Hotjar costs $32/mo — and unlike a tool you buy once, that bill never stops. Over three years that's roughly $1,152 for software doing a job your own hardware could just as easily do.
Where the subscription actually goes
$32/month ($384/yr) is the sticker price. It compounds: cancel and you typically lose access to your own history, and most plans ratchet the price up as you add usage, seats or storage — the bill rarely stays flat for long.
Hearback: the pay-once alternative
Hearback does the same core job for $29, once. Self-hosted feedback + NPS widget with an inbox, dashboard and CSV export — unlimited responses.
| Hearback | Hotjar | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $29 once | $32/month ($384/yr) |
| Cost over 3 years | $29 | ~$1,152 |
| Response limits | None | 500/mo on entry plan |
| NPS surveys + dashboard | Yes | Yes |
| Your data on your server | Yes | No |
| Works behind a VPN / intranet | Yes | No |
| Cookie-banner headaches | None — first-party | Third-party scripts |
| Source code | MIT, yours | Closed |
One month of Hotjar costs more than Hearback does once. Everything after day 28 is free.
Is the subscription ever still worth it?
If you need Hotjar's specific ecosystem, integrations or managed infrastructure and that's genuinely load-bearing for you, the subscription earns its keep — that's a real trade-off, not a trick. Hearback is for everyone else: people paying every month for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.
Try Hearback — $29, once
Self-hosted feedback + NPS widget with an inbox, dashboard and CSV export — unlimited responses.