Grade B

Cookie Bar

Name: Cookie Bar
Rating: 4.9 (22 reviews)
Author: Brontobytes

⤓ Download v2.2 on WordPress.org ↗

by Brontobytesupdated 2025-10-29😴The Napper

Minimalist and lightweight but lacks deep customization.

HealthyGrowing

82/100

Users appreciate the lightweight and open source design but find the customization and multilingual features lacking.

Loved32/40

Trustworthy14/15

Fair & Honest15/15

Maintained9/18

Momentum12/12

✂️

You might not need this plugin. Its core job is small enough to live in your theme's functions.php.

Show the snippet

// Output the cookie bar HTML and JS
add_action( 'wp_footer', function () {
    if ( isset( $_COOKIE['cookie_bar_accepted'] ) ) {
        return;
    }
    ?>
    <div id="cookie-bar" style="position:fixed;bottom:0;left:0;right:0;background:#333;color:#fff;padding:12px 20px;text-align:center;z-index:9999;font-size:14px;">
        This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience.
        <button id="cookie-bar-accept" style="margin-left:12px;padding:4px 12px;cursor:pointer;">Accept</button>
    </div>
    <script>
    document.getElementById('cookie-bar-accept').addEventListener('click', function () {
        document.cookie = 'cookie_bar_accepted=1; path=/; max-age=' + (60*60*24*365);
        document.getElementById('cookie-bar').style.display = 'none';
    });
    </script>
    <?php
} );

Keep in mind:The plugin offers customizable message text, colors, and link to a privacy policy page via a settings UI which this snippet hardcodes.

More plugins you can skip →

Active installs

~15,000

our estimate · wp.org shows 10k+

→ on track for 20k+in ~4 months

Rating

4.9★

22 ratings

Trend · vs a year ago

+127%

Growing fast

11 → 25 installs/day

What to watch out for

MINORnot updated in 7 months

Downloads over time

real new installs per day · release spikes shown separately from the trend

2025-04-302025-08-082025-11-162026-02-232026-06-03

organicrelease spikerelease tailorganic trend · 14d rolling median

Growing fast · +127% in the last year

11/day a year ago→25/day today

Reviews

what people actually say

Cookie Bar is widely praised for its simple, lightweight, open-source approach that works reliably out of the box, but users note that its customization and multilingual features are limited.

What people like

+Very simple, minimalistic and unobtrusive design×12
+Lightweight and low on resource usage, no third-party calls×3
+Open-source code that is easy to audit×3
+Works reliably out of the box×5
+Provides basic colour and text customization

Common complaints

−Limited customization options (placement, size, font, padding, accessibility features)×3
−Claims of Polylang compatibility but no multilingual settings
−CSS changes are cached and only take effect after deactivating/reactivating the plugin
−Unable to change language in the plugin settings

Review trustMostly organic

4.91★Verified rating — holds steady vs the raw 4.90★
0%One-shot reviewers — most reviewers are active community members
past spikeReview timing — up to 33% of all reviews landed in a single month

Reviews per month · 5★ vs lower

2023-11-172025-03-112026-06-04

5★ reviews1–4★ reviews

All-time ratings · 22 total

5★

4★

3★

2★

1★

Latest reviews · 22 analyzed

2025-05-11★★★★★Simple, light, easy markzoi
2024-06-02★★★★★Wonderful easy solution LinuxArchitect
2023-10-26★★★★★Discrete, effective & so simple 180turnaroundmarketing
2022-12-27★★★★★The plugin works great. It uses no third-party sites or memberships…65Erik65
2022-09-26★★★★★Simple and Unobtrusive!cats02nb
2021-04-23★★★★★Perfect Sten
2021-01-21★★★★★minimalistic. open source. excactly what I was looking for…princesshorsepower
2020-02-16★★★★★Thank you for an excellent plugin!pairfumlondon
2020-01-26★★★★★Non-invasive Muge
2019-11-05★★★★★Awesome.BudComSol

Releases

recent versions from WordPress.org SVN

2025-10-29v2.2
2023-10-24v2.1
2022-10-18v2.0
2022-09-23v1.8.9

Alternatives to Cookie Bar

Top Cookies plugins, ranked by score.

Complianz350k installs

Pressidium Cookie Consent15k installs

Complianz1.5M installs

CookieYes2.3M installs

GDPR15k installs

Legal Pages15k installs

For developers & the curious

the raw signals behind the grade — none of this is on the friendly summary above

Download signals

Baselines are computed on organic days only — release spikes and their tails are excluded, so they're not inflated by the auto-update wave.

Baseline · median of last 7 organic days

Prior 7-day baseline

Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days

Latest day · 2026-06-03(organic)

-8.3%

Week-over-week organic trend

Review signals

Concentration and drive-by metrics drive the review-burst and fake-review flags. 30–40% solo reviewers is normal; we only flag the extremes.

33%

Max month share · biggest single 30-day window

3.11

Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty

96%

5★ share in analyzed sample

Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity

—

Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo

4.91 → 4.91★

Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered