What is the __hstc cookie?
The main cookie for tracking visitors.
Our October 2026 scan found it on 46 sites (2% of the 2,450 we scanned), set before any consent.
- Purpose
- Advertising
- Belongs to
- Hubspot
- Set as
- First-party (under the site's own domain)
- Typical lifetime
- 6 months (vendor says: 13 months) — shorter than the vendor documents
Sites that set __hstc before consent
The highest-ranked 30 of 46 sites.
- techcrunch.com38 tracking companies
- seedtag.com4 tracking companies
- bidmachine.io13 tracking companies
- plos.org3 tracking companies
- businesswire.com6 tracking companies
- adroll.com11 tracking companies
- pusher.com3 tracking companies
- cpmstar.com3 tracking companies
- eskimi.com8 tracking companies
- primis.tech11 tracking companies
Show 20 more sites
- aniview.com3 tracking companies
- laravel.com7 tracking companies
- semanticscholar.org3 tracking companies
- geocomply.com7 tracking companies
- ssl.com9 tracking companies
- aditude.io5 tracking companies
- joinmassive.com6 tracking companies
- riskified.com4 tracking companies
- asahi.com41 tracking companies
- moz.com11 tracking companies
- goguardian.com8 tracking companies
- jampp.com4 tracking companies
- mediavine.com1 tracking company
- gitbook.io7 tracking companies
- feedly.com5 tracking companies
- ably.io4 tracking companies
- omni-dex.io3 tracking companies
- tufts.edu12 tracking companies
- sundaysky.com16 tracking companies
- island.io17 tracking companies
Related cookies
Other cookies from Hubspot.
- __hssrc47 sites
- hubspotutk47 sites
- __hssc46 sites
How to stop it
Declining non-essential cookies in a site's consent banner should stop __hstc being set on later visits. Blocking third-party cookies in your browser settings stops the third-party kind everywhere, and clearing cookies for a site removes any it already set.
Description from the Open Cookie Database (Apache 2.0).
Understanding this page
- How cookie lifetimes work, and why a 13-month _ga matters
What a cookie's "expires" field actually controls, why Google Analytics ships a 2-year default that many sites cut down to 13 months, and how Safari's 7-day cap on script-set cookies changes the picture.
- First-party vs third-party cookies (and why "first-party" still tracks you)
What the distinction actually means technically, why browsers only block one of the two, and how CNAME cloaking, server-side tagging and cookies like _ga let sites keep tracking under their own domain.
- How to block or limit trackers
Browser privacy settings, content blockers, Global Privacy Control and clearing cookies compared honestly — what each one actually stops, what it doesn't, and what it costs you in return.