What does the cookie scanner check?
The CookieConsentHQ cookie scanner uses a Chromium browser to load website pages without consent, as a new visitor would see them. It then loads the first few pages again after an Accept all action to complete the cookie list.
The scanner crawls breadth first, loading each discovered page once without consent before making those additional post-consent visits. This gives you a view of cookies found before a visitor has made a choice alongside cookies found after acceptance. The distinction matters when you are investigating cookies set before consent: a cookie that appears only after acceptance tells a different story from one that appears on the initial load.
Found cookies are matched against a built-in database of 92 known cookies. Unknown cookies can be classified using AI. Results are presented as cookies grouped into categories in the dashboard, so you can review what the scan found instead of treating the number of discovered cookies as the whole result.
How many pages can the scanner crawl?
Free scans cover up to 50 pages, while paid plans cover up to 150 pages per scan. The scanner accepts public websites, but it cannot scan localhost or IP addresses.
The page limit applies to a scan, not to the number of pages your website might contain. Breadth-first crawling also affects which pages fall within that limit: it processes pages closer to the starting point before pages farther away in the crawl. A 50-page scan should therefore be understood as a view of up to 50 visited pages, rather than a report on every URL belonging to a larger site.
The scanner's public-website requirement matters when you are testing a site that has not been published. For a local development address or a direct IP address, you will need a public website before you can run this crawler. If you only want to check one public page first, the separate free website checker offers a smaller starting point.
How often can I run a cookie scan?
Scheduled scans run monthly on Free, weekly on Starter, and daily on Growth, Business and Agency. The manual Scan now button allows another scan after 24 hours on Free or after 1 hour on paid plans.
This means the frequency of automatic checks and the interval between manual runs are separate plan details. A Free site receives a monthly scheduled crawl, while a Starter site receives weekly scheduled crawls and can use the shorter paid-plan interval for manual runs. If you need daily scheduled checks, they begin with Growth; the pricing page sets out the corresponding pageview allowances and plan costs.
Each scan also reads the Google Consent Mode values sent in Google's own requests. Starting on Starter, the Consent Mode Health Monitor checks signals during every scheduled scan. That is a scheduled check, not a claim of continuous observation between scans. For the Google-side details, see Google Consent Mode v2.
Where do scan results appear?
The results appear in the dashboard's cookie list, grouped into categories. The scanner can also fill the banner's cookie table on your cookie policy page through a placeholder element.
That connection lets the scanned cookie list supply the table displayed with your cookie policy. You still need to understand the categories in the list, particularly when a cookie is not found in the 92-cookie database and is classified using AI. The page scan tells you what the browser encountered on the pages it loaded; the coverage remains bounded by the page cap and the before-and-after consent visits described above.
This cookie table is a different feature from the cookie consent log. The scanner records which cookies are found during a crawl, while the log stores an individual visitor's consent choice and related details. Keeping those functions distinct helps when you are checking site behavior and looking up a particular visitor's recorded choice.
Can I check a website before setting up recurring scans?
Yes, the free public checker at /check scans one page for cookies set before consent, hardcoded tracker tags and Consent Mode v2 defaults. It also recognizes 22 other consent tools, including tools you may be assessing before a switch.
The checker is useful for a focused, one-page question; the product scanner adds breadth-first crawling, scheduled scans, before-and-after consent visits and a categorized cookie list in the dashboard. Do not use the one-page result as though it covers the rest of the website. For a WordPress site, you can also review the WordPress integration, which provides the CookieConsentHQ plugin with WordPress Consent API support.
If your main question concerns Google signals, start with the page-level check and then use scheduled scanning on the plan that matches how often you need updates. If your main question concerns the cookies across site pages, use the crawler and read its results within the applicable page limit.