Is Microsoft Clarity Free? Cost, Limits, Privacy and Site Speed Before You Install It

Is Microsoft Clarity free? Yes. There is no paid plan, no traffic limit and no sampling, and Microsoft says you will never be asked to upgrade [1]. What you give instead is data and some setup work. Microsoft says plainly that Clarity's data helps train its machine learning models. Its cookies include one used for advertising. Visitors from Europe need a consent signal before Clarity works fully.

This page covers the questions to settle before you add the script. Setup, masking and reading heatmaps are in Anobee's Microsoft Clarity guide.

How this was checked: Microsoft's FAQ, pricing page, terms of use and privacy documentation were read on 21 October 2026. The speed figures come from 10 Lighthouse runs on a live anobee.com article the same day: 5 with Clarity and 5 with it blocked. The method is described in the speed section.

Is Microsoft Clarity free, and why?

Clarity's pricing page says all features are available at zero cost, with no traffic limits and no forced upgrade [2]. The same page explains why. Microsoft processes large amounts of anonymous behaviour data to improve the machine learning models behind its products. Clarity is one of the ways it gathers that data [2].

Two details in the fine print are worth knowing:

• Free today, not promised forever in the contract. Clarity's terms of use let Microsoft change the service, remove features or start "charging additional fees for features previously provided free". Any new fee must be disclosed before it takes effect, and your only option then is to stop using it [3].
• Some integrations can cost money elsewhere. Connecting a server or CDN for Clarity's Bot Activity feature may bring charges from your CDN or cloud provider. Those bills come from the provider, not from Microsoft [1].

Microsoft Clarity pricing and limits at a glance

"Free" does not mean "no limits". These are the limits Microsoft publishes in its FAQ [1]:

The 30-day limit on recordings is the one that catches people out. If you find a recording that explains a problem, mark it as a favourite before the month runs out.

Does Microsoft Clarity record all sessions?

Not always. Microsoft's answer is that Clarity tracks all sessions, but recordings might not be available for all of them [1]. So your session counts cover all your traffic, while the library of replays you can watch may be smaller.

Consent changes this further. For visitors in the EEA, UK and Switzerland who give no consent, Clarity counts every page view as a new session. Pages per session becomes 1, every visitor looks new, and multi-step funnels show a full drop-off [6]. If much of your traffic comes from Europe, set up consent before you trust the numbers.

Does Microsoft Clarity use cookies?

Yes. Microsoft's cookie page says Clarity's normal use requires non-essential cookies, set by the script you install, holding a pseudonymous ID [4]. It lists seven:

If a visitor has disabled cookies in the browser, Clarity does not set any [4]. Clarity also does not respond to the browser Do Not Track setting [1].

Is Microsoft Clarity GDPR compliant?

Microsoft describes Clarity as "GDPR ready" and says it processes data in line with the CCPA [1]. That does not make your use of it compliant on its own. Under Clarity's terms, you and Microsoft are independent controllers of the personal data, and each is responsible for its own compliance [3].

In practice, the terms and documentation put four duties on you:

1. Get consent where the law requires it. For people in the European Union, the terms say you must get consent for cookies. You must also keep records of it and let people withdraw it [3].
2. Pass that consent to Clarity. Since 31 October 2025, Clarity enforces consent signals for visits from the EEA, UK and Switzerland. Consent Mode is on by default for those regions [5]. A supported consent platform or Clarity's Consent API sends the signal.
3. Update your privacy notice. It must say that third parties such as Microsoft may collect personal data from your visitors. It must also mention Microsoft Advertising and link to the Microsoft Privacy Statement [3].
4. Keep sensitive data out. You must not knowingly send Microsoft sensitive personal data [3].

The terms also allow Microsoft to use personal data collected through Clarity to improve its products and to create user profiles for purposes that include advertising [3]. Whether that fits your audience is your call, and a privacy professional can tell you what your local law requires. The Clarity guide shows how to switch on Consent Mode and masking.

Who should not install Clarity

Clarity's terms and FAQ rule some sites out:

• Sensitive content: the terms forbid using Clarity with content that may contain sensitive user materials, naming health care, financial services and government-related information [3].
• Under-18 audiences: Microsoft says Clarity should not be used on sites or apps aimed at users under 18 [1].
• User profiling: you may use it for analytics such as experiments and A/B testing, but not to build user profiles [3].

Does Microsoft Clarity slow down a website?

Microsoft says no: the script is asynchronous and visitors notice no change in speed [1]. Anobee checked that on its own site, with one important detail. Anobee loads Clarity late on purpose, 3 seconds after the page finishes loading, when the browser is idle.

Method: on 21 October 2026, Lighthouse 13.4.1 ran 10 times on the live Clarity guide. It used the default mobile settings, with simulated throttling and a 4x CPU slowdown. Five runs loaded Clarity normally and five blocked every clarity.ms request. The runs alternated, and Lighthouse waited 8 seconds after load so Clarity's late start was captured.

The score gap looks large, but Clarity did not cause it. In all 10 runs, the page's largest element appeared on screen between 0.3 and 1.4 seconds in real time. Clarity's first request came between 4.7 and 7.5 seconds. Clarity could not have delayed something that had already happened. The wide spread of scores in both groups is ordinary run-to-run variation. It is also why a single Lighthouse run tells you very little.

Clarity did add something measurable: about 28 KB of download, mostly its 26 KB script, and around 0.3 seconds of work on a throttled mobile CPU. On anobee.com that work happens after the page is already readable.

This check covers Anobee's delayed setup only. Microsoft's standard snippet loads Clarity earlier, alongside the page, where the same work could overlap with loading. If speed matters to you, run your own before-and-after check on a key page, using several runs each way rather than one.

Should you install Microsoft Clarity?

So is Microsoft Clarity free to run? In money, yes. It makes sense when you want real sessions and heatmaps without paying, and your site is not in a sensitive category. It is a harder call in three cases: many visitors from Europe and no consent setup, an audience under 18, or readers who would object to Microsoft's advertising use of the data.

If you decide to go ahead, the Microsoft Clarity guide walks through setup, consent and masking. For how it fits next to your analytics, read Microsoft Clarity vs Google Analytics. For a paid alternative, see Microsoft Clarity vs Hotjar.