its pixel-perfect session recordings give you an over-the-shoulder perspective on each user’s session. 

And, with the addition of a single line of code, you can collect data on:

• scrolling and page navigation,
• browser console events,
• mouse movement,
• network requests,
• outbound links, 
• clicks, 
• and more.

But its biggest differentiator is live co-browsing (with less than 1s latency) which gives customer support teams a unique advantage — with the additional support of collaboration tools it allows them to interact with customers in real-time.

Complementary features like developer tools, user segmentation, conversion funnels, and the built-in SessionStack AI, make SessionStack the best session replay option on the market.

SessionStack Pros	SessionStack Cons
✅ Pixel-perfect session replays with AI	❌ No internal chat features
✅ Advanced developer tools	❌ No mobile app support
✅ User segmentation and user journey funnels	❌ No surveys and user feedback forms
✅ SessionStack AI recommendations
✅ Low-latency co-browsing

Session Replay: Collect over-the-shoulder information on user behavior

SessionStack’s stand-out feature is the pixel-perfect session recordings of your website visitor’s browsing sessions. With this, you can quickly spot navigation issues, rage clicks, and friction spots when visitors use your site.

Unlike most session replay tools that only capture random sessions as samples, SessionStack collects 100% of all user sessions, catching every:

• click, 
• scroll, 
• keystroke, 
• tab switch,
• and other UI actions. 

And it equips you with high-quality session recreation, either in real-time or as a replay.

User click data is used to generate clickmaps — a digital representation of the visitor’s mouse activity. 
Since SessionStack records all user sessions, it collects a lot of data. So, to help you make a better sense of it, it uses built-in generative AI to condense hours of session replays into short summaries and actionable advice on how to improve user experiences.

Many session replay tools share recordings as video files, which take up lots of storage space. But SessionStack is different. That’s because it stores session replays as HTML or JSON text, both of which are a lot more compact and easy to understand.

Co-browsing: Collaborate with customers and take over their session in real-time

SessionStack is hands-down the best co-browsing platform on this list. Much more than a simple screen-sharing app, it lets you launch live remote sessions without any software installation or website modifications, besides a single line of code. 

Not only does it stream browsing activity, but SessionStack also allows you to actively participate in the browsing session.

For example, you can highlight specific portions on the screen using a brightly colored pointer. Additionally, the pen tool lets you annotate the screen with pen strokes.

But here’s the real game-changer.

With the user’s approval, SessionStack gives you full control over the entire browsing session, allowing you to perform actions like:

• clicking, 
• scrolling,
• page navigation,
• and form submissions.

This feature is especially handy for support teams that want to provide immediate, hands-on solutions to customer issues. And, because it stores replays as text, SessionStack can achieve less than 1-second latency for co-browsing, while the other tools can’t. 

Developer Tools: Debug UX issues with network and browser console information

In addition to user actions and events, SessionStack also collects all network requests during a session. This lets you inspect network details, such as:

• request URL, 
• request method,
• status code,
• and headers.

They also provide more context to your session replays, allowing you to replay the moment the request was logged during the session.

SessionStack also logs browser console events:

• warnings,
• errors,
• debug messages,
• and network data.

Just like network requests, you can easily navigate to the exact time the event occurred during the session.

SessionStack’s dev tools allow you to filter out IP addresses you don’t want to monitor. This way, you can improve recording performance by specifying which URLs and page sections you want to record.

User Segmentation & Conversion Funnels: Understand behaviors at scale to optimize conversion rates

SessionStack provides filters to help you segment users based on shared user attributes, session details, and events. You can also combine multiple filters to create specific workflows and analyze users based on common behavior.

Furthermore, it lets you save and share user segments, facilitating collaboration between team members.

To help you make the most of its session replay features, SessionStack lets you create custom user journeys using conversion funnels.

They don’t require any coding or instrumentation to set up, and the beginner-friendly dashboard visualizes conversion rates on your website.

Use SessionStack if:

• You want the best session replay features on the market.
• You want advanced developer tools to improve customer digital experience.
• You want to take your customer support to the next level with co-browsing.

