Complianz vs CookieYes: Where Your Consent Records Live

The short answer: at 250,000 pageviews a month on one WordPress site, Complianz Premium costs $59 a year with no traffic limit, while CookieYes needs Pro at $250 a year, because Basic stops at 100,000 and bills $0.30 for every extra 1,000 (Complianz pricing, CookieYes pricing, both checked on 26 October 2026). The larger difference is where the evidence sits: Complianz keeps consent inside your WordPress install, while CookieYes keeps it in its cloud, and only once the site is connected to an account. Choose Complianz if your job is consent you hold yourself across WordPress sites; choose CookieYes if your job is a banner a small team runs from a web dashboard, on WordPress or any other platform.

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Three numbers to write down first:

1. Your pageviews, through both price models. For example, at 250,000 a month CookieYes Basic would cost $10 + 150 x $0.30 = $55 a month, so Pro at $25 is the cheaper plan, while Complianz stays at $59 a year at any volume (CookieYes pricing, Complianz pricing). CookieYes counts every page load carrying its script, refusals included, so its count runs above GA4's (pageview pricing).
2. The sites you already run. CookieYes needs a plan per domain and allows one Free plan per account; Complianz Professional covers five WordPress installs for $179 a year (CookieYes plans and FAQ, Complianz pricing). For example, five sites at 80,000 pageviews each cost 5 x $100 = $500 a year on CookieYes Basic. Agencies can apply to CookieYes' partner programme for discounts of up to 50%, per the same page.
3. How you will compute the consent rate. CookieYes' instructions for AI assistants warn that a false analytics flag can mean "declined" or "not chosen yet", and name the field that tells them apart, isUserActionCompleted (CookieYes AGENTS.md). In either tool, count only visitors who made a choice, weekly, and keep the first four weeks as the baseline.

One sentence of law, two registries

Cookie banners answer Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive: storing information in a user's terminal equipment, or gaining access to information already there, needs consent given with clear and comprehensive information, with exemptions only for carrying a communication and for what a service the user explicitly requested strictly needs (consolidated text on EUR-Lex). Neither plugin settles that by being installed: CookieYes' FAQ says no plugin can guarantee compliance (CookieYes plugin listing), and Complianz's listing puts the same burden on the user. The Dutch regulator's analytics line is set out in the consent-friendly analytics use case.

Publishers on AdSense, Ad Manager or AdMob have a second condition: Google serves personalised ads in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland only through a certified platform that integrates the IAB framework, and its checks concern that framework rather than privacy law as a whole (Google's publisher requirements). Read on 26 October 2026, Google's list shows Complianz CMP as ID 332 for web and CookieYes CMP as ID 401 for web and app, as does IAB Europe's register for Complianz BV and CookieYes Limited. The framework needs Premium on Complianz and Pro or Ultimate on CookieYes.

What an auditor would ask

Two differences that decide it

The log, and who holds it

The CookieYes plugin runs in two modes. Standalone, the banner and settings live in WordPress, nothing scans for you and no consent is recorded anywhere; connected to app.cookieyes.com, the platform crawls the site, generates the cookie policy and records consent for CSV export (AGENTS.md). Complianz has one mode, with proof of consent in your own database (listing). A privacy lead who wants evidence that never leaves your hosting has an answer. One who would rather a vendor held it in the EU under a processing agreement has the other.

What the free tier covers

On price alone, one WordPress site is cheaper on Complianz Premium at every volume: $59 a year against $100 for CookieYes Basic (CookieYes pricing). CookieYes earns its place lower down. Under 5,000 pageviews a month its Free plan, once connected, carries auto-blocking, a consent log and Consent Mode v2, the last of which Complianz keeps for Premium. A small one-language site running Google Ads can live on that for nothing.

Prices on 26 October 2026

CookieYes is priced per domain in US dollars plus local taxes: Basic $10 a month or $100 a year, Pro $25 or $250, Ultimate $55 or $550, with annual billing charging ten months and euro and pound prices on the same page; a paid plan's 14-day trial charges the card automatically unless it is cancelled first (CookieYes plans and FAQ, checked on 26 October 2026). Complianz is $59, $179 and $399 a year for 1, 5 and 25 sites, renewing automatically, with a 30-day refund (Complianz pricing, checked on 26 October 2026).

An agent installs CookieYes; a person decides the law

CookieYes' AGENTS.md gives an assistant with shell access a setup flow and a twelve-point verification list (AGENTS.md). In Claude Code on a staging copy: install and activate with WP-CLI, read the cky_settings option to learn whether the site is standalone or connected, tag scripts the theme injects with data-cookieyes, then run the checks and report each failure as observed. Two decisions stay with a person by the file's own rules: the applicable law, GDPR opt-in or CCPA opt-out, which it calls a legal determination about the audience, and the connection to the CookieYes account, which only the owner can authorise in a browser.

The human check is one test the file insists on: click Accept with the network panel open and no reload, and the held-back scripts must fire on that same page view. Complianz ships no such file; its wizard asks a person the same questions.

The record is where the business model shows. Run standalone, the free CookieYes plugin records no consent at all; the log appears once the site is connected to app.cookieyes.com, the account through which every paid plan is sold and where a trial becomes a charge unless someone cancels it (AGENTS.md, CookieYes plans and FAQ). Connect it knowingly, and put a reminder in the calendar on day 12.

Which job each one wins

Choose Complianz if your job is consent across WordPress sites you control, with the evidence in your own database and one flat licence however busy the sites become (Complianz pricing).

Choose CookieYes if your job is a banner run from a web dashboard, on WordPress or elsewhere, auto-translated into 40+ languages, with an assistant that can check banner status and start scans through its MCP server (CookieYes plugin listing).

FAQ

Does the CookieYes WordPress plugin keep a consent log by itself?

No. Its AGENTS.md says standalone mode records nothing and creates no local consent table; the platform keeps the log once the site is connected (AGENTS.md).

Is Google Consent Mode free on either?

On CookieYes, yes: every plan, Free included, lists Consent Mode v2 (CookieYes pricing). On Complianz it needs Premium (Consent Mode guide).

Can one CookieYes plan cover subdomains?

Consent can be shared across subdomains from Pro upwards; Free and Basic do not include it (CookieYes pricing).