Microsoft Clarity vs Google Analytics

Do you want to know the difference between Microsoft Clarity vs Google Analytics?

Microsoft Clarity is arguably the most complementary tool to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) outside of those in the Google Marketing Platform.

Clarity is designed to help you understand exactly what your visitors are doing on your website; whereas GA4 provides a broader overview of your website’s performance, focusing on metrics such as user acquisition, engagement, and conversions.

🚨 Note: We will explore the essential aspects of these tools without covering installation. Please check the FAQ section at the end to learn more about the tools or read their documentation.

We are going to cover these key points to differentiate Microsoft Clarity vs Google Analytics:

• Cost
• Integration
• The Interface
• Filters
• Events
• Sampling
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Let’s dive in!

Cost

Both tools are free to use. However, Google Analytics has a paid version known as GA4 360 for enterprise-level businesses.

Although very similar to the free version, GA4 360 allows you to collect, report, keep, and export more data. It also includes dedicated technical support.

Microsft Clarity remains free for all.  Both tools can be tried via their free demos. Clarity is accessible without registration.

The Google Analytics demo account requires a Google account; once registered with your Gmail, you can access the Google Merchandise Store (web data) and Flood-It! (app and web data).

Integration

Microsoft Clarity offers third-party integrations, including GA4. We’ll focus on this integration in this article. To enable this integration, you’ll need to install Clarity on your website first.

There are different ways to install it, but here is the recommended method.

Connecting GA4 creates a GA Dashboard in Clarity, letting you analyze GA4 data with Clarity’s features.

The Google Analytics dashboard in Clarity contains five cards for the following:

• Audience overview
• Acquisition report
• Popular pages
• Sessions by country/region
• Sessions by device

How to use the GA4 dashboard in Microsoft Clarity

Each card in the dashboard has Clarity features that can be used for selected data points.

To illustrate, we have a page for server-side tracking services and we would be interested in knowing where there might be opportunities, curiosity, or even frustration from visitors who land on this page.

We can go to the Popular page card, locate our page path being /services/server-side-gtm-services, and click either the session recordings or the heatmaps icons under the Actions column, to get a deeper understanding of your user’s behaviors.

You’ll be directed to a report specific to that page where you can use AI to make sense of all these interactions, especially if there are many – more on this topic in the Artificial Intelligence section.

Alternatively, you can also identify problematic pages in GA4 and then examine them more closely in Microsoft Clarity using filters.

The Interface

The new data model and overwhelming interface of GA4, with its many settings and reports, can frustrate users of Universal Analytics and discourage newcomers.

Microsoft Clarity cuts through the complexity by focusing on specific behavior analytics data. Clarity has a clear and well-spaced interface with fewer options, making it straightforward to find what you need.

Clarity’s menu organizes reports into four sections:

1. Dashboard
2. Recordings to observe user sessions
3. Heatmaps to see user activity patterns
4. Settings for customization

Integrating GA4 adds a dedicated “Google Analytics” section for analyzing GA4 data within Clarity.

Filters

Both Microsoft Clarity and GA4 have filters that let you view reports for a subset of data. For example, you can view a report specifically for Google organic traffic. Both largely share similar filtering features.

However, Clarity is more focused on user behavior and performance metrics. These distinct features are highlighted in bold in the table below, which includes the filter groups available in Microsoft Clarity.

Filter Group	Filters
User info	Time frame Day of the week Device Browser Operating system Location Clarity user ID User type
User actions	Rage clicks, Dead clicks Excessive scrolling Quick backs Cursor movement Entered text, Selected text, Clicked text Resized page Page scroll depth Smart events Funnels Reader type, Reading behavior
Path	Entry URL Exit URL Visited URL
Traffic	Referring site Source Medium Campaign Channel
Performance	Performance score Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) First Input Delay (FID) Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Product	Price Brand Product name Availability Rating Number of ratings Purchases Checkout abandonment
Session	Session duration Session click count Session page count
Page	Page duration Page click count JavaScript errors Click error Page size Screen resolution Visible page Hidden page
Custom	Custom tags Custom IDs Custom labels

On the other hand, GA4 provides detailed eCommerce filters, general test data filters, and user lifetime filters, which are not available in Microsoft Clarity.

You can see these highlighted in bold in the table below, which lists the filter and comparison options in GA4.

Type	GA4 Filters & Comparisons options
Custom	Member ID	UTM content	UTM keyword
	member_level	search_term	search duration
Demographics	Age	Gender	Session source/medium
eCommerce	Item ID	Item affiliation	Item Brand
	Item category	Item category 2	Item category 3
	Item category 4	Item category 5	Item coupon
	Item list ID	Item list name	Item list position
	Item location ID	Item name	Item promotion ID
	Item promotion creative name	Item promotion creative slot	Item promotion name
	Item variant	Local item price
General	Test data filter name
Geography	City	Country	Region
Page / Screen	Hostname	Landing page + query string	Page path and screen class
Platform / Device	App version	Browser	Device
	Device brand	Device category	Device model
	Language code	Os with version	Operating system
	Platform	Screen resolution	Stream name
Time	Date	Date + hour (YYYYMMDDHH)	Day
	Hour	Month	Week
	Year
Traffic Source	Session campaign	Session campaign ID	Session creative format
	Session default channel group	Session medium	Session primary channel group (Default Channel Group)
	Session source	First user source/medium	Session source platform
	First user campaign	First user campaign ID	First user creative format
	First user default channel group	First user medium	First user primary channel group (Default Channel Group)
	First user source	First user source / medium	First user source platform
User	Audience name
User Lifetime	First session date	First visit date

Clarity Segments vs Saved Comparisons

Microsoft Clarity allows you to save your filter selections, name them, and easily apply them later in your reports. There’s no need to recreate the same filters from scratch every time.

