Microsoft Clarity setup and analysis services: reading where visitors get stuck, straight from the recording.

We wrote this guide for marketing, product and ecommerce teams who want to set up Microsoft Clarity on their site, or who already have it running but can’t turn its heatmaps and session recordings into a concrete decision. Every setting, limit and definition we describe is based on the Clarity documentation on Microsoft Learn; the sources are listed by number at the bottom of the page. We verified features and limits against the source as of September 2026, and because Microsoft updates its documentation often, we check again on every setup. Our own field observations are marked separately under the heading “Expert note”.

Our Clarity work runs in three layers: setting up the tag together with masking and the consent signal; reading heatmaps and session recordings with the right question; and confirming each finding with segments and GA4 data, then turning it into an improvement. We cover Clarity’s overall place in conversion work on our CRO consulting page; this page goes into the tool itself, its settings and its limits. We run our own site, markention.com, on the same stack: a WordPress theme, GA4, Google Tag Manager and Clarity.

What is Clarity, and how is it different from GA4?

Clarity is a user behavior analytics tool that shows how visitors interact with your site through session recordings and heatmaps.¹ Microsoft says Clarity is free forever, has no traffic limits and will never force you to upgrade to a paid version.¹ GA4 counts how many people drop off at which step; Clarity shows what the visitor actually did at that same step. Clarity’s three working surfaces break down like this:

Alongside these three surfaces, the Clarity documentation also covers AI Visibility: how often the site appears in AI and superintelligence answers, and how AI crawlers access it (Bot Activity); Bot Activity requires a connection to a supported CDN such as Cloudflare, Fastly or Amazon CloudFront.¹ Microsoft also notes that bot access doesn’t guarantee your content was used or cited in an answer.¹ We cover the whole subject on our GEO consulting page.

One usage limit is worth knowing up front: Microsoft states that Clarity shouldn’t be used on sites and apps that target users under 18.² That’s why we don’t install Clarity on sites aimed at children or teenagers.

Setup and privacy: how do you install Clarity and verify the setup?

Clarity is installed by adding a tracking code unique to each site; the code can be added manually to the site’s <head> section, through a supported third-party platform, or with the NPM package.² The same code can be used across a site’s subdomains;² for different domains, Microsoft recommends creating separate projects, and says Clarity works with tools such as WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify and Google Tag Manager.¹ There are two ways to verify: live sessions appearing in the project, and POST requests to clarity.ms/collect in the browser’s network tab.²

The Clarity script loads asynchronously, and Microsoft says it doesn’t affect page load speed.¹ Bot detection is on by default, and bot sessions are excluded from the total session count.² There are also areas the setup can’t see: Clarity can’t capture the inside of canvas elements or third-party iframes.² If the payment step runs in a payment provider’s iframe, what happens inside it won’t show in recordings; we read drop-off at that step from GA4 events instead.

Masking: which content never reaches Clarity?

Masked content is never uploaded to Clarity; Clarity masks sensitive content by default and doesn’t capture anything that’s masked.³ The contents of input boxes are masked in every masking mode, and that behavior can’t be changed; dropdown menus are also masked in every mode.³ There are three masking modes: Strict masks all content, Balanced (the default) masks only sensitive content such as numbers and email addresses, and Relaxed masks nothing except input boxes and dropdowns.³ The site-wide mode can be overridden element by element with a CSS selector in the dashboard, or with the data-clarity-mask=”true” and data-clarity-unmask=”true” attributes added to the HTML; the attribute takes precedence over the dashboard setting.³

Masking has two blind spots: Clarity doesn’t mask content inside stylesheets and style tags, and only project admins can change masking settings.³ We list every template where personal information shows as plain text, such as the confirmation page, the account screen and the order summary, mask each one, then check it in a new recording.

How is the consent signal passed to Clarity?

