What is a cookie checker?
A cookie checker loads your website the way a visitor's browser does and reports every cookie and tracker it sets. Most tools stop there, at a list. The question that actually decides compliance is when those cookies fire: a non-essential cookie set before the visitor makes a choice is the most common privacy violation, and in our own study of live sites most did exactly that. This checker scans your site from both an EU and a US perspective and shows you what loads before consent, whether Reject truly stops it, and where you stand against GDPR, CCPA, and 195+ regulations.
Every cookie and tracker
Detects first- and third-party cookies, pixels, and tracking scripts your site sets, and names the vendor behind each one.
Fires before consent
Flags the most common violation: cookies and trackers that load and set before the visitor has made any consent choice.
Does Reject actually work
Clicks Reject and re-checks, to catch trackers that keep firing after a visitor opts out, which many banners quietly allow.
GDPR and ePrivacy
Evaluates the EU and UK rule that non-essential cookies need consent before they are set on a visitor's device.
CCPA and opt-outs
Checks US duties, including honoring opt-out and Global Privacy Control signals for visitors who decline.
EU vs US behavior
Scans from EU and US servers in parallel to catch sites that set different cookies depending on where the visitor is.
We tested the other free cookie scanners
Every consent vendor offers a free cookie checker, ours included, and they all promise the same thing. So we checked. On 1 September 2026 we ran 11 of them, including six that rank on the first page of results for this very search, against a test site we built to leak on purpose. Then we ran every one of them again within the hour.
- 0 of 11caught the tracker that kept firing after the visitor clicked Reject. That is the miss that costs the most, because it is the violation a regulator can see from the outside.
- 4 of 11caught a tracker firing before the visitor had consented to anything.
- 1 of 11clicked the consent banner at all. A scanner that never clicks Reject cannot report what happens after someone does.
- 3 of 11gave a different answer when run twice on the same site within the hour. One flipped its whole verdict in 16 seconds.
- 0 of 11say where in the world they scan from, so we measured it ourselves. EU and US law require different behavior from the same site, so a verdict from an undisclosed location cannot be read.
We publish the method, the per-tool results and the scan id behind every row, including the four mistakes our own scanner made during the study. Read the full study, or see the report our scanner returns for that test site to judge the output before you run it on your own.
How to fix cookie compliance issues
- 1
Categorize every cookie
Know which cookies are strictly necessary and which are analytics, advertising, or functional, because only the first group can run without consent.
- 2
Block non-essential cookies until consent
Do not let analytics, ad, or social pixels set cookies before the visitor accepts. This is the step most sites skip, and the one the checker above catches.
- 3
Honor Reject and opt-out signals
When a visitor declines, stop the trackers for real, and respect Global Privacy Control and CCPA opt-outs for US visitors.
- 4
Re-scan to confirm
Check again to confirm nothing sets before the choice, from both EU and US perspectives.
A consent management platform does all four automatically. ConsentStack blocks non-essential cookies until consent, region by region, and honors reject for real. Scan your site free above to see where it stands today.
Common questions
A cookie checker, sometimes called a cookie scanner, is a tool that loads your website the way a visitor's browser does and reports every cookie and tracker it sets. Most stop at a list. The part that matters for compliance is when those cookies fire, so this checker also shows you what loads before a visitor consents.
The cookie checker on this page is one. Enter a URL and it loads the site the way a visitor's browser does, from both an EU and a US location, and returns every cookie and tracker it finds, the vendor behind each one, and which of them fired before the visitor consented. It is free and needs no signup. Most consent vendors offer a comparable free scanner; we tested 11 of them in September 2026 and published which checks each one passed.
They are two names for the same kind of tool, and you will see cookie checker, cookie scanner, cookie analyzer, and cookie audit tool used interchangeably. What actually differs between them is depth: some only list the cookies a site sets, while others also test when those cookies fire, click the consent banner, and re-check after Reject. The list is the easy part and the timing is the part that decides compliance.
Cookies themselves are legal. In the EU and UK, GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive require prior consent before any non-essential cookie is set, so an analytics or advertising cookie that fires on page load, before the visitor chooses, is the violation. In the US there is no upfront consent rule, but states like California require you to honor opt-outs.
Enter your site's URL in the checker above. It loads your live site from both an EU and a US vantage point, lists every cookie and tracker it finds, names the vendor behind each one, and flags any that fire before the visitor makes a consent choice. Results are instant and need no signup.
Yes. The cookie checker is free, instant, and needs no email or signup. Enter a URL and you get the full report, including which cookies fire before consent and how the site measures up against GDPR, CCPA, and 195+ privacy regulations.
Cookies change whenever you add a tool, embed a widget, or a third party updates a script, often without you touching your site. Re-scan after any change to your tag setup and at least once a quarter, so a new tracker does not quietly start firing before consent.
A basic cookie checker lists the cookies a site sets. Our full compliance scan goes further: it tests whether trackers fire before consent, clicks Reject to see whether they actually stop, and returns a verdict per regulation for both EU and US visitors. The cookie list is the start, not the answer.
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See what your cookies really do.
Scan your site free to see every cookie it sets and what fires before consent, then turn on real blocking from one install. Region-aware, reject means reject.