What does pexels.com track?
Before any consent, pexels.com loaded 4 tracking companies and set 6 advertising or analytics cookies.
That's more tracking companies than 70% of the 2,450 sites we scanned.
Scanned October 2, 2026 from Germany, loading www.pexels.com once and clicking nothing. How we scan
- Tracking companies
- 4
- Tracking cookies
- 6
- Third-party hosts
- 14
- Cookies in total
- 13
Consent banner
The page loaded OneTrust, a consent management platform. Everything below was recorded before anyone answered it. 4 tracking companies still loaded while it was unanswered.
Companies contacted before consent
2 of the 8 companies it contacted before consent were analytics companies.
- Google Ads2 requestsAdvertising
www.google.de, stats.g.doubleclick.net
- Meta3 requestsSocial media
connect.facebook.net, www.facebook.com
- Google Analytics6 requestsAnalytics
www.googletagmanager.com, region1.analytics.google.com
- Hotjar2 requestsAnalytics
static.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com
Other third parties (content delivery, consent, functional, unclassified)
Cookies set before consent
The longest-lived tracking cookie it set was _ga, from Google Analytics, lasting about 13 months.
| Cookie | Purpose | Set by | Lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| _fbp | Advertising | pexels.com | 3 months |
| _dd_s | Analytics | www.pexels.com | Under a day |
| _ga | Analytics | pexels.com | 13 months |
| _ga_8JE65Q40S6 | Analytics | pexels.com | 13 months |
| _sp_id.9ec1 | Analytics | www.pexels.com | 13 months |
| _sp_ses.9ec1 | Analytics | www.pexels.com | Under a day |
| country-code-v2 | Unclassified | www.pexels.com | 1 day |
| __cf_bm | Functional | pexels.com | Under a day |
| _hjSession_171201 | Functional | pexels.com | Under a day |
| _hjSessionUser_171201 | Functional | pexels.com | 12 months |
| cf_clearance | Functional | pexels.com | 12 months |
| g_state | Functional | www.pexels.com | 6 months |
| OptanonConsent | Functional | pexels.com | 12 months |
The page also wrote 7 keys to local storage, which works like a cookie but isn't sent with requests.
Understanding this page
- How to see which cookies and trackers a website loads
A hands-on walkthrough for checking what a site sets before you've clicked anything, using Chrome and Firefox's built-in tools, plus how CookieTosser automates the same check every month.
- What counts as valid cookie consent in the EU
The rules that actually govern cookie banners — the ePrivacy Directive, the GDPR consent standard, the Planet49 ruling, the strictly-necessary exemption, and what "reject" has to offer compared with "accept.
- Consent management platforms explained
What a CMP banner is actually doing behind the scenes, how the IAB's TCF standard and Google's Consent Mode v2 fit in, and why a banner being present is no guarantee that nothing loads before you answer it.