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Clear Cookie, the cookie banner you actually control

Actually block trackers until the visitor accepts. You document what they were shown, you keep your data on your own server, and there is no subscription.

Platform
WordPress plugin
Price
Free

Coming soon

In short

Clear Cookie displays a consent banner on your WordPress site and, more to the point, actually stops trackers from running until the visitor accepts. Google Analytics, the Meta pixel, YouTube embeds: nothing loads before the click. The visitor's choice is kept in their own browser, and they can come back to it at any time. The plugin is bilingual, configured from the dashboard, and no data ever leaves your server.

What it is for

  • Most cookie banners block nothing at all. They appear, the visitor clicks, but Google Analytics and the Meta pixel already loaded while the page was rendering. The cookies were placed before consent, and the banner delivers the appearance of compliance without the substance.
  • This is not an edge case: a study by ETH Zurich covering 97,000 European websites measured that placement before any interaction on 73.4% of sites carrying a cookie notice.
  • Without a tool that blocks upstream, you can neither stop trackers from firing before the visitor chooses, nor document what that visitor was actually shown. Those are the two points regulators check first, and the second is an explicit obligation.
  • The products that do both properly are paid, by subscription, per site, and they host your consent data on their servers rather than yours.

What the tool does

  • Blocks tracking scripts before they execute, not after the fact
  • Shows Accept all, Reject all and Customise with equal prominence, as European regulators require
  • Lets the visitor choose category by category: necessary, preferences, statistics, marketing
  • Replaces blocked videos and maps with an Accept and display panel rather than an empty space
  • Keeps the visitor's choice in their own browser, along with the policy version in force, and asks again when it expires
  • Archives every version of the banner, its wording, its categories and its configuration, timestamped, which is the form of proof regulators actually enumerate
  • Reopens the preference centre from a floating button, a menu link or a shortcut you can place on any page
  • Detects the cookies placed by the services present on your site and shows them to the visitor: name, duration, provider
  • Sends Google Consent Mode v2 signals to GA4, Google Ads and Tag Manager
  • Configurable without code: five placements, ten colours, the typography, and every string in French and English
  • Applies the validity period you set, after which the question is put to the visitor again
  • Flags optimisation plugins likely to interfere and offers a one click compatibility mode
  • Ships in two editions: one aligned with the GDPR and French CNIL guidance for Europe, one aligned with Quebec's Law 25 and PIPEDA for Canada

Where these numbers come from

Trackers placed before consent are not a hypothesis, they have been measured. The study Automated Large-Scale Analysis of Cookie Notice Compliance, by Ahmed Bouhoula, Karel Kubicek, Amit Zac, Carlos Cotrini and David Basin of ETH Zurich, presented at USENIX Security 2024, analysed around 97,000 European websites. Three of its findings bear directly on this plugin.

Of the 48,843 sites carrying a cookie notice, 73.4% place trackers before any user interaction. Of the 33,431 sites whose notice offers an accept button, 56.7% offer no matching reject button. And among those that do offer one, 65.4% likely collect data despite an explicit refusal.

That last figure is the telling one. It describes sites that went to the trouble of installing a banner, that display a reject button, and where refusing changes nothing.

The French regulator reaches the same conclusion in regulatory terms. The CNIL’s September 2020 recommendation sets out two obligations: consent must be collected before any non exempt tracker is placed, and the site operator must be able to provide, at any time, proof that valid consent was collected. During its enforcement campaign, the CNIL recorded three recurring failures: cookies placed automatically before any acceptance, notices that made refusing harder than accepting, and reject buttons that were followed by placement anyway. Around 90 organisations had been formally notified as of 14 December 2021.

On what form that proof should take, the CNIL is explicit, and it often surprises people. Its article 4 enumerates the methods it accepts: placing successive versions of the code in escrow with a third party, or publishing a timestamped hash of it; keeping a timestamped screenshot of what was actually displayed, for each version of the site; having the mechanism audited by a mandated third party; and documenting the tools used and their successive configurations. None of those four methods bears on individuals. That is why this plugin documents its own mechanism rather than keeping a per visitor register: less personal data retained, and more actually proven.

My own market review of 9 August 2026 lands in the same range: roughly 85% of the large European sites I examined show a gap on cookies alone, and fewer than half of the banners offer a refusal as accessible as acceptance.

Why I wrote this plugin

Building sites for clients in France and Quebec, I ran into the same problem on every project: installing a cookie banner that would actually hold up.

The free options on the market display a notice and block nothing. The client believes they are covered, they are not, and they will only find out the day somebody looks properly. The serious options cost a monthly subscription per site, which becomes absurd across several projects, and they store the consent data on their own servers, which moves the problem rather than solving it.

There was a deeper question too. Three or four companies share this market and charge a subscription for a function WordPress can perform natively. With the AI assisted development tools available today, building and maintaining this kind of extension yourself has become realistic for an independent.

So I wrote the plugin I needed, and I publish it free for anyone with the same problem.

