Data privacy laws are not stricter than ever, and businesses with a global user base must keep up. Regulations like GDPR and CCPA have made cookie compliance essential to running a website. While this process can seem like a hassle, it’s good for both the users and the businesses. On the user side, these regulations protect their data from being used without their consent. For businesses, cookie compliance does more than just help them avoid paying hefty fines. It also helps build user trust. And the first step of cookie compliance is actually knowing what kind of cookies your website uses.
What is a Cookie Compliance Checker?
A cookie compliance checker, also known as a cookie scanner or cookie crawler, is a tool that automates that first step. It scans your pages, identifies every cookie your site stores, and categorises them. Without a cookie scanner, you would have to go through each page manually, which can be time-consuming and leave room for errors.
How Does a Cookie Compliance Checker Work?
Most cookie scanners essentially work the same way. The process is as follows:
- First, you enter your website’s URL, and the tool simulates a virtual user visiting your site.
- Then, It captures all the cookies stored during the visit, including those from subpages and third-party scripts.
- The tool matches the detected cookies with a database, and categorises them into functional, analytics and marketing.
- Finally, the findings are presented in a report, showing what cookies your site uses and what for.
Almost all cookie checkers are part of Consent Management Platforms (CMP), so they use this data to generate compliant cookie banners and policies automatically. Periodic scans ensure new cookies added to your site as it evolves are detected. Some CMPs even offer daily scans, with up to 100 per day.
Why Do You Need a Cookie Compliance Checker?
Global privacy laws like GDPR require websites to announce and categorise cookies to protect user privacy and give visitors more control over their data. A cookie compliance checker makes this possible by giving you an accurate inventory of your site’s cookies. With this information, you can create a cookie banner and policy that allows users to choose which cookies they want to accept or reject and learn more about the functions and usage of those cookies.
Now, if done manually, this process can be quite tedious. Especially since it needs to be done regularly to keep your website updated with the ever-changing regulations. As the cookie compliance checker automates the process, it saves a lot of time by making it efficient and effortless.
Best Cookie Compliance Checking Tools
If you’re looking for a cookie compliance checker, here are some options that might be worth looking into:
- consentmanager: Offers up to 100 scans daily for up to 20 domains, with no subpage limit.
- CookieYes: Provides unlimited scans and supports up to 8,000 subpages, making it ideal for small to medium-sized websites.
- Cookiebot: Scans more than 3,500 subpages with scalable pricing for larger websites.
- CookieFirst and CookieScript: Both include monthly scans. CookieScript mentions a limit of 3,000 subpages, while CookieFirst does not specify.
Each of these tools simplifies cookie compliance, but their features and pricing cater to different business needs. For a deeper dive into these CMPs, check out our guide to the Top 5 Best Consent Management Platforms in 2025.
Wrapping Up
A cookie compliance checker can actually add value to your business by saving time and money while helping you comply with privacy laws. Moreover, they also make your data processing practices more transparent and build user trust. So, you should let tools like this do most of the heavy lifting so you can focus on what really matters: growing your business.