What is the cf_clearance cookie?
Whether a CAPTCHA or Javascript challenge has been solved.
Our October 2026 scan found it on 226 sites (9% of the 2,450 we scanned), set before any consent.
- Purpose
- Functional
- Belongs to
- Cloudflare
- Set as
- First-party on 92% of sites, third-party on 8%
- Typical lifetime
- 12 months (vendor says: session)
Sites that set cf_clearance before consent
The highest-ranked 30 of 226 sites.
- vimeo.com0 tracking companies
- openai.com1 tracking company
- yuga.com5 tracking companies
- epicgames.com1 tracking company
- discord.com2 tracking companies
- medium.com2 tracking companies
- nist.gov3 tracking companies
- canva.com1 tracking company
- cpanel.net4 tracking companies
- pubmatic.com1 tracking company
Show 20 more sites
- name.com3 tracking companies
- hostgator.com3 tracking companies
- claude.ai0 tracking companies
- substack.com0 tracking companies
- businessinsider.com0 tracking companies
- ietf.org0 tracking companies
- fandom.com3 tracking companies
- wired.com2 tracking companies
- klaviyo.com4 tracking companies
- sagepub.com4 tracking companies
- cambridge.org2 tracking companies
- anydesk.com2 tracking companies
- outbrain.com1 tracking company
- kick.com3 tracking companies
- mediafire.com5 tracking companies
- buydomains.com2 tracking companies
- box.com8 tracking companies
- sedo.com0 tracking companies
- singular.net0 tracking companies
- apnews.com14 tracking companies
Related cookies
Other cookies from Cloudflare.
How to stop it
Declining non-essential cookies in a site's consent banner should stop cf_clearance 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.