TL;DR: Termly is good software. People leave it for four reasons: the per-website price stops making sense once you run more than one site, they only ever needed the banner and not the legal documents, they want the consent layer inside WordPress instead of hosted, or they’ve realized the banner is the fourth thing wrong with a website they don’t want to manage. CookieYes is the cheapest like-for-like swap (free tier, then $10/$25/$55 per domain, but geo-targeting starts at $25). Complianz is the WordPress-native answer at $59/yr for one site. Cookiebot has the best scanner for large or messy sites. iubenda is the pick when consent is one part of a broader compliance program. And Surmado Pro+ ($199/mo annual) is the alternative to running a consent tool at all: a managed website where the banner is included rather than installed. Pick by which reason you’re actually leaving for.
Termly does the job. Pro+ runs $15 per website per month billed annually, or $20 month to month, and for that you get weekly cookie scans, script auto-blocking, a preference center, consent records, DSAR forms, Google Consent Mode v2, and a generator that produces your privacy policy, cookie policy, and terms. That’s a genuinely complete package, and for a lot of businesses it’s the right buy.
So the useful question isn’t “what’s better.” It’s “which of Termly’s tradeoffs is the one bothering you.” There are four, and they lead to different places.
Why businesses leave Termly
The per-website math. Termly prices per site. One site at $15 a month is fine. Four sites is $60 a month, $720 a year, for what feels like the same banner four times. This is the single most common trigger, and it’s why annual-billing competitors look so different on a spreadsheet.
You only needed half of it. Termly’s real value is consent plus legal documents together. If you already have a lawyer-drafted privacy policy, or you’re a US-only business whose exposure is genuinely small, you’re paying for a document generator you’ll use once.
You want it in WordPress. Termly is hosted, which means a script on your site talking to Termly’s service. Some people would rather the consent layer live in the same place as everything else, with no external dependency in the page load.
The banner isn’t really the problem. This is the quiet one. Plenty of people shopping for a Termly alternative are not actually shopping for a consent tool. They have a slow site nobody has updated in two years, analytics that may or may not be recording anything real, and a consent banner they inherited. Swapping the banner fixes one visible symptom.
Quick comparison
| Alternative | Price | Best for | Hosted or self-hosted |
|---|---|---|---|
| CookieYes | Free; $10 / $25 / $55 per domain/mo | Closest like-for-like, cheaper | Hosted |
| Complianz | $59/yr one site; $179 five; $399 twenty-five | WordPress setups | Self-hosted plugin |
| Cookiebot | Free to 50 subpages; ~€7 to €90/domain/mo | Large or messy sites | Hosted |
| iubenda | Tiered by module | Broader compliance needs | Hosted |
| Surmado Pro+ | $199/mo annual ($250 monthly) | Not running a consent tool at all | Included in managed site |
CookieYes: the closest swap
If you want to keep doing exactly what Termly was doing but pay less, CookieYes is the move. There’s a free tier at 5,000 pageviews a month, then Basic at $10 per domain, Pro at $25, and Ultimate at $55 with unlimited pageviews. Annual billing saves about 16.67%.
You get scanning, automatic script blocking, consent logging, policy generators, and a solid WordPress integration. Feature-for-feature it’s the nearest thing to Termly on this list.
Read this before you buy the $10 plan: geo-targeting starts at the $25 Pro tier. Geo-targeting is what makes an EU visitor see an opt-in banner and a US visitor see something appropriate to their state. If region-specific behavior is why you’re shopping, your real comparison is $25 a month against Termly’s $15, and CookieYes stops being the cheap option.
Also worth knowing: every domain needs its own subscription. If you left Termly over per-site pricing, CookieYes has the same structure.
Complianz: if you’re on WordPress
Complianz has over a million active WordPress installations, and it solves the hosted-dependency complaint by living entirely inside your site.
The free version covers a single-site banner, cookie scanning, and a policy generator. Premium is $59 a year for one site, $179 for five, $399 for twenty-five, and adds geo-detection with region-specific banners, consent records, Google Consent Mode v2, IAB TCF, A/B testing, and the fuller legal documents.
