Why people switch from CookieYes
CookieYes is the most-installed cookie banner on the web, and most of the people searching for a replacement are not unhappy with the banner. They are unhappy with the bill, the cap, or the free tier. Four reasons come up again and again in reviews and forum threads, and each one is verifiable on CookieYes's own pricing page.
1. Every domain is its own subscription
CookieYes prices every plan per domain: Basic $10, Pro $25, Ultimate $55 a month, each for one domain, and the free plan is limited to one per account. Two domains on Pro cost $50 a month; five client sites cost $125. Geo-targeting, which shows EU visitors an opt-in banner and US visitors an opt-out one, starts at Pro, so the per-domain price that matters for a multi-jurisdiction site is $25, not $10.
2. A pageview cap that can switch the banner off
Every CookieYes plan below Ultimate has a monthly pageview cap: 5,000 on Free, 100,000 on Basic, 300,000 on Pro. CookieYes's documentation is direct about what happens at the cap: “Once your monthly pageview limit is reached, the cookie banner will no longer be displayed.” Basic and Pro can buy extra pageviews at $0.30 per 1,000, which keeps the banner up, but that setting is only on by default for accounts created after December 23, 2025. Older accounts have to switch it on. The free plan cannot buy extra pageviews at all.
“A free plan that at a certain point hits you up for money otherwise they disable the cookie banner.”
campanellafoto (Michael), WordPress.org reviewer, Jan 20263. Geo-targeting and Global Privacy Control start at $25 a domain
On Free and Basic, every visitor sees the same banner whatever jurisdiction they are in, and the Global Privacy Control signal that California, Colorado and a growing list of US states require sites to honor is not supported. Both features are marked Pro-and-up on CookieYes's plan table. A site with any US and EU traffic is therefore a $25-per-domain site on CookieYes, and that is the number every alternative below should be compared to.
4. The free tier keeps shrinking
CookieYes's v3.4.0 release in January 2026 removed color customization from the free tier. Long-time users on WordPress.org have noticed the pattern.
“They trapped us with a good free tier and now they are making it worse and worse every year... they are removing stuff EVERY YEAR from it, I'm done.”
kroups, WordPress.org reviewer, Feb 2026Not sure whether your CookieYes banner is actually blocking trackers before consent? Run your site through the free compliance scanner and see exactly what fires. It is the fastest way to catch the gap between a banner that shows and a banner that works.
The alternatives at a glance
Eight tools, including ours, on the five things a switcher actually asks about: what it costs per site, what it caps, what a second site costs, whether it is a WordPress plugin or a script, and whether it writes your legal documents. Every price was read from the vendor's own pricing page on September 11, 2026; where a vendor lists euros, the euro figure is shown.
| Tool | Starts at | Traffic cap | More sites | WordPress | Legal documents | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ConsentStack | Free; Pro $29/mo for 30,000 unique visitors | Unique visitors, not pageviews: 1,000 free, 30,000 Pro, 1,000,000 Business | 2 domains on Pro, $5/mo each after | Header script, any theme or host | No generator; the banner links to your policy | More than one site or more than one jurisdiction |
| Cookiebot | Free up to 50 subpages; Premium from $8/mo per domain | No pageview cap; priced by subpage count instead | Each domain and subdomain billed separately | WordPress plugin | No | Automated scanning and IAB TCF publishers |
| Complianz | Free plugin; Premium $59/yr for 1 site | None (self-hosted) | 5 sites $179/yr, 25 sites $399/yr | Native plugin, WordPress only | Yes, generated in the plugin | WordPress-only sites on a flat yearly fee |
| WPConsent | Free plugin; paid from under $100/yr for 1 site | None ("no pageview fees, no usage caps") | 5, 25 or 100 sites at $199, $399 or $599/yr | Native plugin, WordPress only | Not shown on the pricing page | WordPress sites that want Consent Mode v2 and GPC in a plugin |
| Termly | Free (10,000 banner views); Starter $10/mo per site billed annually | Banner views: 50,000 on Starter, unlimited on Pro+ ($15/mo per site annual) | One licence per site; bulk discount from 5 | WordPress plugin | Yes, the core product | Policies and a banner from one vendor |
| iubenda | Essentials $5.99/site/mo billed yearly | 25,000 pageviews on Essentials, then €0.05 per 1,000; 50,000 on Advanced ($24.99); 150,000 on Ultimate ($99.99) | One plan per site | WordPress plugin | Yes, with a 2,400+ service library | Legal-document coverage on a small site |
| Usercentrics | Essential €7/mo for 1,500 sessions and 1 domain | Sessions: 1,500 to 50,000 (€50, 10 domains), then €100 per 100,000 | Domains bundled by tier: 3 on Pro (€30), 10 on Business (€50) | Script; its WordPress plugin ships under the Cookiebot brand | No | Session-metered sites in Europe; also owns Cookiebot |
| OneTrust | No public price; Vendr median $11,970/yr | Contract | Contract | Script | Add-on modules | Enterprise privacy programs |
Sources, all read on September 11, 2026: cookieyes.com/pricing, cookiebot.com/en/pricing, complianz.io/pricing (a discount was showing on the $59 / $179 / $399 list prices that day), wpconsent.com/pricing (a sale was showing; the page lists its Basic tier at both $79 and $99 a year), termly.io/pricing, iubenda.com/en/pricing, usercentrics.com/pricing, onetrust.com/pricing (no prices published; the Vendr median is from our OneTrust cost comparison). ConsentStack prices are from our pricing page.
ConsentStack: for more than one site, or more than one jurisdiction
If the reason you are leaving CookieYes is the per-domain bill or the geo-targeting gate, ConsentStack is the closest replacement. It covers 195+ regulations with geo-detection on every tier (CookieYes gates that behind Pro at $25/mo per domain), meters unique visitors instead of pageviews, and folds extra domains into $5/mo pricing. Here is the side by side.
Where CookieYes is the better fit is covered honestly in When to keep CookieYes below: cookie scanning as a workflow, a very large support community, and an IAB TCF certification we do not hold.
The other seven, one at a time
Each entry names the price that matters for a switcher, the cap, and the one trade you make. Where we have a full comparison page, it is linked.
Cookiebot: the scanner-first pick
Cookiebot (owned by Usercentrics) is the alternative Google's own AI Overview names first as of September 2026, for its automated scanning. It has a free plan for one domain of up to 50 subpages, and Premium tiers from $8 a month (Lite, 50 subpages) to $96 (XLarge) per domain, priced by page count rather than traffic, with daily scanning an extra €99 a month. There is no pageview cap. The trade is the same per-domain math as CookieYes: three sites on Premium Medium ($34) cost $102 a month, against $34 on ConsentStack Pro ($29 plus one $5 domain). Full comparison: ConsentStack vs Cookiebot.
Complianz: the WordPress-only flat fee
Complianz is a WordPress plugin with a free version on wordpress.org and a Premium licence at $59 a year for one site, $179 for five and $399 for twenty-five, legal documents included. Because it runs inside your WordPress install there is no pageview cap and nothing to suspend, which is why the AI Overview lists it as the no-caps WordPress option. It is cheaper per site than ConsentStack. The trade is that it only exists on WordPress: a Shopify store, a Webflow site or a React app needs a second tool. Full comparison: ConsentStack vs Complianz.
WPConsent: the newer WordPress plugin
WPConsent is another WordPress-only plugin with a free version and a “no pageview fees, no usage caps” pitch. Paid licences run from under $100 a year for one site to $199, $399 and $599 for five, twenty-five and one hundred sites, and the plan table lists Google Consent Mode v2 and Global Privacy Control. Its pricing page was mid-sale when we checked, showing its Basic tier at two different list prices. Same trade as Complianz: WordPress only.
Termly: policies and a banner from one vendor
Termly's reason to exist is the legal documents. The free plan includes one basic policy and 10,000 banner views a month; Starter is $10 a month per website billed annually ($14 monthly) with two policies and 50,000 banner views; Pro+ is $15 a month per website billed annually ($20 monthly) with unlimited policies and unlimited banner views. Note that banner views are not unique visitors: one visitor loading twenty pages is twenty views. If you need a privacy policy generated and kept current, Termly does that and ConsentStack does not. Full comparison: Termly alternatives.
iubenda: legal documents on a small site
iubenda pairs a banner with a privacy and cookie policy generator drawing on a library of 2,400 or more services. Essentials is $5.99 a site a month billed yearly ($6.99 monthly) for 25,000 pageviews, then €0.05 per 1,000; Advanced is $24.99 for 50,000 pageviews; Ultimate is $99.99 for 150,000. Like CookieYes it is per site and pageview-metered, so a busy multi-site setup pays twice: once per site and again per thousand pageviews. Pick it for the documents on a low-traffic site.
Usercentrics: session-metered, domains bundled
Usercentrics prices its web CMP in euros by monthly sessions: Essential €7 for 1,500 sessions and one domain, Plus €15 for 3,000, Pro €30 for 15,000 sessions and three domains, Business €50 for 50,000 sessions and ten domains, then €100 per 100,000 sessions. A returning visitor is a new session each time, so the tier you need is higher than your visitor count suggests. The domain bundling is friendlier than CookieYes; the session meter is not. It also owns Cookiebot, so two of the eight tools here share a parent. Full comparison: Usercentrics alternatives.
OneTrust: the enterprise option
OneTrust publishes no prices. Vendr puts the median contract at $11,970 a year before implementation fees, and the product is a privacy program (data mapping, DSARs, vendor risk) with a consent banner inside it. It is the right answer when a procurement team is asking the question, and the wrong one for a site that outgrew a $10 banner. Full comparison: OneTrust pricing vs ConsentStack.
Also on most lists: Osano, whose self-service Plus plan is $199 a month for 30,000 monthly visitors and three domains (free tier: 5,000 visitors, one domain), the same 30,000-visitor tier ConsentStack Pro sells for $29 with two domains; and CookieFirst, Cookie Information, Enzuzo and Ketch, each of which ranks its own product first on its own alternatives page. So do we, which is why every number on this page names its source and date.
CookieYes vs ConsentStack pricing
CookieYes looks affordable at $10/month. But geo-targeting costs $25/month per domain. Branding removal costs $55/month per domain. Every domain is a separate subscription. ConsentStack Pro starts at $29/month with 2 domains included and $5/month per additional domain. Here's what you actually pay.
- 30,000 unique visitors/mo
- Geo-detection on every tier
- Global Privacy Control on every tier
- 7 ad platform integrations
- Branding removed
- Custom CSS/JS, headless mode
- 2 domains included, $5/mo add-on
- No per-pageview billing
- 300,000 pageviews/mo
- Geo-targeting (not on Free/Basic)
- GPC (not on Free/Basic)
- 3 ad platform integrations
- Branding removal requires $55/mo
- Custom CSS (no headless mode)
- $25/mo per domain
- $0.30 per 1,000 extra pageviews, or banner off
Metered on visitors, not pageviews
ConsentStack counts a visitor once a month however many pages they load, so a 300,000-pageview month on a content site is usually well inside Pro's 30,000 unique visitors. There is no per-pageview billing. What happens at the cap is also different: a monthly Pro site that reaches 30,000 visitors is moved to Business so the banner keeps serving, and the new rate is not charged until the next renewal. On the free Basic plan the banner does stop at 1,000 visitors until the next cycle, the same behavior as CookieYes Free at a different number, so if you are choosing between the two free tiers, compare the caps, not the words.
$25/mo per domain adds up fast
CookieYes charges $25/month per domain. Add www.example.com and app.example.com and you're paying $50/month. Five client sites on CookieYes Pro = $125/month. ConsentStack Pro includes 2 domains at $29/month, with additional domains at $5/month each. Five domains on ConsentStack = $44/month. That's a $81/month difference that only grows with every domain you add.
The features you need aren't extras
CookieYes gates geo-targeting and Global Privacy Control at $25/mo, branding removal at $55/mo, and color customization behind any paid plan. ConsentStack includes geo-detection and GPC on free, removes branding at $29/mo, and gives you full visual customization on every tier.
For the full breakdown, including the per-domain compounding math once you run more than one site, read our CookieYes pricing guide.
Source for CookieYes prices: cookieyes.com/pricing, read on September 11, 2026: Free (5,000 pageviews), Basic $10 (100,000 pageviews), Pro $25 (300,000 pageviews), Ultimate $55 (unlimited), each per domain, with extra pageviews at $0.30 per 1,000 on Basic and Pro. Geo-targeting, GPC and IAB TCF are listed on Pro and Ultimate; branding removal on Ultimate only. The pageview-limit behavior is quoted from cookieyes.com/documentation.
