Hotjar vs ReadMe

Hotjar (Product Experience Insights Tools) and ReadMe (Interactive developer hubs that help users succeed with your APIs 🦉) both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

ReadMe (rank #257) holds a narrow lead over Hotjar (rank #317) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (47 vs 44). The gap of 3 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

On code quality (the state of repositories, tests, releases and polish), ReadMe is ahead of Hotjar. On education (docs, guides and learning material for developers), Hotjar is ahead of ReadMe. On community (issue response, PR reviews and discussion health), ReadMe is clearly ahead of Hotjar. On reach (how visible the ecosystem is beyond its own repos), Hotjar is clearly ahead of ReadMe. On momentum (release cadence and how fast the ecosystem moves), ReadMe is clearly ahead of Hotjar.

Hotjar carries 52 GitHub stars across 2 public repos, with 1 repositories active in the last 90 days and 2 external contributors on record. ReadMe shows 1,824 stars across 106 public repos, 26 active in the last 90 days and 21 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but ReadMe's footprint is roughly 35.1x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Hotjar is the stronger read for anyone weighting reach. ReadMe looks better where momentum is the deciding factor. The table below breaks the scores down pillar by pillar; the linked profiles cover the underlying repos, docs and community signals in full.