Cookieless analytics counts visitors without storing anything on their device and without keeping IP addresses, usually with a daily-changing hash. Because nothing is stored on the device and no one can be followed across days, such a tracker usually falls outside the consent rules for cookies, but you should still mention it in your privacy policy and check with your legal adviser.
European publishers carry a cost they often do not measure: every visitor who rejects the consent banner disappears from cookie-based analytics. On many sites that is between a fifth and a half of readers. Cookieless analytics removes that blind spot.
How cookieless counting works
A cookie-based tool gives each browser an ID and stores it on the device. A cookieless tool stores nothing on the device. To know that two pageviews belong to the same visitor, it builds a hash from:
- the IP address,
- the browser's user agent,
- the website,
- a random salt that changes every day.
The hash is the same for the same visitor during one day, so sessions and daily users can be counted, and different the next day. The IP address itself is never stored. Nobody, not even the analytics provider, can follow a person across days or across websites.
What you lose and what you gain
| Cookie-based | Cookieless | |
|---|---|---|
| Visitors who reject consent | missing | counted |
| Returning visitors over weeks | yes | no (daily only) |
| Cross-site tracking | possible | impossible by design |
| Consent banner needed for the tracker | yes in the EU | usually not |
| Ad-blocker resistance | low | higher with a first-party style script |
For a publisher, daily users, sessions and pageviews are what matter for advertising and editorial decisions. Long-term returning-user analysis is rarely worth losing a third of your audience.
Does it really need no consent?
The ePrivacy rules require consent for storing or reading information on a device. A tracker that does neither is generally outside that rule. GDPR still applies to any processing of personal data, so a cookieless tool should process the minimum, keep data in the EU and be described in your privacy policy. Regulators' positions differ between countries; ask your legal adviser for your own site.
Your ad tags are a separate question
Your analytics can be cookieless while your ad tags are not. Google AdSense, Ad Manager and most ad networks still need consent in the EU, through a certified consent management platform. Cookieless analytics simply means your traffic numbers no longer depend on that banner.
How PubPulse does it
PubPulse sets no cookies, keeps no IP address, rotates its salt every day and stores data in Frankfurt, Germany. Known bots are filtered before anything is stored. Our privacy policy describes the processing for the visitors of the sites we measure.
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