2. Hotjar — Best for collecting first-hand user feedback

Ease of Use	Features	Heatmaps & Reporting	Affordability
⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐

David Darmanin was a former conversion optimization professional who needed an affordable tool for understanding user behavior. So, he founded Hotjar in 2014 to help website owners and developers learn what their users need. 

Top Hotjar Features:

• Interaction heatmaps,
• Targeted surveys,
• Automated user interviews,
• AI-generated surveys,
• Contextual feedback with web page highlighting.

Hotjar is best for UX designers & developers who need unbiased user feedback. It offers forms, pop-ups, surveys, and live interviews to help users identify areas of improvement and resolve customer issues.

Hotjar Pros	Hotjar Cons
✅ Live interviews with customers	❌ Complicated pricing model
✅ Real-time user feedback	❌ Requires manual event tracking
✅ Integration with Google Analytics	❌ Poor session replay performance

Hotjar Overview:

Hotjar features a playback tool that allows you to find relevant sections in session recordings. You can also record audio during sessions and leave comments on specific timestamps in recordings. 

In addition to session replay, Hotjar provides heatmaps that highlight high-activity areas on your web pages. This visualization tool helps you identify usability issues and difficulties navigating your web pages.

One limitation of using Hotjar is that you’ll have to manually set up event tracking on your website. Furthermore, several users have reported poor website performance when using Hotjar. 

Hotjar Pricing:

Hotjar splits its features into three separate pricing packages. The Observe package, which starts at $39/month gets you heatmaps, recordings, and user segmentation for up to 100 daily sessions. 

If you need surveys and feedback forms, you can purchase a paid subscription from the Ask package. These plans, which range from $59/month to $159/month, allow you to create unlimited surveys and feedback widgets.

The Engage package unlocks live interviews, allowing you to conduct up to 15 live interviews for $350/month. These interviews can only last 30 minutes, so if you want 1-hour interviews you’ll have to upgrade to the $550/month business plan.

These pricing packages all offer free options and, when combined, give you 35 daily sessions, 20 monthly responses, and 60 yearly interviews.

Use Hotjar if:

• You want the best tool for collecting feedback from your customers.
• You want to have live interviews with your customers.

3. Crazy Egg — Best for heatmaps and user activity reports

Ease of Use	Features	Heatmaps & Reporting	Affordability
⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐

New York Times bestselling author and entrepreneur, Neil Patel, founded Crazy Egg in 2006 after feeling lost and confused on several websites he visited. Since then, this platform has helped thousands of developers, support teams, and website owners collect information on how users interact with their websites.

Top Crazy Egg Features:

• Web traffic analysis,
• Error tracking,
• Targeted feedback with surveys,
• A/B testing,
• Heatmaps and session replays.

Crazy Egg is best for customer experience teams and developers who need to understand how real users interact with their web pages. That’s because it provides reports on individual clicks, scroll depth, and user interface activity.

Crazy Egg Pros	Crazy Egg Cons
✅ Unlimited website tracking	❌ Limited analytics tools
✅ Advanced reporting on visitor activity	❌ Limited tracking on individual user actions
✅ JavaScript error tracking

Crazy Egg Overview:

Crazy Egg is designed for website conversion rate optimization. Its session replays should help you understand how users interact with your website and find the problematic areas hurting the conversion rates.

It also takes snapshots of your website and generates up to five types of reports on user activity. The variety might come in handy — for example, heatmaps show you click activity, while scrollmaps reveal the average scroll depth.

While its analytics tools are sub-par compared to the other options, Crazy Egg does provide you an A/B testing tool to help you understand what works best on your website.

Crazy Egg Pricing:

Cary Egg pricing starts at $29/month 25 snapshots and 100 recordings per month. You can also track unlimited websites create unlimited A/B tests, and store recordings for up to three months.

Higher subscription tiers increase the number of snapshots and recordings and offer priority support. All plans offer a 30-day free trial. The most popular plan—Crazy Egg Plus—costs $99/month with annual billing.

Use Crazy Egg if:

• You need A/B testing on your website.
• You want advanced visitor behavior analytics & reporting.

