Pageguard vs CookieYes

The core tension here is simple: CookieYes is a consent management platform that added policy generation. Pageguard is a compliance scanner that generates documents from what it actually finds. Those are different products solving different problems, and conflating them leads to real compliance gaps.

CookieYes does cookie consent well. If you run a WordPress blog or a content site where the entire compliance question is "which cookies am I setting and do my visitors consent," CookieYes is a reasonable, well-priced answer. The banner is polished, the setup is fast, and the free plan covers 5,000 monthly pageviews.

Where it breaks down is the moment your stack gets more interesting. A SaaS product using Firebase for auth, PostHog for analytics, and Stripe for billing is running a web of SDKs and server-side data flows that a cookie-focused scanner will never surface. CookieYes will find the cookies those services drop. It will not tell you that PostHog is capturing session replays or that Firebase is syncing device identifiers. Your privacy policy will reflect what CookieYes found, not what your product actually does.

We built Pageguard for the team that ships fast and needs compliance documents that are actually accurate, not documents that cover 60% of their stack and hope nobody notices the rest.

What the scan actually covers

CookieYes scans for cookies. That is genuinely useful, but it is a narrow slice of what a modern SaaS collects. Pageguard detects 437+ technology signatures including SDKs, analytics libraries, third-party scripts, and server-side tools. In practice, this means a solo founder running a Next.js app with Segment, Intercom, and Stripe will get a Pageguard scan that surfaces all three and folds them into the generated documents. A CookieYes scan will catch whatever cookies those services set and stop there. The SDK-level data collection, the behavioral profiling, the payment data handling: none of that makes it into the policy.

Document scope

Both tools generate privacy policies and cookie policies. CookieYes also offers a basic terms of service. Pageguard generates privacy policies, cookie policies, terms of service, App Store privacy nutrition labels, and Google Play Data Safety forms. For a 5-person SaaS shipping their first iOS app alongside their web product, CookieYes cannot help with the App Store submission at all. That is not a knock, it is just outside the product's scope. Pageguard covers the full document set in a single scan.

Pricing model and pageview gates

CookieYes's free plan caps at 5,000 monthly pageviews and 100 pages per scan. For a real product with real traffic, that means upgrading to at least the $25/mo Pro plan to get geo-targeting and adequate scan coverage. Pageguard's scan has no pageview cap and requires no account. You pay per document generated when you need a document. No subscription, no monthly invoice, no ceiling that forces an upgrade the week your traffic spikes.

Gap reporting depth

Pageguard produces a GDPR gap report with severity ratings across critical, high, medium, and low findings, tied to what the scan found in your actual stack. CookieYes surfaces cookie-level compliance gaps. If you want to know that your use of a session replay tool without a disclosure is a critical gap, or that a missing data retention clause is a medium finding, that analysis does not exist in CookieYes.

Switching from CookieYes to Pageguard is not a one-to-one swap, and it is worth being honest about that.

What you give up: the consent banner. CookieYes's primary product is a runtime cookie consent manager that sits on your site and gates third-party scripts behind user consent. Pageguard does not have a consent banner. If you need one, you will need to keep CookieYes for that purpose, use a separate CMP like Osano or Cookiebot, or implement consent logic yourself.

What you gain: on the document side, the switch is straightforward. Run the free Pageguard scan on your live URL with no account required. The scan returns a full technology breakdown across 437+ signatures, a gap report with severity ratings, and the option to generate documents grounded in what was actually found. If you have an existing CookieYes-generated privacy policy, you will likely find that the Pageguard-generated version is longer and more specific, because it covers technologies CookieYes did not detect.

There is no data migration in the traditional sense. Your previous consent logs stay in CookieYes. Your new compliance documents come from Pageguard. The two tools can coexist: CookieYes managing the consent banner, Pageguard handling document generation and gap analysis. That is actually a sensible split for teams that need both.

A solo founder running a Stripe and PostHog-powered SaaS, no mobile app. Their stack goes well beyond cookies, and they need a privacy policy that actually reflects what PostHog captures and how Stripe handles payment data. CookieYes will produce a policy, but it will miss the SDK-level detail. Pageguard is the right call for document accuracy.

A content blogger on WordPress with Google Analytics and a few affiliate scripts. The entire compliance surface is cookie consent and a basic privacy policy. CookieYes's free plan handles 5,000 monthly pageviews and generates the relevant docs. For this use case, Pageguard is more than they need. CookieYes wins here.

A 5-person SaaS team shipping a web app and an iOS app simultaneously. They need a privacy policy, terms of service, and an App Store privacy nutrition label before the App Store review goes through. CookieYes cannot generate the App Store label. Pageguard covers all three documents from a single scan. The answer is Pageguard.

A small e-commerce store with EU customers, needing geo-targeted consent banners. They need both a consent banner with GDPR-specific behavior and accurate policy documents. CookieYes handles the consent banner well, but geo-targeting requires the $25/mo Pro plan. For the documents, Pageguard gives a more thorough scan. The pragmatic answer is both tools for their respective jobs, or Pageguard for documents and CookieYes Pro for the banner.