Free Cookie Compliance Scanner

If your website sets non-essential cookies (analytics, advertising pixels, social embeds) on visitors from the EU/EEA or UK, yes — the ePrivacy Directive requires informed consent before they load, and the GDPR sets the standard that consent must be. Strictly necessary cookies (sessions, carts, security) do not need consent. Several US states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, and others) have their own consent-or-opt-out rules for tracking cookies.

Supervisory authorities can fine up to €20 million or 4% of global annual turnover under the GDPR, and consent failures are among the most-fined issues in Europe. US state laws carry per-violation penalties. Beyond fines, ad platforms increasingly require valid consent signals — an unfixable configuration can get your tracking suspended.

In the EU/EEA and UK, yes — Google Analytics sets non-essential cookies, so it must not load until the visitor consents. Multiple data-protection authorities have specifically ruled against loading it without consent. Configure your consent tool to block it pre-consent, and consider server-side or cookieless analytics if consent rates hurt.

Strictly necessary cookies: session identifiers, shopping-cart state, CSRF tokens, load-balancer cookies, security cookies, and the cookie that remembers the visitor's consent choice itself. The test is simple: if switching it off breaks a core function the user asked for, it is probably strictly necessary.

Reject-all must be as easy to reach and tap as accept-all, consent must be granular per category (analytics, marketing), nothing non-essential loads before the choice, pre-ticked boxes are invalid, consent is recorded and can be withdrawn as easily as granted, and the banner says what is set and why.

It is enough to find your problems, not to keep you compliant forever — sites add new cookies with every new script or tag. Phriday's free scan gives you the point-in-time truth (banner presence, pre-consent tracking, full inventory) plus the consent-principles checklist; rerun it whenever you change your tag setup.

Nothing — it is free forever. No credit card, no trial clock. We built Phriday to make compliance less miserable for small businesses, and the cookie scanner is our gift: the thing everyone needs, free. Paid Phriday products (accessibility monitoring and the security Compliance Halo) pay for it.