Trying to decide if your business should use Termly or Cookiebot?
Below, I compare these two privacy compliance solutions so you can choose the right platform for your business.
Keep reading to learn which one is right for you.
Quick Comparison
For a quick comparison of Cookiebot and Termly, read through the table I compiled below.
| Termly | Cookiebot | |
| Free Services |
Termly offers a FREE plan that includes:
|
14-day free trial
Free Plan of their Consent Management Platform with limited features that includes:
|
| Paid Services |
Monthly + Annual Billing Available for 3 Plans.
|
Cookiebot Pricing
|
| Policy Generators |
|
|
| Consent Management |
Termly’s CMP offers:
|
According to Cookiebot’s website:
|
| Privacy Law Compliance |
Privacy Policy Generator & Template:
Consent Management Platform:
|
According to their website:
|
| Customer Support |
Support Options
|
Support Options
|
| Customer Reviews + Business Accolades |
|
|
Deeper Dive Into Features and Solutions
Below, I dive deeper into the features and solutions offered by Termly and Cookiebot.
Free Services
Both Cookiebot and Termly offer free services to users.
Overall, Termly’s free plan is more robust than Cookiebot, which, according to their website, is only available to websites with fewer than 50 sub-pages.
What Termly Gives Free Users
With Termly, free users who sign up for an account get to use one of the policy generators for free, and everything is included in the policy.
They also get to use Termly’s Consent Management Platform, which includes the following:
- A free generated cookie policy
- Consent banner
- Cookie script auto-blocker
- Quarterly website scans
Additionally, Termly provides free template versions of all eight policy generators they offer directly on the website, which include much of the same clauses, legal protections, and other information as the generators.
They also offer a free Impressum template.
What Cookiebot Gives Free Users
According to their website, Cookiebot has both a 14-day free trial of their Premium plan and a Free Plan.
However, their Free Plan is only available to websites with fewer than 50 subpages and doesn’t include all Premium features, some of which are important for privacy law compliance.
For example, it doesn’t provide multi-language support and does not allow you to export the records of consent.
Their website says it include:
- Google Consent Mode support
- Microsoft UET Consent Mode
- Pre-build banner templates
- Preview function
- Banner close button
- Explicit consent
Consent expires up to one month and there is a default privacy trigger and cookie declaration (aka policy) included as well.
It does not include custom banner styles or branding, multi-language supports, implicit consent, geo-targeting, cross-domain consent sharing, and more.
Based on an FAQ on the Cookiebot pricing page, it appears they also offer a 14-day free trial of their consent management platform that includes all features in their Premium Plan.
After the trial period ends, users can upgrade to a paid plan or continue using the free plan if their website qualifies.
However, the FAQ section says that after the trial period ends, the account remains intact, but you cannot access logs and the banner stops displaying.
To regain access, you can upgrade your account to one of their paid services.
Paid Services
Cookiebot and Termly offer different types of paid plans. Termly has three paid plans available that can be billed annually or monthly.
Cookiebot has four paid plans available that are billed monthly.
Termly’s Paid Plans
Termly has two paid plans available, which include all the policy generators and the CMP:
- Starter Plan: $14/month when billed monthly, $10/month when billed annually.
- Pro+ Plan: $20/month when billed monthly, $15/month when billed annually.
The Starter Plan gives users access to two policy generators and the CMP with up to 50,000 monthly banner views.
Users can unlock access to all of Termly’s policy generators and CMP features with unlimited banner views by signing up for the Pro+ Plan, which also includes:
- Multi-language supports
- Weekly cookie scans
- Auto-updated policies
- Remove the Termly logo
- IAB TCF v2.2 compatibility
- Google Consent Mode v2 compatibility
- Regional consent rules
- Scan subdomains
- Consent logs
For more information, view Termly’s Pricing Page.
Cookiebot Paid Option
Cookiebot has the following four paid ‘Premium’ plans available, which all include the same features but differ in price depending on how many subpages a website has:
- Premium Lite: $8 per domain, per month, 50 subpages and only one domain.
- Premium Small: $16 per domain, per month, up to 350 subpages
- Premium Medium: $34 per domain, per month, up to 3,500 subpages
- Premium Large: $56 per domain, per month, more than 3,500 subpages
The plan automatically upgrades depending on the number of subpages a website has. Cookiebot gets this information whenever a website scan is performed.
