Cookiebot pricing, setup with Google Tag Manager and Consent Mode v2

Cookiebot is a consent management platform (CMP) that scans your cookies, shows a cookie banner, stores your visitor’s choice and passes that choice on to Google and other tags. The free plan covers one domain up to 50 subpages; above that you pay per domain per month, depending on the number of subpages. Ideally you install it through the official template in Google Tag Manager, so that Consent Mode v2 is right from the very first page view.

This guide is about one tool: what Cookiebot costs, which plan fits your site and how to set it up technically correctly. Still choosing between Cookiebot and alternatives such as Usercentrics or Complianz? Then first read our comparison of Cookiebot vs Usercentrics vs Complianz. If you want to know what the law in Belgium requires, see cookie banner rules in Belgium.

What exactly does Cookiebot do?

Cookiebot does four things you would otherwise have to handle manually:

1. Scanning. It crawls your website and lists all cookies and trackers, grouped into categories (necessary, preferences, statistics, marketing).
2. Showing the banner. In your visitor’s language, with a button to refuse that is as easy to use as the button to accept.
3. Storing consent. Every choice is logged, so you can demonstrate who gave consent for what, and when.
4. Passing consent on. To Google through Consent Mode, and to other tags through Google Tag Manager.

That last point is where the commercial stakes are. Since Consent Mode v2, Google expects four signals for traffic from the EEA: ad_storage, analytics_storage, ad_user_data and ad_personalization. According to Google’s documentation, no value is set by default and you have to set those defaults yourself before your tags send data. Cookiebot does this for you, provided it is installed correctly. Read more about the impact on your campaigns in Consent Mode v2 for Google Ads.

What does Cookiebot cost?

Cookiebot charges per domain per month, and the price rises with the number of subpages on that domain. These are the plans as Cookiebot publishes them on its pricing page (checked on 6 October 2026, excluding VAT). These are the vendor’s prices, not ours.

Three things to watch when choosing:

• Subpages are all unique URLs the scanner finds, so including blog articles, category pages and translated versions. A B2B site with a knowledge base in three languages quickly goes over 350.
• The free plan is limited. You get the basic banner and Consent Mode, but no custom branding, multiple languages or geotargeting. For a Belgian site in Dutch and French, that alone is usually a reason to move to a paid plan.
• Multiple domains count separately. If you have a .be, .nl and .fr, you pay three times, unless you move to a different model at Usercentrics.

Installing Cookiebot through Google Tag Manager: step by step

You can paste Cookiebot directly into the <head> of your site, but if you work with Google Tag Manager, install it there. Then consent and tags live in one place and GTM controls the order.

1. Create an account and add your domain. Let the first scan run and check the categories. A marketing pixel classified as “necessary” will later load without consent.
2. Copy your Domain Group ID. You find it in your Cookiebot account; the GTM template needs it.
3. Add the Cookiebot template in GTM. Go to Templates, search the Community Template Gallery for the official Cookiebot CMP template and add it. Google recommends this itself: CMPs provide templates in the Community Template Gallery to manage consent mode.
4. Create the tag on Consent Initialization. Enter your Domain Group ID and choose “Consent Initialization - All Pages” as the trigger. That trigger fires before all other triggers.
5. Set the default consent to denied. For ad_storage, analytics_storage, ad_user_data and ad_personalization, at least for the EEA. Enable the option in the template to pass Google Consent Mode on.
6. Link your other tags to consent. Google tags read the consent state themselves. For non-Google tags (Meta, LinkedIn, Hotjar) you set the required consent in GTM under the advanced settings, or you use triggers on the Cookiebot events.
7. Put the cookie declaration on your privacy page. Cookiebot provides a script that shows the current cookie list. Combine it with a proper privacy policy.

Basic or advanced consent mode?

With basic, Google tags only load after consent; with advanced, they load immediately with a denied state and send cookieless pings, which lets Google model missing conversions. Cookiebot supports both. Which one you choose is a trade-off between measurability and your internal privacy policy; for most B2B advertisers with paid traffic, advanced makes more sense. We work out that choice further in our guide to Consent Mode v2.

The mistakes we see most often with Cookiebot

• Loaded twice. Cookiebot is hard-coded in the theme and also added as a tag in GTM, or a WordPress plugin adds it once more. Result: double banners or a consent state that jumps around.
• On the wrong trigger. The Cookiebot tag sits on All Pages instead of Consent Initialization, so the first hit of every session goes out without a consent state.
• Only the old signals. An outdated template sends ad_storage and analytics_storage, but not ad_user_data and ad_personalization. Google Ads treats that as a refusal.
• Wrong categories. The scan puts an unknown tracker in “unclassified” and nobody looks at it. That tracker then loads without any control.
• A banner that makes refusing hard. The Belgian Data Protection Authority states that consent is not valid through pre-ticked boxes and that withdrawing it must be as easy as giving it. In the Netherlands, the Dutch Data Protection Authority sent warning letters to websites in April 2025 where saying “no” did not have the intended effect or boxes were pre-ticked.

How do you test whether Cookiebot and Consent Mode work?

A banner that appears proves nothing. Test like this:

Repeat that test after every theme update, new plugin or new tag. If Google Ads suddenly shows half as many conversions after a banner change, compare with your CRM first: it is often a measurement loss, not a lead loss. Our conversion tracking audit checklist covers the rest of the chain.

When should you have this set up?

You can install Cookiebot yourself with these steps. The mistakes usually sit in how everything fits together: consent, GTM, Google Ads, Meta and server-side tagging all have to connect. At Kaizo we set up the full chain, from consent to GA4, Google Ads and Meta; read the setup in the Kaizo case. At Tryve, too, consent was the foundation of conversion measurement.

Want to know whether your setup is right? Start with a tracking audit. If you want it built, our tracking specialist handles the installation, the Consent Mode v2 connection and the tests. Pricing on request.

For more on privacy-friendly measurement, read our guides on third-party cookies and Matomo.

Frequently asked questions