Try or ByeTry or Bye

Hotjar Not Capturing All Sessions (Session Limit Reached)

Ongoing Web Updated October 21, 2026

Quick answer

Hotjar only captures sessions up to your plan's allowance and samples traffic above it; once the allowance is used up, no new recordings or heatmap data arrive until the reset. On the free Contentsquare plan, replays cover only 5% of sessions.

Most likely fix: Check coverage.

Symptoms

Recording counts are far below your visitor numbers, or recordings and heatmaps stop updating partway through the period.

Why it happens

  • Traffic above the plan's capture rate is sampled
  • Allowance used up before the reset date
  • Free plan records replays for only 5% of sessions (max 10k)
  • Coverage is less accurate in the first 7 days after install

How to fix it

Try these in order — the most common fix is first.

  1. 1. Check coverage

    1. Open the traffic coverage widget in the top-right of Hotjar to see your capture rate and coverage

  2. 2. Spend sessions on pages that matter

    1. Use Session targeting & tracking to limit capture to key pages or events

  3. 3. Raise the session tier

    1. Upgrade your Experience Analytics (Observe) session tier, or use Microsoft Clarity for full-volume recording

This guide also covers

  • hotjar not capturing all sessions
  • hotjar session limit
  • hotjar sampling
  • hotjar recordings missing

Still not working?

If Hotjar keeps failing, you're not alone. See every Hotjar problem users report or the alternatives people switch to.

Other Hotjar errors