Compare pricing, deployment, product fit, integrations, and capabilities side by side.
Website owners who want simple, privacy-focused analytics
Important considerations: Hosted use is donation-supported with a reasonable-use policy; high-volume or specialized deployments should be self-hosted.
Website owners, marketers, and product teams that need free session replay and heatmaps
Important considerations: Clarity is vendor-hosted and uses cookies. Teams must review consent and data policies; it emphasizes qualitative behavior analysis rather than replacing a complete first-party analytics stack.
| Attribute | GoatCounter | Microsoft Clarity |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | A lightweight, privacy-aware open-source web analytics service with cookieless visit counting, referrers, campaigns, browser and location reports, exports, and JavaScript-free tracking options. | Microsoft's free behavior analytics service for websites and mobile apps, with always-on session recordings, click and scroll heatmaps, smart events, frustration signals, and Copilot-powered summaries. |
| Pricing | Hosted service is donation-supported and free for reasonable public use; self-hosting is free and open source | Free forever with no traffic limits; unlimited heatmaps, websites, and team members are included |
| Deployment | Self-hosted and hosted options | Vendor-hosted cloud |
| Best for | Website owners who want simple, privacy-focused analytics | Website owners, marketers, and product teams that need free session replay and heatmaps |
| Operator | Martin Tournoij Independent project | Microsoft Corporation Independent public company |
| Company base | Ireland · European Union | Redmond, United States · United States |
| Organization scale | 1 maintainers · operator, as of 13 Aug 2026 | 228,000 employees · operator, as of 30 Jun 2025 |
| Recent direction | self-hosted expansion Recent official evidence shows a focus on self-hosted expansion. | marketing attribution Recent official evidence shows a focus on marketing attribution. |
| Key features |
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| Important considerations | Hosted use is donation-supported with a reasonable-use policy; high-volume or specialized deployments should be self-hosted. | Clarity is vendor-hosted and uses cookies. Teams must review consent and data policies; it emphasizes qualitative behavior analysis rather than replacing a complete first-party analytics stack. |
| Integrations | Ghost, Hugo | Google Analytics, Google Ads, WordPress, Shopify |
| Fact check | We checked this information against official vendor sources on 2026-08-27. | We checked this information against official vendor sources on 2026-08-08. |
This matrix shows capabilities recorded in our catalog. Not listed means we have not confirmed the capability here. Check the linked vendor sources for plan, deployment, and usage limits.
| Attribute | GoatCounter | Microsoft Clarity |
|---|---|---|
| AI insights | Not listed | Listed |
| App analytics | Not listed | Listed |
| Audience insights | Listed | Listed |
| Behavior analytics | Not listed | Listed |
| CCPA compliant | Listed | Listed |
| Cookieless | Listed | Not listed |
| Cross-device tracking | Not listed | Listed |
| Custom reports | Listed | Not listed |
| Data export | Listed | Listed |
| Data ownership | Listed | Not listed |
| Event tracking | Listed | Listed |
| Free plan | Listed | Listed |
| GDPR compliant | Listed | Listed |
| Goals | Not listed | Listed |
| Heatmaps | Not listed | Listed |
| Integrations | Listed | Listed |
| Open source | Listed | Not listed |
| Privacy-first | Listed | Not listed |
| Real-time data | Listed | Listed |
| Self-hosted | Listed | Not listed |
| Session recordings | Not listed | Listed |
| User segments | Listed | Listed |