ConsentOwl

ConsentOwl is a lightweight, cache-friendly cookie consent manager for WordPress. It shows a consent banner, groups cookies into categories, and only loads analytics and marketing scripts after the visitor agrees.

Built with privacy laws in mind — GDPR, ePrivacy, Russian Federal Law No. 152-FZ “On Personal Data” and Belarus Law No. 99-Z — ConsentOwl helps you meet these requirements out of the box.

For sites operating in Russia, Federal Law No. 152-FZ treats cookies that can identify a user (for example via IP address or browsing history) as personal data. Their processing requires the visitor’s informed, active consent (Art. 6). ConsentOwl shows a consent banner before non-essential cookies load, lets visitors accept, reject or choose categories, keeps an audit log of every decision, and can generate a draft cookie policy page — the building blocks for 152-FZ compliance. Note that full compliance also requires actions outside any plugin (such as filing a notification with Roskomnadzor and publishing a personal-data policy); ConsentOwl is a tool, not legal advice.

Languages: ConsentOwl ships with English, Russian and Spanish (Spain and Mexico) translations. On a fresh install the banner texts appear in your site’s language automatically; after changing the site language you can refresh them with one click in ConsentOwl → Texts.

Core features (free forever):

• Consent banner with Accept all / Necessary only / Reject buttons
• Three consent categories: Necessary, Analytics, Marketing
• Ten built-in services connected by ID — Google Analytics, Yandex Metrica, Meta Pixel, Google Maps, Yandex Maps, YouTube, RUTUBE, VK Video, Dzen, Odnoklassniki (OK)
• Scripts load only after the visitor consents to the relevant category
• Consent audit log with CSV export
• Floating reopen button so visitors can change their choice any time
• Withdraw-all-consents button
• Consent versioning — bump the version to re-ask everyone after a policy change
• [consentowl_settings_link] shortcode for a footer “Cookie settings” link
• One-click Cookie Policy draft page generator
• Cookie or localStorage storage, configurable retention
• Works with full-page caches (WP Rocket, LiteSpeed)

The core features are free forever.

Your data stays on your server

ConsentOwl stores every consent record in your own WordPress database — nothing is ever sent to an external cloud, third-party server, or the plugin author. There is no external account, no data transfer abroad, and no dependency on a SaaS service.

This local-only storage matters for compliance:

• GDPR / ePrivacy (EU) — fewer third-party data transfers means a simpler lawful basis and less exposure.
• Federal Law 152-FZ (Russia) — personal data of Russian users must be stored on servers located in Russia. Because ConsentOwl keeps consent records in your own database, if your hosting is in Russia the data stays where the law requires. Cloud consent tools that store data abroad cannot offer this.
• Law 99-Z (Belarus) — the same data-localisation logic applies.

ConsentOwl is a tool that helps you meet these requirements; it is not legal advice, and full compliance also depends on your hosting location and other measures.

Why upgrade to Pro

The free version is fully functional, but it asks you to do one thing by hand: find every tracker on your site (in your theme, widgets or Google Tag Manager) and wrap it so it only loads after consent. Miss one, and you may be loading cookies without permission — the exact thing privacy law penalises.

ConsentOwl Pro removes the manual work:

• Add any tracker from the admin UI — LiveInternet, Top.Mail.Ru, Yandex.RTB, support chats and any other script, without editing theme code. Just paste it once and pick a category.
• Automatic scanner — walks your site and finds the trackers on it, then describes the cookies they set from a database of 2282 known cookies. No digging through code, no guessing.
• One-click protection — the “Protect” button wraps a tracker via PHP. You never touch theme code, and you never miss a script.
• Weekly auto-scan — catches trackers added later (by you, a plugin, or a marketer) before they become a compliance risk.
• Google Consent Mode v2 — required by Google since March 2024 for GA4 and Google Ads to work correctly in the EEA. Without it, your analytics and remarketing data are incomplete.
• iframe blocking with preview — YouTube, RUTUBE, VK Video, Dzen, Odnoklassniki, Google Maps and similar embeds set cookies before consent; Pro replaces them with a click-to-load placeholder.
• Statistics dashboard — acceptance rate and a 30-day consent trend, so you can see how your banner performs.
• GPC support and colour customization.

Read the full description on the official page →