Compliance
Enable Global Compliance Mode (one toggle) and 195+ privacy regulations across 157+jurisdictions apply automatically. No region configuration, no jurisdiction research, no manual rule mapping. A visitor from Germany gets GDPR treatment, a visitor from California gets CCPA/CPRA, a visitor from Brazil gets LGPD. All from a single setting, on every tier including free.
CookieYes claims “130+ countries” on its features page but publishes 11 named regulatory frameworks on the homepage and no per-jurisdiction consent model mapping. Their geo-targeting requires the Pro tier ($25/month). Without it, EU and US visitors see the same banner, which means the same consent model for jurisdictions that require fundamentally different treatment. That's not a feature limitation. It's a compliance gap.
ConsentStack covers all 20 US state privacy laws with automatic per-state resolution via a single toggle. CookieYes documents roughly 5 US state laws and appears to treat US states as a single category rather than enforcing per-state consent models.
“CookieYes admin panel shows ~900 visits, Search Console shows ~600, GA4 shows ~80 (!!!)”
u/KitchenCarrot1, r/Wordpress, Mar 2026Without geo-targeting, every visitor sees a GDPR-style opt-in banner, including visitors in jurisdictions with no consent requirement. The result is unnecessary consent friction and a collapse in analytics data. ConsentStack's geo-detection shows the right consent experience to the right visitor, maximizing opt-in rates where consent is needed and showing no banner where it isn't.
Platform
CookieYes started as a WordPress plugin called “Cookie Law Info” in 2012. WordPress is where it shines: 1 million active installs, responsive support, five-minute setup. But the product's strength is also its ceiling. Outside WordPress, CookieYes is a script tag you paste into your site. No headless mode, no REST API, no event system beyond a single cookieyes_banner_loaded event. The Banner Action API offers three actions, and setting partial consent requires manipulating DOM checkboxes by element ID.
“CookieYes plugin is causing issues on my WordPress sites. Sometimes it blocks Elementor forms, slows down or completely breaks page loading.”
u/KitchenCarrot1, r/elementor, Apr 2025Even within WordPress, CookieYes's auto-blocking causes breakage that costs real money. One user reported Gravity Forms payment fields stopped working, costing “$10,000+ in business.” ConsentStack blocks against a library of 900+ known tracker patterns and lets you override any decision.
ConsentStack works identically across WordPress, React, Next.js, Shopify, and any site that can include a script tag. One script, full JavaScript API. getConsent, setConsent, hasConsent, onConsentChange, showBanner, showPreferences, event listeners, command queue, and headless mode on Pro. The same SDK, the same behavior, regardless of platform.
Ad platform signaling that covers your stack
ConsentStack signals consent to 7 ad platforms: Google, Meta, TikTok, Microsoft Ads, Microsoft Clarity, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. CookieYes signals to 3: Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. If you run ads on TikTok, Pinterest, or LinkedIn alongside CookieYes, those platforms never learn whether a visitor consented. Your ad reporting suffers and you lose insight into what's working.
Customization
CookieYes gives you a color picker and a logo upload. ConsentStack gives you a design system. The difference matters when your banner needs to match a brand, not just approximate one.
Full control over banner text
ConsentStack lets you edit every line of banner copy, including per-consent-model overrides so GDPR visitors see different messaging than CCPA visitors. CookieYes auto-generates banner text and provides limited editing. Their v3.4.0 release (January 2026) removed color customization from the free tier entirely.
Visual builder, not a settings page
ConsentStack's visual builder offers 12 color tokens, 5 banner layouts, 4 preferences center layouts, and live preview. CookieYes offers basic color and position controls with no layout options and no live preview. Most customization requires their Ultimate tier at $55/month.
CSS, JS, and headless mode when you need them
When the visual builder isn't enough, ConsentStack Pro includes custom CSS/JS injection and headless mode for fully custom UIs. CookieYes supports custom CSS but discourages it because their class names change between releases. No JavaScript injection. No headless mode. No way to build your own consent experience on top of their SDK.
For Developers
Performance
CookieBench benchmarked CookieYes at 147ms First Contentful Paint , the slowest of any CMP tested. DebugBear measured CookieYes at 81ms INP, 7th of 11 CMPs. Agence Web Performance found CookieYes injects ~140 DOM nodes (67% more than the 84-node average). With IAB TCF enabled, users have documented 48,000 DOM elements and the banner becoming the Largest Contentful Paint element at 6.5 seconds on mobile. ConsentStack's SDK is ~46 KB total: stub plus core. Zero external dependencies. CSS scoped with cs- prefix. Config cached in localStorage with 24hr TTL.