The consent signal is the decision made in the cookie banner, reported to Clarity through Clarity’s consent API, a supported consent management platform (CMP), a third-party platform integration, or Google Consent Mode.⁴ Clarity handles two consent types:⁴

If you use a custom cookie banner, the decision is passed with a window.clarity(“consentv2”, …) call that sends the ad_Storage and analytics_Storage values separately; Microsoft describes this call as the recommended replacement for the older consent API, which is being deprecated.¹³ If the visitor denies consent, Clarity deletes its existing cookies, ends the current session, and keeps running in cookieless mode on later visits until consent is granted.¹³

Since October 31, 2025, Clarity looks for a valid consent signal on visits from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland; in these regions it doesn’t set cookies until consent arrives, deletes its existing first-party cookies if consent is denied, and treats a granted consent as valid for up to 9 months.⁴ Türkiye isn’t on this list; Microsoft says sites with no traffic from these regions aren’t affected, but recommends setting up the signal wherever it’s relevant, since enforcement may expand to other regions and new visitors may arrive from these ones.¹ Consent Mode is on by default only for visits from these three regions; for other visits, it’s turned on in the project settings.⁴ Clarity doesn’t currently respond to the browser’s Do Not Track signal, but it does support Global Privacy Control (GPC); data is stored in the Microsoft Azure cloud.¹

How do reports change for visits without consent?

On a visit without consent, Clarity can’t stitch the same visitor’s pages into a single session, and counts every page view as a new session.⁵ The table shows rows we picked from Microsoft’s list, and how we handle each one when reading reports:⁵

What do the different heatmap types show?

A heatmap is a visualization that aggregates how visitors interact with a page across many page views and shows it in color; Clarity tracks clicks and scrolls on desktop, tablet and mobile and generates the map automatically.⁶ There’s no minimum traffic requirement for a map, and one can be generated for a single page or a group of pages.⁶ Click maps are built on the element that was clicked rather than the absolute position of the mouse on screen; Microsoft says this approach gives accurate results across screen sizes and responsive layouts.⁶ Clarity offers five map types:⁶

The click map has six views: all clicks, dead clicks, rage clicks, error clicks, first clicks and last clicks; first clicks help you understand how visitors start on the page, and last clicks help you spot flow patterns.⁷ A heatmap is built from at most 100,000 page views, with the applied filters.⁷ From an element in the left panel you can jump to the recordings where it was clicked, and copy the element’s CSS selector.⁷ Because maps are built on an element’s attributes rather than its content, they’re still generated with masking on, and this data stays accessible for up to 9 months.¹

How do you read a session recording, and how long is it kept?

A session recording isn’t a video; Clarity captures the page’s HTML structure and the visitor’s actions, and reconstructs the session step by step.⁸ A session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity; if the visitor later returns to the same tab, a new session starts.⁸ Recordings are kept for 30 days; after that, 1% of recordings or 10 recordings a day, whichever is greater, are kept for up to 9 months, and favorited recordings are also kept for up to 9 months.⁸

There’s a recording quota too: Clarity records at most 100,000 sessions per project per day; if traffic exceeds that, it samples recordings, so on a site with 200,000 sessions a day it keeps one recording in every two.¹¹ To prioritize recordings of important flows such as the cart, you use the upgrade API.¹¹ Clarity also offers the option to summarize the first 10 recordings in the session list, or selected recordings, with AI.⁸

What do rage clicks, dead clicks and other friction signals tell you?

Friction signals are moments Clarity flags automatically when a visitor doesn’t get the response they expected; each one raises a question and isn’t evidence on its own. Clarity defines them like this:⁹

• Rage click: the visitor clicks rapidly and repeatedly in a small, clustered area; it can be a strong sign of frustration with an element they expected to be interactive.
• Dead click: no visual change or page transition follows the click within a reasonable time; it can point to a broken element, a slow request or a misleading design.
• Excessive scrolling: vertical scrolling in the session is above the expected average; it can point to a demanding interface, content that isn’t relevant, or something the visitor can’t find.
• Quick back: the visitor follows a link to another page and comes back sooner than the threshold set for that page; it shows the navigation didn’t serve them.
• Error click: a JavaScript error that occurs after a click; these sessions are tagged automatically.

