Cookie walls and pay-or-consent: paying instead of agreeing

The idea is simple: whoever does not want tracking-based advertising pays a monthly fee. Whoever does not want to pay gives consent. The alternative is meant to keep the consent freely given.

The dispute is whether a paid alternative genuinely establishes free choice – or merely puts a price tag on a fundamental right.

The hard cookie wall

The clearer case first: a page cannot be opened at all without agreement, and no other option exists. This form is regarded as unlawful – the European Data Protection Board expressly rejected it back in 2020. The reason is the prohibition on bundling: access is tied to consent that access does not require.

The 2024 opinion

The European Data Protection Board addressed large platforms in April 2024. The core statement: for very large providers, the choice between agreeing and paying is generally not enough. A third option is demanded – free access without behavioural advertising, using purely contextual advertising oriented to the content of the page rather than the person in front of it.

The opinion expressly concerns large platforms. For smaller providers the position is less clear-cut, and national supervisory authorities assess it differently.

Where the question matters in practice

• Editorial offerings financed by advertising – the original use case and the most frequently examined.
• Pure service sites scarcely at all: where there is no ad financing, there is no occasion to bundle in the first place.
• Public authorities not at all: paid access to official information is not a permissible alternative.

Anyone considering the model should factor in the effort it brings: a second technical version of the service with no tracking at all, payment handling, a cancellation route, and documentation of how the amount was arrived at. For smaller offerings the route via a clean, symmetrical consent question is as a rule considerably cheaper.