Best WordPress Cookie Consent Plugins With Google Consent Mode v2
If you run Google Ads or GA4 and serve visitors in the European Economic Area, Google Consent Mode v2 has been mandatory since March 2024. Plenty of sites still have not implemented it, and the symptom is not an error message. It is conversion data that quietly stopped being attributed, which means you are optimising ad spend against numbers that are wrong.
The other thing worth knowing before you shop is that these tools meter on completely different bases. Cookiebot charges by page count, CookieYes and iubenda by pageviews, Termly by banner views, Usercentrics by sessions, and Osano by monthly visitors, while Complianz and Borlabs charge a flat annual fee. The same website can cost $59 a year or $2,388 depending purely on which meter you signed up to.
Verified August 2026. Average fines for minor cookie violations reached EUR 47,000 in early 2026, and 2026 DMA rules forbid hiding the reject option.
What Consent Mode v2 actually changes
Consent Mode signals a visitor’s consent choices to Google’s tags so data collection adjusts accordingly, rather than either firing regardless or not firing at all. Version 2 adds two parameters, ad_user_data and ad_personalization, which separate consent for sending user data to Google from consent for personalised advertising.
The practical consequence is commercial rather than legal. Where consent is denied, Google uses modelling to estimate conversions rather than recording nothing, so implementing v2 properly means you keep usable measurement from visitors who declined. Not implementing it means those conversions are simply absent, and remarketing audiences degrade.
Alongside this, the requirements a banner must meet in 2026 have hardened: granular category controls, a visible Reject All at the first layer, a consent log for record-keeping, and automatic cookie blocking before consent is given. The 2026 DMA rules specifically forbid burying the reject option, so a banner with prominent Accept and a hidden reject link is no longer arguable.
The 6 options compared
1. Complianz
The WordPress-native pick and the one whose pricing does not scale against you. Premium starts at $59 a year for a single site, flat, regardless of traffic, pageviews, or page count. On a site with real traffic that difference against a metered CMP is not marginal; it is an order of magnitude.
It handles Consent Mode v2, automatic script blocking before consent, granular categories, and consent logging, and because it is built for WordPress specifically it recognises the plugins you are running and configures categories around them rather than requiring you to map everything by hand. That plugin awareness is the practical advantage over a generic CMP: less setup, fewer things missed. For a WordPress business site, this is the default recommendation and the burden of proof sits with anything more expensive.
- Pricing: From $59 a year, single site, flat regardless of traffic
- Metering: None
- Best for: Most WordPress sites
- Watch out for: Per-site licensing if you run many properties
2. Borlabs Cookie
The other flat-fee WordPress option, with Borlabs Cookie 3.0 starting at €49 a year for a single site. Like Complianz it is unmetered, which puts both in a different commercial category from the CMPs below.
Its strength is blocking granularity. Borlabs has long been regarded as one of the most thorough at preventing scripts and embeds from running before consent, including the awkward cases like YouTube and Maps embeds that many banners let through. Given that pre-consent blocking is the requirement regulators actually care about, that is the right thing to be good at. It is German-developed with a strong GDPR orientation, which shows in defaults that are conservative rather than conversion-optimised, and that is a feature rather than a limitation if compliance is your goal.
- Pricing: From €49 a year, single site, flat
- Metering: None
- Best for: Thorough pre-consent blocking, including embeds
- Watch out for: Conservative defaults may reduce measured traffic
3. Cookiebot by Usercentrics
The best-known CMP and the most thorough automatic cookie scanner, which is genuinely its distinguishing feature: it crawls your site, finds cookies you did not know you set, and categorises them, then rescans on a schedule so new ones do not go unnoticed.
Pricing is by page count: around €12 a month under 500 pages, €28 a month under 5,000, and €49 a month above that. Read that meter carefully, because page count is not traffic. A small-traffic site with a large archive lands in an expensive tier while a high-traffic site with fifty pages stays cheap, which is the opposite of how most people assume consent tools price. At €49 a month you are paying roughly €588 a year against Complianz’s $59, and the scanning quality has to justify a tenfold difference.
- Pricing: ~€12, €28, or €49 a month by page count
- Metering: Number of pages, not traffic
- Best for: Sites needing the strongest automatic cookie discovery
- Watch out for: Large archives are expensive regardless of traffic
4. CookieYes
Priced from $10 a month on a pageview-based model, so your cost scales directly with traffic. For a small site that is cheap and for a successful one it becomes the most expensive thing about your consent banner.
It is easy to set up, supports Consent Mode v2, and handles multiple jurisdictions from one banner, which is useful if you serve both EU and US visitors. The pageview meter is the thing to model before committing: work out your current monthly pageviews, then your expected figure in two years, and price both. A site growing from 50,000 to 500,000 monthly pageviews will see this bill move considerably while Complianz stays at $59. Choose it for the setup experience and multi-jurisdiction handling, with the growth cost in mind.
- Pricing: From $10 a month, scaling with pageviews
- Metering: Pageviews
- Best for: Easy setup across multiple jurisdictions
- Watch out for: Cost rises directly with your success
5. iubenda
The cheapest entry point among the hosted platforms, starting from around €4.99 a month, with a genuinely free tier if you only need the basics. It meters by pageviews like CookieYes, so the same growth caveat applies.
