Free Session Replay: What Free Actually Gets You

Free session replay exists in three genuinely useful shapes: free plans from commercial tools, a free hosted service, and free open source software you run yourself. Each model has a different resource profile (budget, hosted data, or engineering time), and picking the right one is a matter of matching the model to your goals. The full landscape sits in the open source session replay guide.

What are the three kinds of free?#

Free plans (including rrweb Cloud, PostHog, Highlight, Hotjar, and many SaaS tools): a defined monthly allowance and retention profile, useful for evaluation and right-sizing. Free hosted service (Microsoft Clarity): effectively unlimited for most sites at zero price, with a documented cap of 100,000 recorded sessions per project per day. Free software (rrweb and the open source ecosystem): no license cost, with the production backend and its ongoing operation left to your team. The rest of this guide takes them in turn.

Are free tiers a plan or a trial?#

A starting point. Free plans are excellent for evaluation and give teams a clear way to understand replay before choosing the scale and workflow they want long term. As usage grows, teams can select the plan or deployment model that best matches their volume, retention, and data goals. Allowances change over time, so check each platform's current pricing page when planning.

Is Microsoft Clarity really free?#

Yes. Clarity's capture code is open source, while Microsoft operates the hosted service. For most sites the allowance is effectively unlimited: Microsoft documents up to 100,000 recorded sessions per project per day, although a recording may not be available for every tracked session and ordinary recordings are retained for 30 days. The old rule applies: if it's free, you're the product. In this case you pay with behavioral data instead of a subscription. That can be a reasonable exchange for a marketing or content site. Products that handle customer or account data should weigh ownership, exportability, residency, retention, and privacy controls before making the same trade.

What does free open source cost?#

The rrweb library costs nothing and remains MIT-licensed. Running it as a production service still requires durable ingest, indexing, access control, PII handling, retention, deletion, monitoring, migrations, support, and incident response. Object storage may be inexpensive, but it is rarely the deciding cost; engineering capacity and ongoing ownership are. The detailed responsibility model is in self-hosted session replay, while the rrweb guide covers the library APIs.

Open source provides freedom and control over the software. A production deployment also needs infrastructure and ongoing operations. Self-hosting can be the right economic choice when your team wants to own those responsibilities. Compare the complete operating model with rrweb Cloud pricing, which includes a free starting tier and keeps the recorder open source while the rrweb team runs the backend.

Does free change the compliance picture?#

Consent requirements, masking obligations, and retention limits apply at every price point. For any hosted tool, review how recordings are stored, retained, and processed. For self-hosted tools, document those controls in your own environment.

How should you choose?#

Marketing site, no sensitive data, zero budget: Clarity is a strong fit. Evaluating whether replay matters to your team: a free plan offers a simple way to learn. Building replay into a product: start with the open rrweb recorder, then choose who owns the backend. rrweb Cloud is the managed path for teams that want open capture plus production ingest, storage, indexing, privacy controls, APIs, and replay serving. Self-hosting remains available when owning those responsibilities is itself a requirement.

FAQ#

Is there a completely free session replay tool?#

Microsoft Clarity is genuinely free and effectively unlimited for most sites, with a published cap of 100,000 recorded sessions per project per day. The rrweb library is free open source software, while a production backend still requires infrastructure and ongoing engineering. rrweb Cloud and other commercial free plans provide a managed way to evaluate replay before choosing the scale and operating model that fits your team.

How should free session replay tiers be evaluated?#

Session and retention allowances define the natural scale of a free plan. They are excellent for evaluation, and teams can use the results to choose the plan, hosted service, or open-source deployment that fits their next stage.

Is open source session replay really free?#

The software is free. A dependable service also requires ingest reliability, indexing, access control, privacy operations, retention, deletion, monitoring, migrations, and on-call ownership. Raw storage is one component of that cost. A managed platform such as rrweb Cloud packages those responsibilities while preserving the open recorder.

Can I use free session replay under GDPR?#

The same privacy requirements apply to free and paid services. Establish the appropriate lawful basis, configure masking for personal data, define a retention policy, and review where a hosted provider stores and processes recordings. Requirements vary by purpose and jurisdiction, so involve your privacy or legal team.