Policy Generators
Termly offers the following eight comprehensive policy generators and nine policy templates:
Cookiebot users get a ‘cookie declaration,’ the same as a cookie policy, but the company does not offer any other policy generators or free templates.
Consent Management
Termly and Cookiebot have similar consent management solutions that should work for most businesses that need to comply with privacy laws.
For example, here’s a small sample of some of the features both Termly’s CMP and Cookiebot’s CMP provide:
- Cookie policy and consent banner
- Multi-language supports
- Cross-domain consent
- Customizable banner designs
- WordPress plugin
When it comes to differences, Termly allows users to remove the logo without using CSS coding, which is currently the only way to remove the Cookiebot branding, according to one of their support articles.
Cookiebot claims to be compatible with Microsoft UET Consent Mode. While Termly doesn’t advertise this, their CMP can also support it.
Currently, Cookiebot supports more languages than Termly, which is in the process of adding more to its platform over time.
Cookiebot also has an Analytics Dashboard with opt-in and opt-out statistics and a CSV export of all consents.
Overall, both platforms are comprehensive and similar in scope.
Privacy Law Compliance
Only Termly offers a privacy policy generator and template that helps businesses meet notification and transparency requirements outlined by 26 laws.
When new laws are added to Termly’s solutions, they are updated in the ‘What laws does Termly cover’ resource article.
Termly and Cookiebot’s CMPs comply with similar global privacy laws.
For example, the Cookiebot website says its CMP can accommodate ‘the GDPR/ePrivacy Directive, CCPA/CPRA, LGPD, POPIA, and more,’ and features 47 language options.
Termly’s CMP is configurable to meet opt-in and opt-out requirements in over 70 regions worldwide, including every law mentioned on the Cookiebot website.
Customer Support
Termly offers support via more channels than Cookiebot.
Both companies have support documentation and informational articles available online.
But Termly provides support from a team through live chat, email, and a telephone line, available Monday through Friday from 9 am to 6 pm EST.
They also have a website form available and an AI chatbot.
Cookiebot only has an AI chatbot and a website form available on their site:
- Free and trial users hear back in business 4 days (32 hours) on average.
- Premium users hear back in 1 business day (8 hours) on average.
Customer Reviews + Business Accolades
Termly and Cookiebot have similar business accolades, but user reviews of Termly on Trustpilot are much higher than Cookiebot.
- Termly’s Trustpilot rating is 4.7 (Excellent) based on 418 reviews
- Cookiebot’s Trustpilot rating is 1.9 (poor) based on 88 reviews
Otherwise, both Termly and Cookiebot are:
- Google CMP Partners with GOLD status
- IAB TCF v2.2 Compliant
However, only Termly is:
- BBB accredited with an A+ rating
- An IAPP Silver Member
Additional Features
Termly users get additional features that do not appear to be part of Cookiebot’s solutions.
For example, while both companies sell products backed by privacy experts, Termly’s policy generators feature relevant tips written by their legal team to help businesses find answers to common questions, as shown below.
These additional snippets are helpful for businesses needing more guidance when achieving privacy compliance, like the two details below that help explain what privacy laws might apply.
Businesses don’t need to worry about researching all there is to know about privacy compliance because Termly’s experts have already done that part for them.
Which One Is Right for You?
Overall, Termly and Cookiebot offer strong consent solutions, but Termly also provides businesses with essential legal policies, a devoted customer support team with incredibly high ratings from users, and a legal team who helps ensure its solutions are always up-to-date and accurate.
Termly is an all-in-one compliance solution for businesses of all sizes and supports the IAB TCF v2.2 and Google Consent Mode as a proud Google CMP partner.
Businesses that require the use of a CMP almost always need to also have a compliant privacy policy. Termly’s solutions feature a privacy policy generator, which helps you meet even more of the requirements outlined by privacy laws.
But, when it comes to privacy compliance, the choice is yours.
DISCLAIMER: The information in this article represents the details that were available on Termly and Cookiebot websites as of Nov 14, 2024. Both Termly and Cookiebot product offerings, details, and information are subject to change at any time. This article is for informational purposes only and does not claim to be a significant representation of Cookiebot or Termly.
More about the author
Written by Ali Talip Pınarbaşı, CIPP/E, & LLM
Ali is a London-based Data Privacy Law Consultant with a Master of Laws Degree in EU Privacy law at King's College London. He has three years of experience in advising businesses on how to comply data protection laws. More about the author