At $59 a year against Termly’s $180, this is the biggest raw saving here, and the annual billing suits businesses that don’t want another monthly charge. If your complaint was the per-website math and you’re on WordPress, this is your answer.
The tradeoff is that a plugin is yours to maintain. Complianz says plainly in its own documentation that the administrator stays responsible for configuring it correctly, and that’s the deal with any self-hosted option: you own the config, the updates, and noticing when something breaks.
Cookiebot: if you don’t know what’s on your site
Cookiebot, part of Usercentrics, prices by subpage count per domain rather than traffic. Free up to 50 subpages, then $8 a month for Premium Lite (to 50 subpages), $16 Small (to 350), $34 Medium (to 3,500), $56 Large (to 7,000), and $96 XLarge above that, per domain. Euro pricing runs roughly €7/€15/€30/€50/€90.
Its scanner is the strongest in this group, which matters if your site has accumulated a decade of embeds, widgets, and pixels nobody documented. If the honest answer to “what’s loading on your site” is “no idea,” start here.
Two cautions. Every domain is a separate subscription with no volume discount, so this doesn’t fix per-site pricing either. And in August 2025 Cookiebot moved accounts holding one to three Premium Small domains up to Premium Medium; accounts with four or more kept Small, and Lite was untouched. It was a targeted repricing rather than a across-the-board increase, but if you run a single small site it hit you.
iubenda: if compliance is bigger than cookies
iubenda puts consent alongside policy generation, DSAR handling, and accessibility tooling. Core compliance is bundled per site at $6.99/mo Essentials, $27.99 Advanced, and $119.99 Ultimate, with accessibility priced separately from $7/mo. DSAR management is Ultimate-only, which matters if that’s the feature you came for.
For most small businesses this is more than the problem requires. It’s the right call when compliance has become an ongoing function rather than a task, which usually means multi-market operations or a regulated industry.
Surmado Pro+: if the banner was never the real problem
The four options above are all the same trade: swap one consent vendor for another consent vendor. If you’re leaving Termly for the fourth reason, that trade doesn’t help.
Surmado Pro+ is $199 a month billed annually, or $250 month to month, and it isn’t a consent tool. It’s a managed website. We migrate your existing site, host it, maintain it, wire up your analytics and ad tracking, publish weekly blog posts, and include a cookie consent banner that adjusts to the privacy rules where each visitor is. Scout, our AI agent, handles edits whenever you ask, so changes don’t require a developer or a tutorial.
The point is subtraction. There’s no plugin to pick, no dashboard to configure, no second subscription, no renewal date, and no integration that breaks quietly when something updates. One vendor instead of two.
Be clear on what you’re giving up, though. Surmado does not offer automated cookie discovery and categorization, a granular preference center, stored consent records, generated privacy and cookie policies, DSAR handling, Google Consent Mode v2, or IAB certification. Termly advertises all of those. If you use them, or expect to, Termly is genuinely the better product for that job and you should stay.
How to choose
- Left over per-site pricing, on WordPress? Complianz, $59/yr.
- Left over per-site pricing, not on WordPress? CookieYes, but budget for the $25 tier if geo matters.
- Left because you don’t know what’s loading? Cookiebot.
- Left because compliance outgrew a banner? iubenda.
- Left because you’re tired of managing website tools? A different consent tool won’t fix that.
If you need consent records, DSAR workflows, or Consent Mode v2, stay on Termly or move to Complianz Premium. Downgrading to a tool that doesn’t do those things to save $8 a month is a bad trade, and we’d rather say so.
The bottom line
Most Termly alternatives are lateral moves. That’s fine when the reason for moving is price or platform: Complianz at $59 a year genuinely undercuts Termly, and CookieYes genuinely matches it for less if you don’t need geo-targeting.
But if you’re on your third consent tool in two years, the pattern is the tool-shaped hole, not the tool. That’s a different purchase.
Termly manages privacy compliance. Surmado manages the website, including the consent experience its own tracking needs. If the second one describes your week better, we rebuild your existing site and send you a preview before you pay anything. The pricing page has current numbers, and there’s a fuller breakdown of the whole category in best cookie consent tools for small businesses.
General information about product categories, not legal advice. What applies to you depends on where you operate and what data you collect.