In Clarity, these saved filters are called Segments.

However, they are different from GA4 Segments. The equivalent in GA4 is Saved Comparisons. GA4 Segments are very similar to GA4 Comparisons and Microsoft Clarity’s Segments.

However, they can only be used in GA4 Explorations to explore data deeper than standard reports. They have additional conditions the others don’t have such as Sequence conditions, Condition scope, and Dynamic evaluation.

Clarity Segments cannot be compared one to the other; whereas GA4 Saved Comparisons enable you to compare your filters side by side.

Where Are Filters in Microsoft Clarity vs Google Analytics 4?

To use filters in Clarity, click the Filters dropdown at the top of the page.

Then, make your selection.

Here is where you can find GA4 filters and comparisons.

1. Go to Reports.
2. Select a standard report except for Overview reports.

See Comparisons and Filters at the top of your report’s page.

Events

Before the introduction of GA4, website interactions that communicated data to Google Analytics were known as hits. This remains the case for many analytics platforms.

In Universal Analytics (UA), the predecessor to GA4, hits were categorized into seven hit types, with the four most common being Page View, Event, Ecommerce, and Social.

However, GA4 has eliminated this distinction by consolidating all hit types into “events.” Everything in GA4 is considered an event.

Universal Analytics property hit types	UA hit types in a GA4 property
Page View	Event
Event	Event
Social	Event
Transaction/e-commerce	Event
User Timing	Event
Exception	Event
App/screen view	Event

Smart Events vs GA4 Events

Both GA4 and Microsoft Clarity use events to track user interactions. However, their capabilities and approaches to event categorization differ slightly.

GA4 categorizes its events into Automatically Collected Events and those that require your implementation to appear in GA4.

Clarity’s Smart Events are fewer in number compared to those available in GA4. In comparison to GA4, Smart Events blends elements of GA4’s event types, though they are not exact comparisons.

Clarity’s “Defined by Clarity” events resemble GA4’s Automatically Collected Events, Enhanced Measurement Events, and Recommended Events. Clarity’s API events align more with GA4’s Custom Events and require code, unlike the other event types.

🚨Note: About Smart Events:
– The Purchases feature is only available on Clarity projects of Shopify sites.
– The Checkout Abandonment feature is only available on Clarity projects of Shopify Plus sites.
– The Product Information is only available for sites that use Product Json LD.

Smart Events are automatically generated and include:

• Purchase
• Add to Cart
• Begin Checkout
• Contact Us
• Submit Form
• Request Quote
• Sign Up
• Login
• Download

They work by automatically identifying and responding to specific HTML elements on a website, such as links and forms.

Let’s take the “Contact Us” Smart Event to illustrate. When a link containing “mailto:” is clicked, Clarity detects this action and defines it as a contact event.

Similarly, it recognizes form elements based on the website’s HTML code, and when these forms are submitted, Clarity captures the submit event triggered by the browser.

Since Clarity provides heatmaps, it can track scrolling percentages, which are Scroll on the page.

However, GA4 only tracks when it reaches 90% by default. For other percentages, you have to configure them manually using Google Tag Manager. See this in How to Set Up GA4 Scroll Tracking.

Sampling

Microsoft Clarity does not use sampling, meaning it captures all user interactions without reducing the data set to make statistical estimations.

In contrast, GA4 applies sampling once the event quota limit (10 million events for a standard property) is exceeded.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Microsoft Clarity simplifies session recording analysis by generating summaries and insights in seconds. This increased efficiency comes courtesy of Copilot, Microsoft’s generative AI chatbot.

Copilot analyzes recordings to understand user intent and identify potential issues, reducing the need for guesswork.

Clarity tackles a common difficulty in behavior analytics tools: the time-consuming task of reviewing and interpreting vast amounts of session recordings and heatmaps.

Regardless of the platform you use (Hotjar, Clarity, etc.), reviewing hundreds of recordings can be overwhelming.

While focusing on 20 recordings is a common suggestion, the process still requires significant time for selecting, viewing, and taking notes on each session.

Here are options to either generate insights for one session recording or summarize multiple recordings:

Google Analytics uses AI-powered capabilities to help you make faster decisions and uncover new insights from your data. These include advanced modeling techniques and insights, which come in two forms: automated and custom.

Automated insights detect unusual changes or emerging trends in the data and notify users automatically; while custom insights are based on user-defined conditions to highlight important changes.

To set them up, follow our guide on How to Set Up GA4 Custom Insights.

FAQ

Discrepancies Between Microsoft Clarity vs Google Analytics 4

This article details key points on discrepancies between Microsoft Clarity and Google Analytics. To summarize:

• Time Zone Differences: Clarity uses UTC, while GA4 uses the user’s local time zone.
• Tracking Code Placement: Ensure all pages have the Clarity tracking code.
• IP Address Blocking: Clarity may block certain IP addresses that GA4 tracks.
• Session Definitions: Sessions expire after 30 minutes of inactivity in Clarity. The default session timeout in GA4 is also 30 minutes, but it can vary since it can be changed.
• Filters and Settings: Clear filters except for the timeframe to ensure consistent data comparison.

Summary

Despite similarities, Microsoft Clarity and GA4 are not alternatives but complementary tools.

We’ve examined key features, overlaps, and differences, showing how together they can help website owners improve conversions and better serve users.

If you find this comparison useful, we also have a comparison between GA4 and Hotjar, another behavioral analytics tool like Clarity.

Have you used Clarity in your analytic work? What are your thoughts on how Clarity compares to GA4? Let us know in the comments below.