At a glance — how these 3 alternatives compare
Our read on each project's adoption, maintenance activity and commercial-use risk, derived from GitHub signals and SPDX license terms rather than star count alone. Sorted by stars. How we score.
| Project | Adoption | Maintenance | Commercial use |
|---|---|---|---|
| ★ 40,183 · Python | Flagship | Active | Low risk Embed in a proprietary product with no copyleft obligation. Split licence — this rates the core component; read the † text for the separately licensed parts |
| ★ 20,246 · TypeScript MIT | Mainstream | Active | Low risk Embed in a proprietary product with no copyleft obligation |
| ★ 12,955 · TypeScript | Mainstream | Active | High risk Even a hosted/modified deployment can trigger source release. Split licence — this rates the core component; read the † text for the separately licensed parts |
† Licenses marked † were read from the repository's LICENSE file on 2026-09-05 (linked, pinned to the commit we read) because the GitHub API returned no SPDX id for them. Unmarked licenses are the GitHub API's SPDX classification.
The alternatives
:hedgehog: PostHog is the leading platform for building self-driving products. Our developer tools – AI observability, analytics, session replay, flags, experiments, error tracking, logs, and more – capture all the context agents need to diagnose problems, uncover opportunities, and ship fixes. Steer it all from Slack, web, desktop, or the MCP.
PostHog/posthog Updated 2026-10-08 rrweb
record and replay the web
rrweb-io/rrweb Updated 2026-10-07 Session replay, cobrowsing and product analytics you can self-host. Best for reproducing issues and iterating on your product.
openreplay/openreplay Updated 2026-10-08 Editor's take
Yusuke Morinaga · last revisited · star counts quoted in the text (≈) are as of that date; the cards above are refreshed daily
Session replay you host yourself trades a subscription for a storage-and-retention problem nobody mentions up front.
When people compare Hotjar alternatives they line up heatmaps and recordings feature-by-feature. Useful, but it misses the thing that actually decides whether self-hosting works: a session recorder is a firehose that writes to disk forever, and Hotjar absorbs that cost for you. Move it in-house and storage planning becomes the project, not the install.
The sampling decision you make on day one and regret on day thirty. Recording every session on a high-traffic site is expensive in disk and retention. So the first real choice with any OSS option is sampling rate and how long you keep recordings — set it deliberately, or the volume decides for you. This is also the cleanest reason a low-traffic product or internal tool is a better self-hosting fit than a busy consumer site.
PostHog — the one I’d default to. PostHog (≈39.6k★) bundles session replay with product analytics, feature flags, and surveys. A licensing point worth getting right, since it’s widely misreported: the GitHub API returns no SPDX id for it, and the LICENSE we read gives MIT for the core with an ee/ directory under a separate enterprise license — so audit which directories your deployment actually ships if a strictly FOSS build matters to you. What makes it the safe pick: the in-recording feedback widgets — polls and surveys, the Hotjar feature people actually miss — are more mature here than elsewhere, and analytics lives in the same stack. If you want one platform to replace Hotjar and your analytics, this is it.
OpenReplay — the pick when the use case is debugging, not marketing. OpenReplay (≈12.7k★; AGPL-3.0 by default, with MIT for some directories and a separate licence for ee/ — the card shows what we read in its LICENSE) records with DevTools-level detail and co-browsing. If your team watches sessions to reproduce bugs rather than study funnels, its depth is the draw — accepting that its survey/feedback side is weaker.
rrweb — only if you’re building. rrweb (≈20.1k★, MIT) is the recording library under many of these tools, not a product. Reach for it only if you’re embedding replay into your own software.
So the decision reduces to one sum nobody runs early enough: a week of your real session volume, times your intended retention, priced as disk. Comfortable number — PostHog for an all-in-one stack, OpenReplay for debugging depth. Frightening number — you’ve just learned your sampling rate, and maybe that Hotjar’s hosted bill was buying something real. One thing the spreadsheet won’t flag: swapping recording providers changes how visitor data is handled, so the privacy policy is part of the migration, not an afterthought.
