How to Tell If a Website Uses Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is one of the original heatmap and conversion-optimisation tools, best known for the colourful click maps, scrollmaps and "confetti" reports that show where visitors click and how far they scroll. To tell whether a site uses it, the fastest checks are to look for a snapshot script from script.crazyegg.com or to type CE2 into the browser console. Here is the full detection playbook and what the find means.

What is Crazy Egg?

Crazy Egg is a long-established CRO platform aimed primarily at marketers rather than engineers. Its signature features are heatmaps (where people click), scrollmaps (how far down they read), confetti reports (clicks segmented by source), session recordings and a lightweight A/B testing tool. It competes with Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity, Lucky Orange and Mouseflow in the qualitative-analytics space.

Because Crazy Egg is marketing-led and easy to install, you will most often find it on landing pages, lead-generation sites and content pages where a team is actively trying to lift conversion. Its presence is a clear signal that someone is studying on-page behaviour with optimisation in mind.

How Crazy Egg loads and sends data

A Crazy Egg install loads a per-account "snapshot" script from script.crazyegg.com/pages/scripts/<account-id>/<snapshot-id>.js (the account ID is often a slash-separated path derived from the numeric account number). The script boots the recording library, which exposes the global CE2 object (older versions also set CE_SNAPSHOT_NAME). As visitors interact, click and scroll data is sent back to crazyegg.com endpoints to build the heatmaps and recordings.

State is held in first-party cookies — most recognisably _ce.s (session and snapshot state), _CEFT (snapshot/feature targeting) and is_returning (returning-visitor flag). Knowing this account-scoped script path and the _ce/_CE cookie family makes detection straightforward.

How to tell if a website uses Crazy Egg

1. View the page source. Search for crazyegg or crazy egg. You will usually find the script.crazyegg.com/pages/scripts/.../....js reference, which embeds the account and snapshot IDs.

2. Check the Network tab. Filter for crazyegg. You will see the snapshot script load from script.crazyegg.com and subsequent tracking requests to crazyegg.com. The account-scoped script path is the giveaway.

3. Use the console. Type CE2 and press Enter. Crazy Egg's library returns the CE2 object; on older installs CE_SNAPSHOT_NAME is also defined. These globals confirm the tool is active.

4. Inspect cookies. Look for _ce.s, _CEFT and is_returning. The _ce/_CE prefix is distinctive to Crazy Egg.

5. Check for the account ID. The numeric account ID in the script path is a useful identifier and confirms which Crazy Egg account is recording.

What the Crazy Egg signals look like

GET https://script.crazyegg.com/pages/scripts/0123/4567.js
Cookie: _ce.s = "...snapshot+session state..."
Cookie: _CEFT = "..."
window.CE2 = { ... }

The pairing of the script.crazyegg.com snapshot script, the CE2 global and the _ce.s cookie is conclusive.

Crazy Egg versus similar tools — avoiding false positives

The heatmap space has several look-alikes, so match the exact fingerprint. Crazy Egg uses script.crazyegg.com and the CE2 global; Hotjar uses static.hotjar.com and hj/_hjSettings; Microsoft Clarity uses clarity.ms and the clarity global; Lucky Orange uses tools.luckyorange.com and __lo_site_id; Mouseflow uses cdn.mouseflow.com and _mfp. They overlap in purpose but never in fingerprint. Crazy Egg can also be deployed through Google Tag Manager, so the script may appear only after GTM runs — check the live page rather than the static HTML alone.

How reliable is each Crazy Egg signal?

The account-scoped script.crazyegg.com/pages/scripts/.../....js request is definitive, because that path structure is unique to Crazy Egg and embeds the account. The _ce.s and _CEFT cookies are close behind. The CE2 global is strong confirmation. The weakest signal is a generic mention of "crazyegg" in a tag-manager container without the script actually loading. As ever, prefer the live network request or the cookies over a static reference.

What a Crazy Egg install reveals about a company

Crazy Egg is a marketing-and-CRO tool, so its presence marks a team focused on converting traffic, typically on landing pages and campaign destinations. It is more common at small and mid-sized businesses, agencies and marketing teams than at large engineering organisations, which tend to favour FullStory or Contentsquare. If you sell CRO services, landing-page design, copywriting or A/B testing tools, a Crazy Egg install is a strong fit signal: the buyer already believes in optimising on-page behaviour and has chosen an accessible, marketer-friendly tool to do it.