“Our websites were very slow on mobile after installing the banner... Only solution they offered (after 1000's of euros investigation costs) was to restrict the vendors list.”
Jeroen S., Director, Retail. Capterra reviewer, Feb 2025API
CookieYes's Banner Action API provides 3 actions: accept_all, reject, and accept_partial. Setting partial consent requires document.getElementById("ckySwitchanalytics").checked = true before calling the function. That's brittle DOM manipulation that breaks if CookieYes changes element IDs. No headless mode, no webhook system, no REST API. ConsentStack provides getConsent, setConsent, hasConsent, onConsentChange, showBanner, showPreferences, on/off event listeners, a command queue for pre-load calls, and headless mode on Pro for fully custom UIs.
Source: CookieBench, DebugBear, and Agence Web Performance independent CMP benchmarks.
Consent management that keeps up.
195+ regulations, 7 ad integrations, and pricing by unique visitor, not by pageview or domain. From $29/mo.
FAQ
It depends on why you are leaving. If the per-domain bill is the problem, ConsentStack includes 2 domains in its $29/mo Pro plan and charges $5/mo for each extra one, against $25/mo per domain on CookieYes Pro. If you only run WordPress, Complianz ($59/yr) and WPConsent are native plugins with no pageview caps. If you need legal documents with the banner, Termly and iubenda generate them. Cookiebot is the pick for automated scanning and IAB TCF. OneTrust is the enterprise option.
Yes, and each free tier caps something different. ConsentStack Basic covers 1,000 unique monthly visitors on 1 domain with geo-detection included. Termly Free covers 10,000 banner views a month with one basic policy. Cookiebot Free covers one domain of up to 50 subpages. Complianz and WPConsent both have free WordPress plugins with no pageview caps. Osano Free covers 5,000 monthly visitors on 1 domain. CookieYes Free covers 5,000 pageviews and cannot buy extra pageviews.
CookieYes's documentation says that once the monthly pageview limit is reached, the cookie banner will no longer be displayed. On Basic and Pro you can enable extra pageviews at $0.30 per 1,000, which keeps the banner up; that setting is on by default for accounts created after December 23, 2025 and off by default for older accounts. Extra pageviews are not available on the Free plan, so a free site's banner stops at 5,000 pageviews until the next month or an upgrade.
Cookiebot prices by subpage count and states that it does not charge based on page views. Complianz and WPConsent are self-hosted WordPress plugins with no traffic caps. Termly Pro+ includes unlimited banner views. ConsentStack does not count pageviews at all: it counts unique monthly visitors, 30,000 on Pro and 1,000,000 on Business, and a visitor who loads fifty pages counts once.
On the free Basic plan, yes: at 1,000 unique monthly visitors the banner stops showing until the next cycle, the same behavior as CookieYes Free at a different number. On a monthly Pro plan, reaching 30,000 unique visitors moves the site to Business automatically so the banner keeps serving, and the new rate is not charged until the next renewal. Annual Pro plans are handled by a person rather than switched off.
For a plugin-native setup on WordPress only, Complianz and WPConsent are the closest replacements: both install from wordpress.org, both have free versions, and neither meters pageviews. ConsentStack installs on WordPress as a lightweight header script that works on any theme or host, which is the better fit when the same account also covers a Shopify store, a Webflow site or a React app.
With ConsentStack, yes. Export the consent log CSV from your CookieYes dashboard before you cancel; ConsentStack imports it during onboarding so the historical records arrive with their original consent ID, timestamp and region, and returning visitors keep the choice they already made. CookieYes does not document a carry-over path of its own, and most other platforms ask every visitor to consent again.
CookieYes starts lower at $10/month per domain, but geo-targeting and Global Privacy Control start at Pro, $25/month per domain, and branding removal at Ultimate, $55/month per domain. Five domains on CookieYes Pro cost $125/month. ConsentStack Pro is $29/month with 2 domains included and $5/month per extra domain, so five domains cost $44/month, with geo-detection, GPC, branding removal and 7 ad platform integrations included.
Related Comparisons
We also ran CookieYes's free cookie scanner against a test site with documented consent violations, alongside 11 other scanners. See the tested cookie scanner comparison for what it caught and missed.
Evaluating other consent management platforms? See how ConsentStack compares.
