Lifetime cookie banner licences compared with yearly plugin licences

Of the cookie consent tools we checked on 21 October 2026, only tarteaucitron sells a one-time licence: Pro for all your websites at €690 excluding VAT, once. Complianz's FAQ answers "No" to a lifetime licence, Borlabs Cookie and Real Cookie Banner list yearly licences only, and Cookiequiet has no lifetime licence either. Over five years, one website costs €145 on Cookiequiet Starter (€29 a year), €245 on Borlabs Cookie (€49 a year), €295 on Real Cookie Banner (€59 a year) and $295 on Complianz ($59 a year), assuming each renews at today's list price. A one-time licence pays off only when it replaces the renewals of several sites over several years.

Which one-time licences exist?

As read on each vendor's own pricing page on 21 October 2026:

• tarteaucitron Pro lifetime: €690 excluding VAT, once, for all your websites with no fee per domain. The same Pro is €190 for 1 year or €490 for 3 years.
• Borlabs Cookie: yearly only, €49 for 1 site, €79 for 3, €109 for 5, €179 for 10, excluding VAT.
• Real Cookie Banner: yearly only, €59 for 1 site, €89 for 3, €129 for 5, €229 for 10, VAT included.
• Complianz: yearly only, $59 for 1 site, $179 for 5, $399 for 25; "Your plan renews automatically every year."
• Cookiequiet: no lifetime licence. Free covers one website with no time limit. Starter is €29 a year per website (no branding, AI brand match, a 1-year consent log with CSV export, weekly rescans, policies in every language); Pro is €99 a year per website and adds the AI design agent, custom CSS and a 5-year log. No pageview limit on any plan.

What do they cost over 3 and 5 years for one site?

Renewals are assumed at the current list price; none of the plugin vendors publishes a separate renewal price.

For a single site, every yearly plan in the table costs less over five years than tarteaucitron's €690 one-time licence: €145 on Cookiequiet Starter, €245 on Borlabs Cookie, €495 on Cookiequiet Pro with the AI design agent. A one-time price that covers all your sites only pays off when you have several of them.

Mind the tax line when comparing. Borlabs Cookie, Complianz and tarteaucitron quote prices excluding VAT; Real Cookie Banner's prices include it. At a 20% VAT rate, Real Cookie Banner's €59 is about €49.17 before tax, the same as Borlabs Cookie's €49, so a VAT-registered business that recovers the tax sees the two plugins at almost the same price. Dollar prices (Complianz, CookieYes) are shown as the vendors list them, without conversion.

And for five sites?

On five WordPress sites the plugins win: Borlabs Cookie costs €108 less than five Cookiequiet Starter websites over three years (€327 against €435) and €180 less over five (€545 against €725), and Real Cookie Banner €48 and €80 less. Over five years, tarteaucitron's one-time licence (€690) also costs less than five Starter websites, and it covers any number of sites, though its page mentions neither geolocation nor consent proofs. From 7 websites, Cookiequiet's Agency plan costs less than Starter per site: €190 a year for up to 10 Pro websites, which is €950 over five years, still more than tarteaucitron's €690. See the tarteaucitron comparison.

What happens when a yearly licence is not renewed?

This is the hidden cost of yearly plugin licences. Complianz's pricing page says that without renewal the plugin keeps running, but you can no longer edit the configuration or documents, the IAB TCF stops working, and updates and support end. Borlabs Cookie's page says you "will no longer receive updates or support". A consent plugin without updates falls behind new tracker scripts, Consent Mode changes and browser changes, so in practice a yearly licence is a yearly cost. The Complianz, Borlabs Cookie and Real Cookie Banner comparisons cover the features.

When is a one-time licence the wrong choice?

• When you run one or two sites. tarteaucitron's €690 is priced for all your sites; for a single site it costs more over five years than any yearly plan in the table above.
• When the site will not exist in three years. A campaign site or an event page is better on a free or monthly plan, such as Cookiequiet Free or Starter at €3 a month.
• When you need features the licence page does not list. tarteaucitron's pricing page mentions neither geolocation nor consent proofs. For the IAB TCF, Complianz premium, Borlabs Cookie (TCF v2.4) and Real Cookie Banner Pro say they support it; Cookiequiet is not a Google-certified CMP.

A lifetime licence is also a bet that the vendor keeps running and updating the service for as long as you use it.

Does Cookiequiet sell a lifetime licence?

No. Cookiequiet sells monthly and yearly plans per website: Starter at €3 a month or €29 a year, which is €87 over three years and €145 over five; Pro, with the AI design agent and the 5-year consent log, at €9 a month or €99 a year; and Agency at €190 a year per bundle of 10 Pro websites and 5 team seats. When a subscription ends, downgraded websites keep working on the Free tier, and the banner is one script tag you can replace in minutes. Setup is the same on every plan: one script tag before your other scripts, no plugin to update, a scan that fills the cookie table and prefills the policies. The pricing page lists the plans.