How to use it

One. Install the plugin. Plugins, then Add New, then Upload Plugin, select the ZIP file and activate. A welcome panel points you to the next three steps.

Two. Choose the look. Cookie Banner menu, then Settings. Click one of the five visual previews to pick where the banner sits, then adjust the colours and typography. All by clicking, no code.

Three. Fill in the legal details. Add the URL of your privacy policy, the consent validity period, and adapt the French and English strings if the defaults do not suit you.

Four. Check that blocking works. This is the step everyone skips, and the only one that proves anything. Open your site in a private window, then the developer tools, F12, Network tab. Reload: no request should reach Google Analytics or Facebook before you choose. Accept: they appear.

Five. Archive the current version. Cookie Banner menu, then Versions. Every change to the banner is dated there, with the wording displayed, the categories offered and the configuration chosen. That is the file you present if you are ever asked, not a list of visitors.

What I do not promise

This plugin is an aid to compliance, not a guarantee of compliance.

It provides the technical building blocks the GDPR and Law 25 require, prior blocking, granular consent, documentation of the mechanism, withdrawal at any time, but your compliance also depends on your privacy policy, your configuration and how you actually handle data.

It does not replace legal advice. For a sensitive context or a serious exposure, have your setup reviewed by a lawyer. I am not one, and the page of a free plugin is the wrong place to pretend otherwise.

Requirements

  • WordPress 6.3 or later, tested up to WordPress 7.0
  • PHP 7.4 or later, PHP 8.2 or newer recommended
  • An HTTPS site, so the consent cookie can be properly secured
  • Compatible with Divi, Elementor, Gutenberg, WPBakery, Bricks, Oxygen and classic themes
  • Compatible with WPML and Polylang for bilingual sites

What the tool does not do

  • It does not scan your whole site automatically. It recognises around twenty common services (Google, Meta, YouTube, Hotjar, LinkedIn, TikTok). A more obscure tracker has to be declared by hand, which the settings allow, but it remains your move.
  • It does not block cookies set server side. Anything WordPress or your other plugins set in PHP, before the page even reaches the browser, is outside its reach.
  • It does not write your privacy policy. It links to yours, it does not draft it for you.
  • It does not support the IAB TCF. If your site serves programmatic advertising, you need an IAB certified platform, which this plugin is not.
  • It does not vary the banner by visitor country. One configuration applies to everyone.
  • It does not configure your custom tags in Google Tag Manager. It sends the Consent Mode signals; checking that your tags honour them is on you.
  • One edition per site. The Europe and Canada versions cannot be installed side by side.
  • It can conflict with an aggressive optimisation plugin. If WP Rocket, Autoptimize or LiteSpeed combine or defer your JavaScript files, a setting may be needed. The plugin detects them and warns you rather than breaking the site silently.

Frequently asked questions

Does Clear Cookie really block trackers, or does it just show a banner?

It blocks. Tracking scripts are neutralised before they execute, which means no request reaches Google Analytics or Meta until the visitor accepts. You can verify it in thirty seconds: open your site in a private window, open the Network tab of the developer tools, reload, and watch what leaves before you click.

Is the plugin genuinely free, with no paid tier behind it?

Yes, free and with no subscription. I wrote it because I needed the function across several engagements and paying a monthly fee per site had become absurd. There is no account to create, no traffic limit, and no feature held back for a paid edition.

Does the plugin keep a per visitor register?

No, and that is deliberate. The choice stays in the visitor's browser, no named row is written to your server, and no IP address is retained. No text requires a per visitor register for cookies: the French CNIL recommendation enumerates other proof methods, which bear on the collection mechanism rather than on individuals. That is the one the plugin applies.

How do I prove consent was collected, then?

By documenting the mechanism, not the people. The plugin archives every version of the banner with its date, its wording, its categories and its configuration. The CNIL recommendation proposes exactly that kind of proof: a timestamped hash of the code, a screenshot kept for each version of the site, audits by a mandated third party, and documentation of the tools and their successive configurations.

Does Clear Cookie make my site GDPR or Law 25 compliant?

No, and nobody can promise that. It provides the technical building blocks those texts require: prior blocking, consent by category, documentation of the mechanism, withdrawal at any time. Your compliance also depends on your privacy policy, your configuration and how you actually handle data.

Does it work with Google Tag Manager?

Yes, through Google Consent Mode v2 signals. The plugin passes the four consent signals, including ad_storage and analytics_storage, to GA4, Google Ads and Tag Manager. Checking that your own tags honour those signals is still your job, and the plugin cannot do it for you.

What is the difference between the Clear Cookie plugin and the Cookie Audit extension?

One acts, the other observes. Clear Cookie is a WordPress plugin: it is installed on your site, blocks trackers and collects your visitors' consent. Cookie Audit is a Chrome extension: it is installed on no site at all, it observes from your own browser what any site places, including yours, before and after the visitor's choice. You install the plugin, then verify the result with the extension.