About
Cookie Status compares the tracking protections that the major browsers apply by default. It started in November 2019 and is maintained by Simo Ahava and contributors.
Scope
- Default settings in normal browsing only. Private and incognito windows, stricter modes and features the user has to turn on are not covered.
- Desktop browsers, with notes where a claim only applies to some versions or platforms. On iOS and iPadOS, every browser uses WebKit and gets Safari’s protections.
- Brave, Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari.
How claims are checked
Each cell of the comparison table lists its sources and the date it was last checked. A claim is checked in one of three ways:
- A test in the browser, following steps like those in Test your own site. These show up as “Cookie Status test” in the sources.
- The browser vendor’s own documentation, release notes or source code.
- privacytests.org, which tests default desktop browsers regularly and publishes its methods.
Claims without a checked date are older ones that haven’t been re-checked yet. Changes over time are listed in the history.
Contributing
The site is open source on GitHub. The comparison table, browser summaries, feature pages and history are all generated from data files in data/, so most corrections are a small change to one YAML file:
data/status/<browser>.yamlfor what a browser does today.data/history.yamlfor a dated change.
The build checks the data and fails with an error message if something doesn’t fit. You can also open an issue.
Privacy
This site sets no cookies, uses no browser storage, and makes no requests to third parties. Fonts are hosted on the site itself.