Microsoft Clarity is a free behaviour analytics tool from Microsoft that shows you how people actually use your website. It gives you heatmaps, session recordings and automatic insights such as rage clicks, dead clicks and quick backs, and it can be linked to Google Analytics 4. Analytics tells you that something is happening on a page; Clarity helps you see why.
We use Microsoft Clarity on client sites to spot problems that no amount of visit counting would reveal. This guide covers what it shows, how it differs from Google Analytics, how to install it on WordPress, the UK consent rules, and what to look at first.
The short version
- Clarity is free, with no paid tier to upgrade to.
- It gives you heatmaps, session recordings and automatic insights such as rage clicks and dead clicks.
- In the UK it needs consent. Microsoft has enforced consent signals for UK visitors since 31 October 2025.
- Microsoft says it shouldn’t be used on sites aimed at under-18s, which matters for children’s and youth charities.
- Start with your most important page, usually the donation page, and watch real visits before changing anything.
What is Microsoft Clarity?
Microsoft Clarity is a behaviour analytics tool. Instead of counting visits, it records what visitors do on each page: where they click, how far they scroll, where they hesitate and where they give up. You add a small piece of tracking code to your site, and Clarity builds heatmaps and recordings from real visits.
Microsoft describes Clarity as free forever, with no paid version to upgrade to. That makes it a sensible first step for small organisations and charities that want to understand their visitors without adding another subscription.
What Microsoft Clarity shows you
- Heatmaps: click maps, scroll maps and area maps that show where attention goes on a page, across all visitors.
- Session recordings: replays of individual visits, so you can watch someone try to use your donation form or find a service.
- Dashboard insights: automatic flags for frustration, such as rage clicks (clicking repeatedly in frustration), dead clicks (clicking something that does nothing) and quick backs (opening a page then quickly going back to the previous one).
- Filters and segments: narrow recordings and heatmaps down by page, device, traffic source or behaviour.
- Funnels and smart events: see where people drop out of a journey, such as from the Donate button to a completed gift.
- Copilot: AI-generated summaries of recordings and heatmaps, useful for a first look but worth checking against the recordings themselves.
- AI visibility: a newer feature that shows how AI systems and bots discover and cite your content.
If heatmaps are new to you, our guide on how to use heatmaps to understand your website visitors explains how to read them.
Microsoft Clarity vs Google Analytics
They answer different questions, so most sites are better off with both.
- Google Analytics 4 tells you how many people visited, where they came from, which pages they saw and whether they converted. It’s about numbers across your whole site.
- Microsoft Clarity shows you how people behaved on a particular page. It’s about the experience, one visit at a time.
A typical pattern: GA4 shows that lots of people reach your donation page but few complete a gift. Clarity’s recordings then show you what’s going wrong, perhaps a confusing amount selector or a button hidden below the fold on mobile. Clarity has a Google Analytics integration so you can move from one to the other more easily.
How to install Microsoft Clarity on WordPress
- Sign up for a free account at clarity.microsoft.com and create a project for your site.
- Add the tracking code. On WordPress you have three main options: Microsoft’s official Clarity plugin from the WordPress plugin directory, Google Tag Manager if you already use it, or adding the code to your theme (a job for your developer).
- Connect your cookie consent tool so Clarity only sets cookies once a visitor has agreed. More on this below, because it’s the step most UK sites get wrong.
- Check your masking settings. Clarity masks sensitive content by default, but review donation forms, contact forms and any page that shows personal information.
- Optionally link it to Google Analytics 4.
- Visit your own site, then check Clarity to confirm data is arriving.
Whichever install method you choose, use only one. Adding the plugin and a Tag Manager tag at the same time can load Clarity twice.
Consent: the part UK sites get wrong
Session recordings and heatmaps need consent under UK law. The ICO’s guidance says the analytics (statistical purposes) exception doesn’t cover “logs or recordings of individual visitors to your website and the actions they took”. Clarity uses cookies to tie a visit together, so in the UK it should only set them after a visitor has said yes.
