Yours to keep
One folder on your server and one script tag. No account, no subscription, no third-party requests of its own. Update with git pull, and your own settings, cookie list and texts are never overwritten.
Argnode Consent Kit (ACK)
A cookie consent banner you actually own.
A free, open-source consent management platform that lives in one folder on your own server. It asks for consent, sends Google Consent Mode v2 signals and loads your Google tags in the right order. No subscription, so an expired credit card cannot take your advertising down with it.
What a consent management platform does
A consent management platform (CMP) is the cookie banner and the logic behind it. Under EU rules, a website may not set analytics or advertising cookies until the visitor has agreed to them, and the visitor must be able to say no just as easily. The CMP asks the question, stores the answer, and tells every advertising and analytics tag on the page what it is allowed to do.
Google Analytics 4, Google Ads conversion tracking and remarketing tags all read the consent state through Google Consent Mode. If the banner sends the wrong signal, or the right signal at the wrong time, the tags fire without permission, quietly record nothing, or worst of all feed wrong data into your analytics. In every case the data your ad platforms optimise on is wrong, and it usually comes to light only after the campaign results have disappointed.
Why we built it
We built it because we needed it, and because we did not want to depend on a software-as-a-service subscription. Take a local business spending €200 a month on Google Ads, plenty in a small town where the market saturates quickly and search volumes are low. A hosted consent service costs about €200 a year, over 8% of that budget. Smart Bidding needs conversion tracking to work, and if the tracking makes the budget 10 to 20% more effective, it earns back €240 to €480 a year. One paid hour of setup and the margin is gone, so the arithmetic tells the business to run its campaigns blind.
Take the fee away and the same tracking pays for itself from the first month. The Consent Kit is files on the site's own server: no fee, and no subscription to lapse and take the banner down with it. It is open source under the Mozilla Public License 2.0, and we earn from setting it up, not from licences.
What you get
Built for the strictest reading
Designed against the cookie guidance of Traficom, the Finnish regulator, which is among the strictest in the EU. Reject all is one click on the first layer, the same size and style as Accept all. No pre-ticked boxes, no legitimate-interest toggles. That also makes the banner easier on your visitors.
Keeps your campaign attribution
The banner asks for a decision on the landing page, before the visitor moves on. So the referrer and the UTM tags of a paid click survive, and the visit is not reported as direct traffic.
Google Consent Mode v2, in the right order
The ACK loads Google Tag Manager or the Google tag itself, after the consent default is set. A tag cannot fire before consent is known, because the kit is what starts it.
One file, banner and policy
The same cookie list drives the banner and your cookie policy page, so the two cannot drift apart. Change the list and every visitor is asked again. The kit compares a hash of the list, with no database server involved.
Light and fast
Plain JavaScript, no framework, no dependencies, about 11 kB gzipped. It loads asynchronously without blocking the page and works under a strict Content Security Policy.
Looks like your site
Clean and usable with no CSS of your own. Add one stylesheet to match your brand. The ACK never leaks styles into the rest of the page.
Follows the page language
English and Finnish are included, and you can change any text in your own files without touching the engine.
Ready for your own systems
Hooks to read consent from your own customer records and write changes back, plus dataLayer events compatible with Cookie Information, so switching from it may need no changes to your Google Tag Manager setup. No CRM code ships in the public repository.
Who it is for
Small and medium businesses that run Google Analytics and Google Ads on their own website. Businesses and associations whose ad budget, or appetite for risk, is too small for enterprise SaaS-service. Static sites, custom stacks and any content management system, WordPress included. And agencies that want one consistent, compliant banner across many client sites, each owned by the client, with no licence price that can change under their own service promises.
When to use something else
The Consent Kit is not a Google-certified CMP and does not implement the IAB Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF). Google requires a certified, TCF-integrated CMP if you serve personalised ads through AdSense, Ad Manager or AdMob in the European Economic Area, the UK or Switzerland, and some programmatic buying setups depend on TCF signals too.
Certification means an annual IAB Europe membership, the full TCF machinery and Google's own assessment, every year. For a free tool paid for by implementation work, that cost does not add up, so we have not bothered with it. If your site makes money from ads, or your programmatic campaigns need TCF, use a certified CMP such as Cookiebot or Cookie Information. We set those up too.
On WordPress, the Consent Kit works, but setting it up takes more work than installing a plugin. If you would rather install one, Pressidium Cookie Consent and Complianz are free plugins worth a look.
Where to get it
The code, the install guide and the changelog are on GitHub. Copy the folder into your site, add one line to the <head>, and remove your old Google Tag Manager snippet, because the kit now loads it. With no configuration at all it starts on a sample cookie list for GA4, Google Ads and Meta Pixel. That gives you a working banner, but full compliance needs your site's real cookie list.
If you would rather not do it yourself, we install it, write your cookie list, match it to your brand and check that Consent Mode and your tags behave before it goes live.
Is Argnode Consent Kit really free?
Yes. The code is MPL-2.0 and free to use, change and update, including for commercial sites. You pay only if you want us to set it up for you.
Does it work with Google Consent Mode v2?
Yes. It sets the consent default to denied before any Google tag loads, then sends the update when the visitor chooses. URL passthrough and ads data redaction are on by default.
Can I use it for AdSense or Google Ad Manager?
No. Serving personalised publisher ads in the EEA, UK or Switzerland needs a Google-certified CMP with TCF, and this kit is neither. Use a certified CMP for that site.
Why does the banner block the page?
Because a decision on the first page gives clean data. A banner that visitors can ignore lets them click on first. If consent arrives on page two, the original referrer and UTM tags are already gone, and the visit most likely shows up as direct traffic in both analytics and your ad platforms. An unobtrusive banner can simply fill your systems with wrong data and weaken your campaign targeting. The visitor still gets the whole site whatever they choose: Reject all is one click.
Does it scan my site for cookies?
No, on purpose. A scanner only sees the cookies set while it crawls, so a cookie set only after a login, a form submission or a checkout step is missed and needs to be added manually anyway. The list should come from someone who reads the site's source code and knows what it sets and why: the site's developer, or the platform's own documentation. You keep the list in one JSON file and update it when the site changes. We can write it for you as part of a setup.
Does it work on WordPress?
Yes, but it is not a plugin, at least not yet. You copy the folder to the server and add the script tag to the theme, which is more work than a one-click install. If a plugin suits you better, look at Pressidium Cookie Consent or Complianz.
Want it set up properly the first time?
We install it, write your cookie list and check every tag before it goes live.