4. Mouseflow — Best for analyzing session recordings

Ease of Use	Features	Heatmaps & Reporting	Affordability
⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

After noticing the lack of behavioral analytics tools for websites, Lasse Schou set out to create a tool for recording heatmaps and user sessions. Thus, Mouseflow was born in 2010.

Top Mouseflow Features:

• Conversion funnels,
• Friction scores,
• Surveys and feedback forms,
• Open REST API,
• Heatmaps and session replay.

Mouseflow is best for UX teams that want to capture the entire visitor journey through conversion-tracking funnels. 

Mouseflow Pros	Mouseflow Cons
✅ Multiple heatmap tools and reports	❌ No custom event capture
✅ Lots of integrations	❌ Limited filters for session recordings
✅ Easy to install and use	❌ No native mobile support

Mouseflow Overview:

With a single click of a button, Mouseflow anonymously records 100% of all user activity on your website. It also generates friction scores that highlight frustrated users to make it easier to address their issues.

Mouseflow provides several tools that help you add more context to your session recordings. For example, you can add custom tags, variables, and filters to your recordings, and even layer multiple recordings on top of each other to compare them.

A downside of using Mouseflow is that you can only record URLs and UI clicks, with no way to track custom events like tab switches or keyboard input. 

Mouseflow Pricing:

Mouseflow’s free plan lets you record up to 500 sessions per month on a single website. It provides all the core tools like form analytics, feedback surveys, and live chats. 

Paid plans start at $31/month and increase the limits on the number of monthly sessions, websites, data storage duration, and forms. 

The Starter plan offers the same features as the free plan. But the Business and Pro plans — which cost $219/month and $399/month, respectively — get you advanced tools like the REST API, single sign-on, and a dedicated account manager.

Use Mouseflow if:

• You want to collect user interaction data in bulk.
• You want analytics dashboard templates.
• You need instant valuable insights through automatic session rankings.

5. Lucky Orange — Best for optimizing website conversion rates

Ease of Use	Features	Heatmaps & Reporting	Affordability
⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐

Danny Wajcman and Brian Gruber were two small business owners fed up with the lack of tools to understand what users were doing on a website. So, they created Lucky Orange in 2012 to solve this problem.

Top Lucky Orange Features:

• Session recordings,
• Dynamic heatmaps,
• Pop-up announcements,
• Live chat,
• Conversion funnels,
• Surveys and form analytics.

Lucky Orange’s pop-up announcements make it a great tool for marketing teams that want to increase conversion and sales rates.

Lucky Orange Pros	Lucky Orange Cons
✅ Real-time co-browsing	❌ Custom events require technical expertise
✅ Powerful filters and optimizable segments	❌ No support for mobile applications
✅ Lots of integrations	❌ Limited integrations with third-party apps

Lucky Orange Overview:

Lucky Orange’s session recordings are configurable with filters that let you analyze the exact data you want to see. It automatically generates optimizable segments that help you find frustrated or confused users quickly and identify conversion improvement opportunities.

Aside from session replays, Lucky Orange also provides heatmaps, conversion funnels, and form analytics to help you increase your website conversion rates.

However, its stand-out feature is the pop-up announcements that grab users’ attention. This tool lets you place adverts, news and updates, discount offers, CTAs, and other notifications at strategic positions on your website. And, you can personalize the information using triggers from session replays. 

Lucky Orange Pricing:

Lucky Orange provides all its features on all pricing plans, including the free plan. 

For zero cost, you get 100 monthly sessions and 30 days of data retention. However, the paid plans, which start at $39/month, increase the number of user sessions and give you 60 days of data retention. 

The most popular plan, Grow, costs $79/month for 15,000 monthly sessions, while the Scale plan offers 300,000 monthly sessions for $749/month. 

Use Lucky Orange if:

• You want to increase conversion rates with pop-up announcements.
• You need pre-built user segments to speed up your customer support workflow.

