A FullStory alternative that tells you which fix to ship, without recording anyone.
FullStory records each visit so you can watch it back. Trace records nothing personal, adds up what all visitors did, ranks the problems by visits affected, and checks after each release whether the fix worked. It's hosted in the EU, so legal has less to argue about.
Keep FullStory if you need
- Support teams watching one customer's session to answer a ticket
- Designers who want to see hesitation and confusion that never turns into a click
- Enterprise integrations, exports and the AI features you already rely on
Choose Trace if you want
- Frustration and errors you can act on without recording sessions in the EU
- A dashboard a PM can read in five minutes: problems ranked, goals against targets
- A verdict on every release, so you know which fixes worked
Side by side
| FullStory | Trace | |
|---|---|---|
| How problems surface | Frustration signals in sessions, prioritised by its AI | Ranked by visits affected, with the element and page |
| What is stored | Full session recordings, with masking rules | Totals per page and element. No recordings. |
| Cookies | First-party cookies to follow visitors | None by default |
| Browser errors | Error clicks and console errors, searchable | Counted, with the visits they broke |
| Coding agents | MCP server in beta, with StoryAI | MCP server built for the loop: problem, fix, verdict |
| Did it work? | Not built in | A verdict 14 days after each release |
| Price | Sales-led | Free to start, or self-host for free |
| Self-host | No | Yes, open source |
FullStory details from its public documentation, checked 29 October 2026. Spot something out of date? Tell us.
Moving from FullStory: what maps to what
Most of what your team does in FullStory has a direct counterpart. Replays are the one thing with none, on purpose.
| In FullStory | In Trace |
|---|---|
| Frustration signals: rage, dead and error clicks | Problems, ranked by visits affected |
| Funnels | Funnels in trace.json, reviewed in a pull request |
| Custom events (FS.event) | trace.track() |
| Segments by page or feature | Product areas and features |
| Watching a replay to understand why | The element, page, error and share of visits. Mask anything sensitive. |
What you give up without replays
Replays show hesitation: a cursor that hovers, a visitor who reads the same paragraph twice, copy that gets misread. Trace can't see any of that, because it never records a session. What it does see is every click that went nowhere, every error, every form left half done and every step people drop out of, counted across all visitors instead of the few sessions someone had time to watch.
In practice most fixes come from the second list. For the first, five short user interviews tell you more than a thousand replays, and they don't need a recording of anyone.
Run them side by side for a month
Add the Trace tag next to FullStory. It adds 8.4 KB and does its work when the browser is idle.
Compare Trace's top three problems with what your team found in replays. Ship the first one.
Read the verdict on what you shipped. Keep what still earns its place. Most teams keep replays for support.
Questions from FullStory users
Can Trace replace FullStory?
For finding and fixing UX problems, often yes. If support watches replays to resolve tickets, keep FullStory for that.
Without replays, how do I know why people struggle?
Trace tells you where and how often: the element, the page, the error and the share of visits. In our demo shop, that is enough to see that 436 visits clicked a photo that isn't a link.
Can a PM use it without a coding agent?
Yes. The dashboard ranks the problems and shows goals and funnels. Each problem is a written task you can hand to a developer.
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