Method
How we review
The criteria, the weights, where our facts come from, and what we do when we get something wrong.
In this article
01What we review
We review online services that check a website for compliance with European rules: cookie and tracker scanners, consent management platforms that include a scanner, and broader audit tools that also look at legal documents, consumer information or accessibility. We review the service as a website owner would meet it: its public product pages, documentation and price list.
The current edition covers 10 services. A service is included when it is available to website owners in the EU and publishes enough about itself for us to assess it on our criteria.
02The criteria and their weights
Every service is scored from 0 to 10 on each of the following criteria. The weights are fixed in advance and are the same for every service.
| Criterion | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Breadth of legal checks | 25% | How many of seven areas of EU website law the service itself checks on a live site: (1) cookies and trackers before consent, (2) the consent banner (a reject option, its prominence, tracking after refusal), (3) what the privacy notice says, (4) provider information or imprint, (5) the consumer-law duties of online shops, (6) transport security (HTTPS/TLS) and (7) accessibility. An area checked automatically earns one credit; a generator, a separately sold paid add-on, a manual recording aid or a check that only informs earns half a credit. The score is 10 × credits ÷ 7, moved by no more than 1.0 for depth (consent states tested, pages crawled, storage types) or for areas reported only as provisional results. |
| Quality of evidence | 20% | Whether results are backed by verifiable evidence (lists of cookies and requests, screenshots, timestamps), name a legal basis for each finding, can be exported as a record (a report or a consent log) and come with a published method or stated limits. All four: 9–10; three: 7–8; two: 5–6; one or none: below 5. |
| Guidance on fixing | 15% | How directly the service helps to remove a problem: instructions for each finding, generators for missing texts, an included consent banner that blocks scripts, or access to legal help. Several of these: 9–10; one or two: 6–8; only general advice: 3–5; none: below 3. |
| Fit for European law | 15% | Whether the service is built around EU/EEA law (GDPR, ePrivacy, EU consumer law) and the national rules of member states, whether the vendor is established in the EU or keeps data there, and in how many EU languages results or outputs are offered. Tools built for a single country score below 5; vendors established outside the EU lose up to 1.5 points. |
| Clear prices and value | 15% | Whether the vendor publishes prices with currency, VAT treatment and billing period, offers a useful free tier, what one typical SME website costs, and whether long contracts are forced on the buyer. Free without relevant limits: 10; a useful free tier and complete published prices: 8–9; published prices with gaps or contradictions: 5–7; prices only on request: 2–4. |
| Time to first result | 10% | How much time and effort it takes to get a first result. A public web form without registration scores highest; needing an account or an installation lowers the score; a command-line tool or a sales call scores lowest. Public web form, no registration: 9–10; an e-mail address, account or plugin needed: 7–8; installation or sales-led onboarding: 4–6; command line only: 1–3. |
03How a score is calculated
The overall score is the weighted average of the criterion scores, rounded to one decimal place. For example, Breadth of legal checks counts for 25% and Quality of evidence counts for 20% of the total. We do not use stars, user votes or review counts, and we do not average in scores from other publications.
Each overall score maps to a verdict label:
| Label | Overall score |
|---|---|
| Outstanding | 9.0 to 10.0 |
| Excellent | 8.0 to 8.9 |
| Very good | 7.0 to 7.9 |
| Good | 6.0 to 6.9 |
| Fair | 5.0 to 5.9 |
| Limited | 0.0 to 4.9 |
Ranks follow the overall score. Where we publish quick picks, such as “best free option”, the rule behind each pick is printed next to it in the ranking. The highest-ranked service carries our “Editor’s choice” label.
04Where our facts come from
Every factual statement about a service, including features, prices, limits, headquarters and languages, comes from published sources: first the vendor’s own public pages, and where needed other primary sources such as official registers, the vendor’s code repository or public procurement listings. Each review lists those pages as numbered sources, together with the year we checked them.
When a vendor does not publish something, we write “not published” rather than estimate it. A feature that is not documented is not credited, which can work against a service that has the feature but does not describe it.
We quote prices exactly as published, with currency and billing period. Prices and plans change often; each review tells you when we last checked.
05Notes on this edition
Scores are editorial judgements by the publisher, from 0 to 10 with one decimal, on the six weighted criteria above. The overall score is the weighted average of the criterion scores, rounded half up to one decimal. They are not user ratings: no user reviews, star counts or user numbers go into them. Facts were taken from public pages, chiefly each vendor’s own pricing, product, help-centre and legal-notice pages, read in 2026. For this comparison we created no accounts, submitted no forms and scanned no third-party websites. Prices appear exactly as published, with currency, period and, where the vendor states it, VAT treatment; where a vendor’s own pages disagree, the entry says so, and anything not published is shown as not published. Because each criterion description says what earns full, half or no credit, readers can apply the criteria themselves.
Research for this edition was completed in .
06Updates
We re-check prices and features when we prepare a new edition, and sooner when a reader or vendor tells us something has changed. Each article shows when it was last updated. When a change moves a score, we update the score and the ranking together.
07Corrections
If you find a factual error, write to editors@epedoo.com with the page, the statement and a source. Vendors are welcome to do the same. We correct factual errors and note the date of each correction in an “Updates and corrections” box at the end of the article concerned.
A score changes only when the facts behind a criterion change; the correction note then says so.