Maze vs Hotjar: Before Launch vs After Launch

Maze and Hotjar both fall under "UX research tools," but they operate at completely different stages of the product lifecycle. Choosing between them is really choosing which question you need to answer.

What each tool actually measures

Maze runs unmoderated usability tests on prototypes — primarily Figma files, but also Marvel and other formats. You set up a test with tasks ("find the settings page and update your email address"), recruit participants, and Maze collects task completion rates, misclick rates, time on task, and heatmaps of where people clicked on your prototype.

You use Maze before you launch something, to validate that your design works before investing engineering time building it.

Hotjar records what real users do on your live product. Session recordings, heatmaps of where people actually click on your production site, scroll maps showing how far down the page users read. You also get on-site surveys and feedback tools.

You use Hotjar after you've launched, to understand what users actually do versus what you expected them to do.

Why Hotjar wins for most teams

Most teams that buy a UX research tool do so because something is broken and they don't know why. Conversion isn't where it should be. A feature isn't being used. Users are dropping off at a specific step. These are questions about live product behavior — not prototype behavior.

Hotjar answers these questions directly. You watch session recordings to see where users get confused. You look at heatmaps to see that nobody clicks the primary CTA because it's below the fold on mobile. You use the feedback widget to let users tell you what's wrong. The data is real because the users are real.

Maze can't help with live product issues. If something is broken in production, running a prototype test won't give you the answer.

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Where Maze earns its place

Maze is genuinely valuable for validating designs before engineering builds them. If you're about to ask a developer team to spend three weeks building a complex checkout flow, running a Maze test on the prototype first is cheap insurance. If users fail a task completion test at 40%, you learn that before any code gets written.

Maze also handles first-click testing, tree testing, and card sorting — research methods that require structured test scenarios rather than open-ended behavior observation. These methods are specific, and Maze's test creation interface is built for them.

For teams with dedicated UX researchers running regular research programs, Maze fills a specific slot in the research toolkit that Hotjar doesn't cover.

The workflow that uses both

The highest-value research programs use both tools at different stages:

Before launch: design a feature, build a Figma prototype, run a Maze unmoderated test with 20-30 participants, identify the friction points, iterate on the design.

After launch: instrument the feature with Hotjar, watch session recordings for the first week, check heatmaps to validate that user behavior matches what you expected, use feedback surveys to catch issues you didn't anticipate.

The two tools create a feedback loop — Maze validates before, Hotjar monitors after. Teams that build this loop catch more issues earlier at lower cost than teams relying on either tool alone.

If you can only pick one

If you have to choose: start with Hotjar. Your product is live. Real users are using it right now, and you don't have data on what they're doing. Hotjar's free tier (35 daily session recordings) gives you immediate value before you spend a dollar.

Maze makes sense once you have an active product development cycle and you're regularly validating new features before building them. If you're not running usability tests on prototypes consistently, Maze's monthly cost is hard to justify.

Pricing

Hotjar: Free (35 daily sessions). Plus at $32/month. Business at $80–171/month.

Maze: Starter at $99/month (3 studies). Organization plan at custom pricing.

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