6. LogRocket — Best for error tracking and performance monitoring

Ease of Use	Features	Heatmaps & Reporting	Affordability
⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐

LogRocket’s founders Ben Edelstein and Matt Arbesfeld were frustrated with ambiguous customer feedback and reports of UX issues. That’s why, in 2016, they created a tool to help developers understand how users interact with their online apps.

Top LogRocket Features:

• UX analytics with heatmaps and scroll maps,
• Conversion funnels,
• User path and cohort analysis,
• Autocapture and event definition,
• Advanced error tracking and alerting,
• Website and hardware performance monitoring.

LogRocket is best for developers that want to track down errors and UX issues so they can quickly resolve them.

LogRocket Pros	LogRocket Cons
✅ Automatic data export streaming	❌ Complicated pricing model
✅ Robust UX analytics platform	❌ Limited live chat tools
✅ Lots of third-party integrations

LogRocket Overview:

LogRocket uses heatmaps, scrollmaps, and path analysis to reveal where and how users drop off from your website. It also includes session replays to tell you why they do so and provide more context about the event.

Without any prior setup, it collects all user actions and events, including identification, metadata, and any user-defined information.

Furthermore, LogRocket helps you find specific sessions using user data — URLs, IP addresses, email, or any other built-in or user-defined event. You can even combine multiple filters to create user segments that can be saved for your entire team to use.

LogRocket Pricing:

LogRocket offers a free lifetime plan that provides 1000 sessions per month and 30 days of data retention. Paid plans unlock some advanced features, but their exact costs depend on the platform you’re using and the number of monthly sessions you want. 

For example, the Team plan costs $99/month for 10,000 monthly sessions on the web. However, you’d have to pay $199 for the same number of monthly sessions on mobile platforms. 

Use LogRocket if:

• You want user experience issue reporting.
• You want to store session recordings in a self-hosted data warehouse.
• You want to monitor network and browser console information.

7. FullStory — Best for session recordings on mobile apps

Ease of Use	Features	Heatmaps & Reporting	Affordability
⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐

Led by Scott Voigt, three former Google employees created the first iterations of an app to understand how an existing product was performing. Realizing its value, the group launched FullStory as a tool for analyzing customer journeys in 2014.

Top FullStory Features:

• Mobile app support,
• Tagless auto-capture,
• User segmentation,
• Conversion funnels,
• Heatmaps and session replay.

FullStory is best for developers who need to understand what users are doing on their mobile apps. That’s because it uses proprietary technology to capture mobile data without using screenshots.

FullStory Pros	FullStory Cons
✅ User-friendly set up	❌ Lacks transparent pricing information
✅ Extensive product analytics tools	❌ Not GDPR-compliant by default
✅ Robust support for mobile apps

FullStory Overview:

Unlike most session replay software that can only monitor one browser tab, FullStory allows you to see what individual users are doing across multiple tabs.

It uses tagless auto-capture to ensure you can monitor unpredictable user behavior and can replay the entire session without affecting site speed. You can also customize privacy settings, however, doing so carries the risk of jeopardizing sensitive information security and GDPR compliance.

FullStory’s highlight feature is high-performance session recording on mobile apps. Instead of screenshots and screen recordings to capture user actions, it scans the app 300 times per minute, generating less than 100kb of data. 

FullStory Pricing:

FullStory does not publicly list its pricing information, prompting you to request a demo instead.

However, you can sign up for the freemium plan, which provides basic session recording tools and limited storage. FullStory also offers a 14-day free trial of the business plan with full functionality.

Use FullStory if:

• You want customizable privacy settings.
• You want to monitor user behavior across multiple browser tabs.
• You’re an e-commerce company looking to increase product conversion rates.

The Final Verdict

Session recording software is vital in understanding customer behavior and how to serve them better. But sometimes you need more than just basics.

That’s why it’s crucial that you get the right tool for the job. However, only a few stand out as all-in-one platforms. Based on testing, experience, and user reviews, here’s the verdict for the best session replay tools:

• SessionStack for teams that need an over-the-shoulder perspective of user actions and events on their website.
• Hotjar for support teams that need unbiased feedback through surveys and live interviews.
• Crazy Egg for developers that collect data on UI actions and events.