Comparison notes
PostHog rolls session recordings, heatmaps, and product analytics into one self-hostable package (MIT core with a separately licensed ee/ directory — see the card), while OpenReplay focuses on recording and co-browsing with DevTools-level detail; underneath many of these sits rrweb, the open-source library that actually captures the sessions. On feedback, Hotjar's in-recording polls and surveys exist in PostHog but are less developed in OpenReplay. Whichever you pick, plan ahead for the data: recording sessions on a high-traffic site eats storage, so retention policy is something to decide before you turn it on, not after.
Migration tips
- Download existing Hotjar recordings before migrating — recordings cannot be transferred but key clips can be saved
- Install PostHog or OpenReplay alongside Hotjar before full migration to collect parallel recordings for comparison
- Recreate Hotjar feedback widgets and surveys in your OSS tool's equivalent feature
- Configure session recording sampling rate in your OSS tool — recording every session is storage-intensive for high-traffic sites
- Update your privacy policy to reflect the new session recording provider and any differences in data handling
Which alternative should you pick?
Replacing Hotjar isn't a single call — it's a trade between license terms, team size, and how much early-stage roughness you can absorb. The 3 projects above split along those lines:
- You want the project with the most GitHub stars in this list → posthog. 40,183★ — the most of the 3 projects here. Stars measure attention, not quality or maintenance; check the last-push date and the Editor's take before reading more into it.
- You ship commercial software and need to ship modified code without releasing source → rrweb. MIT licensed — modify and embed without copyleft obligations.
License & commercial-use notes
When replacing Hotjar, the license usually decides more than the feature list — whether you can modify it, ship it inside a product, or host it as a service. The 3 projects here fall into:
- Permissive (posthog, rrweb) — MIT / Apache / BSD / ISC — modify and embed inside a commercial product with no copyleft obligation. The safest bucket for shipping in a proprietary codebase.
- Network copyleft (openreplay) — AGPL / SSPL — the copyleft trigger extends to offering the software over a network, so a hosted deployment of a modified version can oblige you to publish your changes. Read the exact terms before building a paid hosted product on these.
Split licences: posthog (MIT (core) + separate license for ee/); openreplay (AGPL-3.0 (default) + MIT (some directories) + separate license for ee/). These projects are grouped above by the core licence; the separately licensed directories (enterprise or EE parts) are not covered by that bucket — check which files you actually ship.
License fields come from the GitHub API's SPDX classification and can lag a relicense. Where the API returned no SPDX id, the license marked † was read from the repository's LICENSE file on 2026-09-05; the † links to the exact file and commit we read. The repository linked on each card is authoritative — confirm its LICENSE file before any license-sensitive deployment.
Maintenance health of these 3 projects
Of the 3 projects listed, 3 shipped at least one commit in the last 12 months. See how we rank for the full criteria and our self-hosting cost reality check, which apply across every comparison on this site.
Frequently asked questions
How do these 3 alternatives compare on maintenance health?
3 of 3 have shipped a commit in the last 12 months. At least one project here has 5,000+ GitHub stars. Always check the last-pushed date in the cards above and read the latest closed issues — those two signals are the fastest public check we know of.
How this page was compiled
- Repository facts (stars, license, language, last push) come straight from the GitHub public API and are linked on each card as the primary source. Where the API returned no SPDX id, the licence marked † was read from the repository's
LICENSEfile (linked, pinned to the commit we read, with the date checked). - Editorial analysis (the intro, comparison notes and migration tips) is Claude-drafted from Hotjar's use case and the alternatives' repository metadata — in Claude Code sessions or scheduled routines run under the operator's account. Samples are spot-checked against the upstream repositories; entries are not individually reviewed unless they carry a signature. See what Claude drafts and what the operator writes.
- Editor's take is signed by Yusuke Morinaga. It was drafted in a Claude Code session the operator ran, then read and confirmed by Yusuke Morinaga before publication, and carries the date it was last revised. It is written from each project's README, LICENSE, release history and issue tracker — not from running the project in production; where that distinction matters, the take says so.
- Maintenance signal: 3 of 3 projects shipped a commit in the last 12 months as of the latest rebuild (most recent activity: ).
- Last editorial review: by Yusuke Morinaga.
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