Crazy Egg in a modern measurement stack

Crazy Egg usually sits alongside a primary analytics tool (most often Google Analytics) and sometimes a dedicated A/B testing platform. Because it is marketing-led, finding it together with email-marketing tools, landing-page builders (Unbounce, Instapage) and ad pixels paints a picture of a conversion-focused marketing stack rather than a product-engineering one. For an auditor, note the account ID, whether GTM injects it, and which other marketing tools coexist; those facts characterise the team's optimisation maturity and the kind of services or products they are likely to buy.

A quick Crazy Egg detection checklist

• Filter the Network tab for crazyegg; the script.crazyegg.com/pages/scripts/.../....js load is conclusive.
• Search the source for crazyegg and the account-scoped script path.
• Type CE2 in the console (and check CE_SNAPSHOT_NAME on older installs).
• Check cookies for _ce.s, _CEFT and is_returning.
• Note the numeric account ID from the script path.
• Confirm the script actually loads, not just a GTM reference.

Privacy and consent with Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg's heatmaps and scrollmaps are aggregate by nature, but its recordings feature captures individual sessions, which brings the same privacy considerations as any replay tool. Responsible deployments mask sensitive fields and gate the snapshot script behind consent. When you audit a site, check whether the script.crazyegg.com snapshot loads before or after the cookie banner is actioned: a script that fires on first paint, before any consent choice, is a compliance concern in the EU and UK and a useful signal that the team treats Crazy Egg as a fire-and-forget marketing tag rather than a governed analytics tool. Because Crazy Egg is so often installed by marketers through Google Tag Manager, the consent wiring frequently lives in GTM's consent mode rather than in the snippet itself, so it is worth checking the tag manager configuration as well as the page.

There is a practical corollary for detection. If a site uses GTM consent mode and you have not accepted analytics cookies, the Crazy Egg snapshot may never load, and a quick scan would wrongly conclude the tool is absent. Always accept cookies and reload before declaring a negative result — this is one of the most common reasons heatmap tools are missed in a casual audit.

A quick Crazy Egg confirmation walkthrough

Open the page with developer tools on the Network tab and accept any cookie banner. Filter the requests for crazyegg and reload: the giveaway is a request to script.crazyegg.com/pages/scripts/<account>/<snapshot>.js. Switch to the Console and type CE2 — a returned object confirms the recording library is live; on older installs, check CE_SNAPSHOT_NAME too. Then open the Application panel and look under Cookies for _ce.s, _CEFT and is_returning. The numeric account ID embedded in the script path is a bonus: it identifies which Crazy Egg account is running, useful when you are profiling an agency that manages many client sites from one account. Three quick signals, and you have both confirmed the tool and captured an account identifier.

When finding Crazy Egg matters most

For agencies and CRO consultants, a Crazy Egg install on a prospect's landing pages is a warm signal: the team already believes in heatmap-driven optimisation, so the conversation is about doing it better rather than convincing them it matters. For competitive research, spotting Crazy Egg on a rival's campaign pages tells you they are actively studying on-page behaviour and iterating, which is worth factoring into how you benchmark their funnel. And for anyone selling a competing or complementary tool — A/B testing platforms, landing-page builders, analytics suites — a Crazy Egg footprint marks an optimisation-minded buyer who has already opened their wallet for conversion tooling.

How Crazy Egg compares to Hotjar and Microsoft Clarity

If you are auditing a site and find Crazy Egg, it helps to know how it sits against the two category leaders. Hotjar is the most widely deployed heatmap-and-recordings tool and leans on surveys, feedback widgets and a generous free tier; it is the default choice for many product and marketing teams. Microsoft Clarity is completely free, including unlimited recordings and heatmaps, and is increasingly common precisely because it costs nothing — so a paid Crazy Egg subscription alongside or instead of Clarity tells you the team values Crazy Egg's specific reports (confetti, scrollmaps) or its A/B testing enough to pay for them.

Crazy Egg's distinct angle is its marketer-friendly visual reports and its lightweight built-in A/B testing, which Hotjar historically lacked and Clarity does not offer. It is less focused on session-replay depth than FullStory or Contentsquare, and less app-oriented than Smartlook. So a Crazy Egg find typically points to a conversion-focused marketing team optimising specific landing pages, rather than a product-engineering org instrumenting an app. That distinction shapes how you pitch to them: speak the language of campaign conversion and page optimisation, not product analytics. Knowing where Crazy Egg sits in the category also helps you predict what else you might find — often an email tool, a landing-page builder and ad pixels rather than a CDP or product-analytics suite.

Detecting Crazy Egg at scale

One page is a quick check. To find every site running heatmaps across a prospect list, automate it. StackOptic detects Crazy Egg and thousands of other technologies from a real browser, catching tag-manager-injected installs. See how to find out what analytics a website uses and the Crazy Egg profile for more.