Pageguard vs CookieYes
Cookie consent management platform with policy generation
Free scan · No account required
CookieYes is the right pick if you need small businesses that primarily need a cookie consent banner and want cookie-focused compliance. Pageguard is the right pick if you want documents grounded in what your site actually runs — not what you remember it runs. The free scan takes 60 seconds and needs no account.
Our honest take
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.
The real differences
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.
Feature comparison
Pricing
Free (5K pageviews, 100 pages/scan) · $10/mo Basic · $25/mo Pro · $55/mo Ultimate
Free scan (no account) · Pay per document generated. No subscription required, no pageview caps.
Migration considerations
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.
When to pick which
Small businesses that primarily need a cookie consent banner and want cookie-focused compliance. Good fit for blogs and content sites where cookie management is the main concern.
Things to know first
- —Primarily a consent management platform — policy generation is secondary
- —Free plan limited to 5,000 monthly pageviews and 100 pages per scan; inadequate for growing products
- —No detection of non-cookie technologies (SDKs, server-side tracking, analytics libraries)
- —Geo-targeting only available on Pro ($25/mo) and above
CookieYes is fundamentally a cookie banner tool that also generates policies. Pageguard approaches it differently: we scan your full stack — not just cookies — across 437+ technology signatures, then generate documents that reflect everything we find. If you're building a SaaS with Firebase, Stripe, and PostHog, CookieYes will catch the cookies but miss the SDK-level data collection. Pageguard catches both.
Scenarios: who fits where
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.
Common questions
Is CookieYes just for cookies?
CookieYes started as a cookie consent tool and has expanded to include policy generation. Its scanning capability is focused on cookies rather than the full technology stack. Pageguard detects 437+ technologies including SDKs, analytics libraries, and server-side tools, not just cookies.
Can CookieYes handle a high-traffic SaaS product?
CookieYes's free plan supports 5,000 monthly pageviews and scans only 100 pages. For a SaaS with real traffic, you'd need at least the Pro plan at $25/mo. Pageguard's scan is not pageview-gated.
Does CookieYes generate App Store privacy forms?
No. CookieYes is focused on web cookie compliance. For Apple App Store privacy nutrition labels and Google Play Data Safety forms, Pageguard is the right tool.
What's the difference between a consent banner and a compliance scanner?
Browsing alternatives instead of comparing directly?
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