These signals also work as filters; rage and dead clicks, excessive scrolling and quick backs sit in the user actions group on the filter screen.¹⁰ One use Microsoft suggests: set the scroll depth filter below the site’s average fold and watch recordings of visitors who left without ever reaching it.¹⁰

How do segments, custom tags and the GA4 integration narrow down a finding?

A finding narrows down to a single group of visitors when filters are saved as segments and combined with custom tags and GA4 data. Clarity groups more than 30 filters into nine categories; the traffic group includes UTM source, medium and campaign, along with channel values that separate traffic arriving from AI and superintelligence platforms.¹⁰ Frequently used filter combinations are saved as segments; the LCP, INP and CLS filters in the performance group also isolate recordings of slow sessions.¹⁰

Clarity’s client API is used to add site-specific information to a session: a window.clarity(“set”, key, value) call records a custom tag, and a window.clarity(“event”, name) call records a custom event; in Microsoft’s own example, the tag carries the name of an experiment.¹¹ In an A/B test, tagging each session with its variant name lets you see in recordings which variant produced which friction; whether the difference is significant is a matter of the calculation we explain on our A/B testing page.

The GA4 connection is set up by signing in with a Google account from Clarity’s settings; through it, Clarity pulls GA data and shows it in its own Google Analytics dashboard, which Microsoft recommends using to troubleshoot user issues.¹² For now, only one web property can be connected to each Clarity project.¹² We open the drop-off step we find in GA4 in Clarity with the same page and campaign filters, and dig into the recordings and maps. The two tools’ numbers aren’t expected to match exactly; bot filtering and consent status are handled differently on each side.

How our Clarity analysis services work in the first 30 days

The work of the first 30 days is to verify the setup and privacy, let data accumulate, and write findings up with their level of evidence. We go in this order:

1. Week 1 · Setup and privacy: the Clarity project is created in your account, the tag is installed through a single route, masking and the consent signal are configured; the collect request and cookie behavior are verified in the browser.
2. Week 2 · Connections: the GA4 connection, campaign and variant tags and critical events are added; bot sessions and internal traffic are checked, and segments are saved.
3. Week 3 · First read: friction signals, heatmaps and recordings at the drop-off step are read by device and channel; evidential recordings are tagged.
4. Week 4 · Findings report: each finding is written up with its evidence, the page it affects and the recommended fix; clear bugs go to fixing, and uncertain ones become test hypotheses.

Data starts flowing right after setup; according to Microsoft, it takes a few hours to show in the dashboard.¹ Maps and friction signals need enough visits to the page to be read meaningfully, which is why we schedule the first read for the third week.

Setup only, or heatmap analysis services?

Installing Clarity is quick; the value comes from reading recordings regularly and turning them into decisions. There are three ways to work, depending on your needs:

We cover the fixes and tests that come out of findings on our CRO consulting page.

How to choose a Microsoft Clarity consultant

1. Project ownership: the Clarity project is created in your account, and the partner is added as a member.
2. Masking checks: the partner shows, template by template on a fresh recording, that personal data is masked.
3. Consent signal: how the banner decision reaches Clarity, and how that’s verified in the browser, is explained.
4. Evidence-based findings: each finding is backed by recordings, maps and GA4 data; a single rage click isn’t treated as a decision.
5. Measurable language: no promise of “guaranteed conversion growth”; how a fix’s effect will be measured is written down first.

What drives Clarity setup and analysis pricing?

There is no license fee for Clarity itself; the scope of the work sets the service fee:

We work out the scope together in the first meeting and then send a written proposal.

Microsoft Clarity pricing: estimated ranges

Estimated range, excluding VAT; rows marked “/ month” are monthly, the others are one-off. Scope is confirmed in a written proposal after the first meeting. As of October 2026.

If you’d like to read together where visitors get stuck on your site, pick a meeting day that suits you below.