Microsoft Clarity vs Google Analytics
Google Analytics counts. Clarity watches. Neither one says why.
A sourced comparison of what each tool measures, what free includes, how long each keeps your data, and what each one holds back. Every claim links to Microsoft's or Google's own documentation, fetched 6 October 2026.
Which one should you use? Both, and Microsoft says so.
How many
Events, sources, campaigns, conversions. The system of record for "what happened and where did they come from". Free on the standard tier; Analytics 360 is the paid, enterprise version.google
What it looked like
Recordings, heatmaps, rage and dead click insights. Free forever with no paid tier. Microsoft's own integration page says to connect it to Google Analytics "to go beyond the numbers and see how people interact with your site".microsoft
If you have to pick one, pick Google Analytics, because nothing else counts your traffic. Then add Clarity, because it is free and Google Analytics cannot show you a screen. The rest of this page is where each one stops.
What each one measures
Google Analytics counts. Clarity watches. That one sentence settles most of the comparison, and Microsoft agrees with it: its own Clarity page invites you to connect the two "to go beyond the numbers and see how people interact with your site".
| What | Microsoft Clarity | Google Analytics | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| The unit of measurement | Session recordings and heatmaps (click, scroll, area), plus "rage click and dead click insights".microsoft | Events. Some are "collected by default when you set up Google Analytics"; the rest are custom events you define.google | Google Analytics tells you how many people did a thing. Clarity shows you one of them doing it. |
| Seeing the actual screen | Yes. Recordings "aren’t video streams" but reconstructions of the page, which is why they are light enough to be free.microsoft | No. There is no replay or heatmap in Google Analytics; Microsoft’s integration exists to add "recordings for Google Analytics segments". | If your question is "what did the page look like when they left", only one of these can answer it. |
| Traffic sources and campaigns | Segments and "40+ filters", and it imports your Google Analytics segments so you can watch recordings of one audience.microsoft | The system of record for channels, campaigns and conversions; Google positions it as the tool "to understand the customer journey and improve marketing ROI".google | Attribution questions belong in Google Analytics. Clarity borrows its segments rather than competing with them. |
| Custom events in reports | Smart events and conversion heatmaps, in the dashboard.microsoft | "Custom events don’t show up in most standard reports so you need to set up custom reports or explorations."google | A custom event in GA4 is only as visible as the report you build for it, which is where a lot of "GA4 is confusing" comes from. |
Price and limits
Both are free. The useful comparison is what free buys and where each one stops.
| What | Microsoft Clarity | Google Analytics | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | "It’s free, forever." "You’ll never run into traffic limits or be forced to upgrade to a paid version."microsoft | The standard tier is "free of charge". Analytics 360 is the paid tier, "tailored for the unique measurement needs of large enterprises".google | Neither will send you an invoice at small scale. Google has an enterprise tier to grow into; Clarity has no paid tier at all. |
| Why it is free | Microsoft says so plainly: it "processes a massive amount of anonymous data around user behavior to gain insights and improve machine learning models that power many of our products and services. Clarity is one of the ways Microsoft gathers this important data".microsoft | Google does not publish a comparable statement on its Analytics pages, so this page makes no claim about it. | The price of Clarity is paid in data. That is a fair trade for many sites; it is a trade you should know you are making. |
| Sampling | "No sampling", with a ceiling: Clarity "records up to 100,000 sessions per project per day", and a heat map is "limited to up to 100,000 page views".microsoft | Standard reports are unsampled. Explorations sample past "10 million events for standard Google Analytics properties and up to 1 billion events for Google Analytics 360".google | For most sites neither limit bites. Past them, Clarity drops sessions and Google estimates from a sample. |
| Data withheld for privacy | Nothing comparable is published for Clarity, so this page does not claim there is or is not a threshold. | "Data may be withheld when viewing a report or exploration or making an API call that includes demographic data".google | A small site that turns on demographics in GA4 will see rows go blank. It is by design, and it is not a bug in your setup. |
How long you keep it
The two tools forget on different clocks, and the clock is what decides whether you can answer "was it like this last quarter".
| What | Microsoft Clarity | Google Analytics | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recordings and event data | Recordings are kept "up to 30 days from the time of recording".microsoft | Event-level data on a standard property can be kept for up to 14 months (Google’s own example is "if you set retention to 14 months"); "Large and XL properties are limited to 2 months".google | A Clarity recording from six weeks ago is gone. A GA4 event from six weeks ago is there, if you changed the default from 2 months to 14. |
| Aggregates | "You can access heat maps for up to 9 months."microsoft | Google-signals data is retained for at most 26 months "regardless of your settings".google | Both keep the summary longer than the detail. Neither keeps the detail for a year on a free plan without you acting. |
Privacy: who holds the data
This is the part of the comparison that the agency posts skip. For Clarity it is all on Microsoft's own pages, in plain words. For Google Analytics this page makes no claim at all: Google's data processing terms are their own document and we have not evaluated them here.
