How Clarity differs from GA4

GA4 answers "how many": how many visitors, from where, how many leads. Clarity answers "why": what exactly a person did on the page before leaving. Together they give the full picture.

What Clarity offers

  • Session recordings: a video of how a specific visitor scrolled and clicked. Personal data in forms is masked by default.
  • Click heatmaps: where people click most often.
  • Scroll maps: how far down the page most people get.
  • Rage clicks: someone clicks the same spot several times quickly. Often a sign that something is broken.
  • Dead clicks: a click on an element that does nothing, such as an image that looks like a button.
  • Quick backs: a person opens a page and immediately goes back.
  • JavaScript errors that break the site.

What to look for first

  1. Scroll maps of the home page and service pages: do most people see the request button?
  2. Rage and dead clicks: which elements people think are clickable but are not.
  3. Recordings of sessions from ads: what the people you paid for actually do.
  4. Recordings on phones: how easy the form is, button sizes, whether something covers the screen.
  5. Sessions where someone started filling in the form but did not send it.

How Clarity helps your ads

If ads bring visitors but few leads, Clarity shows where the problem is: in the ads (the wrong people arrive and leave at once) or on the site (people are interested but something gets in the way). Clarity can be linked with GA4, and recordings can be filtered by traffic source, for example only sessions from Google Ads.

Cookie consent

Since October 31, 2025, Microsoft requires a consent signal for visitors from the EEA, the UK and Switzerland. Without consent, Clarity does not set cookies for these visitors. If your site has a cookie banner, connect it to Clarity or set Clarity to load only after consent, for example through Google Tag Manager.

How to set it up

  1. Create a project at clarity.microsoft.com.
  2. Add the code to your site directly or through Google Tag Manager.
  3. Set up cookie consent for European visitors.
  4. Link Clarity with GA4.
  5. Wait a few days for data to build up.

I connect Clarity on every website I build, together with GA4 and Search Console. It lets me improve a site based on how people actually use it, not on guesses.

FAQ

Is Clarity really free?

Yes. Microsoft does not charge for Clarity and does not limit site traffic.

Will Clarity slow down my site?

The script loads asynchronously and usually has no noticeable effect on speed. Still, check the site in PageSpeed Insights after adding it.

Does Clarity see passwords and form data?

By default, Clarity masks input field content and sensitive data. You can make masking stricter in the project settings.

Sources