"Compliant" gets used as a vague stamp of approval, but the actual bar is specific and checkable just by looking at a banner — before even checking what fires behind it. Here's what to look for.
The first-layer checklist
A compliant banner's first screen — before any "customize" or "settings" click — needs:
- A genuine "Reject all" (or equivalent) option, not just "Accept all" with a tiny "Manage preferences" link buried in smaller text
- Comparable visual weight between accept and reject — same size, similar color prominence, not a bold colored button next to a grey text link
- No pre-ticked checkboxes for anything non-essential
- A clear, specific explanation of what's being requested, not just "We use cookies to improve your experience"
A German administrative court ruling (VG Hannover, 2025) confirmed the visual-weight point explicitly: a banner that makes rejecting cookies measurably harder than accepting them is a standalone violation, independent of whether any tracker actually fires.
What good actually looks like
Good: "Accept all" and "Reject all" buttons, same size, placed next to each other, both clickable on the first screen. A "Customize" option available but not required to decline.
Bad: A large colored "Accept" button, and a thin "Reject" link in grey, or a reject option that only becomes available after navigating into a settings panel.
Also bad, less obviously: a banner that looks exactly like the "good" example above, but where clicking "Reject" doesn't actually stop any tracking — visually correct, functionally broken. This is the part that can't be checked by eye at all.
Two separate compliance questions
It's worth keeping these apart, because fixing one doesn't fix the other:
- Does the banner's design meet the bar? — checkable visually, in under a minute, by anyone
- Does clicking "Reject" actually stop tracking? — not checkable visually; requires inspecting real network requests before and after the click
Most sites that fail an audit pass #1 and fail #2 — the banner looks right, the backend doesn't match it.
Bannerproof checks both automatically: banner presence and reject-button visibility on the first screen, and whether trackers actually stop firing after "Reject" is clicked. The first scan is free.
This article is informational, not legal advice. Bannerproof is an independent scanning tool, not a law firm or a data protection authority — see our Terms of Service for details.