What distinguishes it is breadth beyond consent: privacy policy generation, terms of service, and cookie policy are part of the same product, which for a small business wanting one supplier for the whole documentation problem is convenient. The generated policies are more thorough than most free generators, though they still need reviewing against what your site actually does. As a consent tool alone it is competent rather than exceptional; as a documentation-plus-consent package at €4.99 it is good value for a small site.
- Pricing: Free tier; paid from around €4.99 a month
- Metering: Pageviews
- Best for: Consent plus policies from one supplier
- Watch out for: Review generated policies against your actual stack
6. Termly and Osano
Grouped as the US-oriented platforms, both offering free tiers with meaningful limits. Termly is free up to 10,000 monthly pageviews, with Pro+ at $0.67 per website per day billed monthly, metering by banner views. Osano’s free tier covers one user, one domain, and up to 5,000 visitors a month, with Plus at $199 a month for two users, three domains, and 30,000 monthly visitors.
Osano’s pricing is the outlier worth naming: $199 a month is $2,388 a year for 30,000 monthly visitors, against $59 a year for Complianz with no visitor limit at all. What you are buying at that price is a compliance platform with broader privacy programme features rather than a banner, and for an organisation that needs those it may be proportionate. For a WordPress site that needs a compliant banner, it is not. Both free tiers are genuinely usable for small sites and worth testing before paying anyone.
- Pricing: Termly free to 10,000 pageviews, Pro+ $0.67 per site per day; Osano free to 5,000 visitors, Plus $199 a month
- Metering: Banner views and monthly visitors respectively
- Best for: US-focused sites; usable free tiers
- Watch out for: Osano Plus is roughly 40 times Complianz annually
Comparison table
| Option | Price | Meter | Annual at moderate scale | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Complianz | From $59/yr | None | $59 | Most WordPress sites |
| Borlabs Cookie | From €49/yr | None | €49 | Thorough pre-consent blocking |
| Cookiebot | €12 to €49/mo | Page count | €144 to €588 | Best cookie discovery |
| CookieYes | From $10/mo | Pageviews | $120 and rising | Easy multi-jurisdiction setup |
| iubenda | Free; from €4.99/mo | Pageviews | ~€60 and rising | Consent plus policies |
| Termly / Osano | Free tiers; $0.67/day or $199/mo | Banner views / visitors | ~$245 / $2,388 | US-focused, or free tiers |
Verifying Consent Mode v2 is actually working
Installing a plugin that claims v2 support and assuming it works is how sites end up with broken attribution for months. The check takes ten minutes.
- Open your site in a private window with developer tools open. Watch the network tab before you interact with the banner at all.
- Confirm the default state is denied. Consent signals should be set to denied before any choice is made, not after.
- Check ad_user_data and ad_personalization appear. These are the v2 parameters. If you only see the v1 signals, you have v1 with a v2 label.
- Accept, and confirm the signals flip to granted. Then reload and confirm the choice persisted.
- Reject, and confirm they stay denied and that tracking scripts do not fire anyway. This is where many implementations quietly fail.
- Check Google’s own reporting. Consent Mode status is surfaced in the Ads and Analytics interfaces; use that as your confirmation rather than the plugin’s dashboard.
Related guides
Frequently asked questions
Is Consent Mode v2 legally required?
It is Google’s requirement for using their advertising products with EEA traffic rather than a law in itself. The underlying legal requirement is valid consent; Consent Mode is how you communicate it to Google, and without it your Ads and GA4 measurement degrades.
Which meter is cheapest for my site?
Flat-fee, almost always, unless your site is genuinely tiny. Complianz at $59 and Borlabs at €49 do not care about your traffic, your page count, or your growth, and every metered alternative does.
Will a compliant banner hurt conversions?
A prominent Reject All reduces consent rates compared with a buried one, which is the point of the rule. Consent Mode’s modelling recovers some measurement from those visitors, which is a reason to implement it properly rather than to hide the reject option.
Do I need a consent log?
Yes. A banner that collects consent without recording it proves nothing if a regulator asks. Check your chosen tool stores records with timestamps and can export them.
What are the actual fines?
Average fines for minor cookie violations reached around €47,000 in early 2026. That is for minor breaches, which puts a $59 plugin in perspective.
Can I use a free tier?
For a small site, yes. Termly is free to 10,000 monthly pageviews and Osano to 5,000 visitors, and iubenda has a free tier for basics. Check each one blocks scripts before consent, because that is the requirement free tiers most often omit.
The verdict
For most WordPress sites: Complianz at $59 a year. Flat pricing, Consent Mode v2, pre-consent blocking, consent logging, and it understands the plugins you are running. Nothing metered has to justify itself against $59 with no traffic ceiling.
If blocking thoroughness is the priority: Borlabs Cookie from €49 a year, also flat, and particularly strong on the embed cases that other banners let through.
If you need the best cookie discovery: Cookiebot, budgeting by page count rather than traffic. A large archive puts you in the €49 a month tier even with modest visitors.
And verify the signals yourself. Ten minutes in developer tools tells you whether ad_user_data and ad_personalization are actually firing. A plugin claiming v2 support and a site sending v2 signals are not the same thing, and only one of them fixes your attribution.
