Free heatmaps, session recordings and rage-click detection from Microsoft. Valuable qualitative signals no metrics dashboard delivers, but US cloud with GDPR homework.
What is Microsoft Clarity?
Clarity shows how visitors actually handle your site: heatmaps, scroll depth, recordings, frustrated clicks. It adds the why to the quantitative view of GA4 or Plausible CE. It is free because Microsoft uses aggregated data for its own ML training; that belongs in any honest verdict.
When it fits, and when it doesn't
Good fit when:
- qualitative signals should come in at zero budget
- UX problems need to become visible, not just measurable
- the consent setup stands solid
Not the right call when:
- strict requirements rule out US cloud tools
- recordings would run without consent gating
- replay should connect to product events; then PostHog
What Datascale builds with Clarity
We decide the architecture, then we build:
- consent gating: Clarity loads only after consent
- masking of sensitive content and form fields
- deployment via the tag manager with a clean trigger
- an honest comparison against PostHog session replay
- a GDPR assessment including the privacy-policy building block
The full picture lives in the matching service. We integrate Clarity where it is the best answer for your case, not as an end in itself. Related: Audit Sprint.
Which analytics tools run GDPR-compliant and when a banner is required: see the GDPR analytics comparison.