What Microsoft publishes about Clarity
Quoted. Each line links to the page it came from.
- "Clarity is GDPR-compliant as a data controller."microsoft
- "We are not able to sign any additional terms or contracts (e.g., DPAs)."microsoft
- "Clarity data is stored in one of Microsoft’s US data centers."microsoft
- "You will not use the Offering in connection with content which may contain sensitive user materials, such as health care, financial services or government-related information."microsoft
What that means in practice
The structural points, not a verdict.
- Controller, not processor. Microsoft decides how Clarity data is used. A processor acts on your instructions; a controller does not need them.
- No DPA, at any price. If your procurement or legal review needs a signed data processing agreement, there is no version of Clarity that comes with one.
- US storage, not configurable. An EU or UK operator is transferring data out and cannot choose a region.
- Health, finance and government sites are excluded by the terms. That is Microsoft's restriction, and it is the short answer to the HIPAA question. The long answer is on our Clarity privacy page.
The question neither tool answers
Google Analytics shows checkout conversion fell on Tuesday. Clarity shows a recording of someone leaving checkout. Neither says the button they tapped three times did nothing, that the error message was below the fold on a phone, or which element is costing the most orders this month. That is a third job, and it is the one Harvv does.
Keep both of them
Nothing on this page asks you to remove a tool.
- Google Analytics stays the system of record for traffic, campaigns and conversions.
- Clarity stays the free way to watch a session when you already know which one to watch.
- The gap is between the number and the recording: knowing which sessions to watch, and what to change.
Add the why
What Harvv measures instead of recording.
- 71 event types across 10 categories: dead clicks, rage clicks, aborted taps, hesitation, form abandonment, scroll depth, Core Web Vitals, errors, and the element behind each.
- Zero personally identifiable information and no recordings. There is no footage to mask and no single visitor to find, which is why a health or finance site can run it where Clarity's terms say no.
- Findings in plain English, each naming the page, the element and the fix, and the same answers inside Slack, Claude, and ChatGPT through the Harvv MCP.
- One 40 KB gzipped script, loaded async, free for one site with 50K events a month.
Where Clarity is ahead of Harvv
If you need to watch a specific person's session, Clarity can show you one and Harvv cannot; we measure behaviour, we do not record it. Clarity is also free at every scale with no paid tier, and its heatmaps are instant and unlimited. Those are real advantages and this page would be dishonest without them. The full row-by-row comparison, including the Data Export API limits that decide whether your AI can use Clarity's data, is on Harvv vs Clarity.
The questions people actually search
Is Microsoft Clarity better than Google Analytics?
They are not the same kind of tool, so neither is better. Google Analytics counts events, sources, campaigns and conversions. Clarity records sessions and draws heatmaps. Microsoft itself ships a Clarity and Google Analytics integration so you can "watch recordings for Google Analytics segments", which is the clearest sign the two are meant to run side by side rather than one replacing the other.
Is Microsoft Clarity free or paid?
Free, with no paid tier. Microsoft’s pricing page says "It’s free, forever" and that you will "never run into traffic limits or be forced to upgrade to a paid version". The same page explains why: Microsoft uses the anonymous behaviour data to "improve machine learning models that power many of our products and services", and Clarity is one of the ways it gathers that data.
Can I use Microsoft Clarity and Google Analytics together?
Yes, and Microsoft built the connection. On clarity.microsoft.com/google-analytics the integration imports your Google Analytics segments into Clarity and shows Clarity playback links on the Google Analytics side. You keep Google Analytics as the system of record for traffic and conversions and use Clarity to watch what a segment actually did.
Is Microsoft Clarity a replacement for GA4?
No. GA4 is the current version of Google Analytics, and Clarity has no attribution model, no campaign reporting and no conversion funnels of the kind GA4 is built around. What Clarity adds is the screen: recordings, heatmaps, and rage and dead click insights. Sites that drop GA4 for Clarity lose the counting; sites that run only GA4 never see the screen.
Is Microsoft Clarity any good?
For what it does, yes, and this page says so. Unlimited free recordings and heatmaps with "no sampling" is a real offer. The limits are the ones Microsoft publishes: recordings are kept 30 days, the project records up to 100,000 sessions a day, Microsoft is the data controller and will not sign a DPA, data lives in US data centres, the terms exclude health care, financial and government content, and the Data Export API allows 10 requests per project per day over the previous 1 to 3 days. Whether any of those matters depends on your site.
What does neither Clarity nor Google Analytics tell you?
Why. Google Analytics shows that checkout conversion fell; Clarity shows a recording of someone leaving checkout. Neither one says the button they tapped three times did nothing, that the form error was off screen on a phone, or that this is the element costing the most orders this month. That is the layer Harvv adds, from behavioural signals rather than recordings, and it reads out in plain English or into your own AI.
Keep counting. Keep watching. Find out why.
Point Harvv at your site and get the findings Google Analytics and Clarity both leave out, each one naming the element, the page and the fix. No card, no video to watch.
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