Microsoft enforces this itself. Since 31 October 2025, Clarity has required consent signals for visits from the UK, the EEA and Switzerland, and it says it doesn’t place cookies in those regions without valid consent. Clarity has a consent mode, and you can pass consent to it through a supported consent management platform, Google Consent Mode or Clarity’s own Consent API.
In practice, that means Clarity needs to be wired into your cookie banner properly. If it isn’t, you’ll either break the rules or get very little useful data, because cookie-dependent features such as recordings and funnels are limited without consent. In our research, 62.3% of UK charity homepages that load analytics cookies show no consent tool, so it’s worth checking. See the research.
One more rule: Microsoft says Clarity shouldn’t be used on websites or apps that target users under 18. If your charity’s site is aimed at children or young people, choose a different approach for those pages.
Masking sensitive data
Clarity masks sensitive content by default. What people type into form fields is always masked, and the default “balanced” setting also hides content it treats as sensitive, such as numbers and email addresses. Masked content isn’t sent to Microsoft at all.
Don’t rely on the default alone. Watch a few recordings of your donation, contact and account pages and check nothing personal is visible, such as names shown back on a confirmation page. You can mask extra parts of a page in Clarity’s settings, or switch to strict mode if your site shows a lot of personal information. Mention Clarity in your privacy and cookie information too.
What to look at first
- Your donation page. Watch ten recordings of people who started a donation and didn’t finish. You’ll usually spot the problem within the first few.
- Rage and dead clicks. They point at buttons that look clickable but aren’t, slow-loading elements and confusing layouts.
- Scroll maps on long pages. If most people never reach your call to action, move it up.
- Mobile versus desktop. Filter recordings by device. Problems that don’t exist on a laptop are common on phones.
- Your most visited information pages. Check people find the next step, such as getting help, signing up or donating.
Using Clarity to improve charity donation forms
For charities, the biggest win is usually the donation journey. Recordings show the friction that numbers hide: people hunting for the monthly option, getting stuck on Gift Aid wording, tapping a button that’s too small on a phone, or leaving when they’re sent to a different-looking payment page.
Fix one thing at a time and watch more recordings afterwards to check it helped. If you’re unsure whether your giving journey works at all, start with our guide to making sure people can donate to you online.
Limitations to be aware of
- You only see visitors who consent. In the UK, people who decline cookies won’t appear fully, so treat recordings as a sample rather than the whole picture.
- Embedded third-party forms may not record properly. Donation and payment forms loaded from another provider, often in an iframe, may appear blank or incomplete.
- Recordings aren’t kept forever. Check Microsoft’s current retention policy and save the recordings you want to refer back to.
- It shows what, not why. A recording can show someone hesitating but not what they were thinking. Pair it with user testing or a short survey.
- It takes time. The data is only useful if someone watches it and acts on it. Set aside an hour a month.
Clarity is one of the tools in our list of free tools every website owner should know about.
How we can help
We set up analytics, heatmaps and consent together on the charity websites we build and support, so you get useful insight without breaking the rules. If you’d like us to review what your visitors are struggling with, get in touch.
Microsoft Clarity FAQs
Is Microsoft Clarity free?
Yes. Microsoft describes Clarity as free forever, with no obligation to upgrade to a paid version.
Is Microsoft Clarity GDPR compliant, and does it need cookie consent in the UK?
It can be used lawfully, but compliance depends on how you set it up. In the UK, Clarity needs a visitor’s consent before it sets cookies, so connect it to your cookie banner. You should also check masking on forms and explain Clarity in your privacy and cookie information.
Does Microsoft Clarity slow down my website?
The script loads asynchronously, so for most sites the effect is small. As with any third-party script, check your page speed before and after adding it.
Microsoft Clarity or Hotjar?
Both offer heatmaps and session recordings. Clarity is free with no paid tier, which suits most charities and small organisations. Hotjar has a free plan with paid plans above it, and adds tools such as on-site surveys and feedback widgets. If you mainly want to watch how people use your site, start with Clarity; if you also want to ask visitors questions, Hotjar may be worth comparing.
