Guide
How do you add web analytics without a cookie banner?
Use analytics that set no cookies and store no personal data that identifies a visitor. Without cookies or cross-site identifiers, most consent-banner requirements do not apply. The options are a privacy-first hosted tool, a self-hosted one, or server logs.
Why the banner exists
Consent banners exist because tools store identifiers on a visitor’s device and follow them across visits or sites. Remove the identifier and the reason for the banner goes with it.
Three ways to measure without one
Each approach trades convenience against control.
- Cookieless hosted analytics: a script counts visits without a persistent ID, typically by hashing a short-lived value. Least work, least control.
- Self-hosted analytics: the same idea run on your own server, so data never leaves your infrastructure. More work to run and patch.
- Server logs: counting requests from your web server or CDN. No script at all, but no sessions, funnels or events.
What to check before relying on it
Ask whether the tool sets any cookie or local-storage value, whether it keeps IP addresses, and whether identifiers rotate. Your own legal advice, not the vendor’s marketing, decides whether you can drop the banner.
A worked example: OnyxMetric
OnyxMetric is a hosted tool of the first kind. It uses no cookies, salts user IDs daily so visitors are not fingerprinted, and says no consent banner is needed. The script is 18 KB and goes in with one script tag.
Beyond counts it records autocapture events, session replays, funnels and Web Vitals. A hosted MCP server also lets an AI agent query the data.
More on the example: OnyxMetric.