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Consent-or-pay is a business tactic in response to the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR). Under this model, users of a website must either:
Consent to the use of cookies and personal data for targeted advertising, or
Pay a small monthly fee to access the service without tracking.
The practice generated significant debate among regulators, policymakers, and consumer advocates alike and is viewed as undermining meaningful consent. Despite controversy, the model is being increasingly adopted by large online platforms and news organizations. As of August 2025, 16 of the 50 largest UK news websites had implemented consent-or-pay.[1]
The General Data Protection Regulation was passed in 2018 with the aim of protecting online users from excessive data collection by large companies. The regulation does this by requiring companies to allow users to consent to data collection, and this is often done by an opt-in banner or pop-up on the home screen of any given website.
Companies began feeling like they were losing revenue over this new regulation because they could no longer collect data for targeted ads at the same scale they'd done before. This led to the new consent-or-pay model as a workaround.
How it works
When a user visits a website, a pop-up consent window is displayed. Traditional options would be Accept or Reject cookies. However the user is presented with the options to Accept or Pay.
The payment is typically a low fee (e.g. £1.99 per month).
Many of the sites that use the model were previously free-to-access and funded primarily through advertising.
Consumers must now "pay" either with their personal data or with money.
This effectively introduces a paywall for previously freely accessible content even if no traditional subscription model exists.
Why it is a problem
Invalid consent
This binary model of data collection creates the illusion of consent because users are compelled to choose one of two bad options, both of which require loss in exchange for content that is generally considered free access.
Lack of informed consent
Companies often inform users that cookies and data collection are for "personalized ads" and "improving services". What they do not express is how a user's personal data is stored in data centers, shared among third-parties, sold to data brokers, and often become publicized through breaches. Users underestimate the costs of giving away their personal data, believing that advertisements of things they're already interested in makes their data a fair trade-off.
False equivalence
The consent-or-pay model creates a false equivalence between two options. It denotes that the company loses, say, $2 or $5 a month when a user rejects targeted ads. This is an impossible metric considering that there is no way to guess whether the individual user would have purchased any item that is advertised to them. At best, this means the monthly fee is completely arbitrary. At worst, it is based upon a percentage of users who do happen to make purchases and is then unfairly distributed upon all users, irrespective of purchase or ad consumption, which is also known as average revenue per user (ARPU).
Illusion of fair exchange
For users, the consent-or-pay model leads to a false belief that a fair exchange is taking place. When a company asks for a price as low as $2 a month while seeking data collection as a "free" alternative, the user is led to believe that they are fairly reimbursing the company for loss ad revenue, especially for such a low monthly fee. In susceptible users, they may be tricked into believing this is a fair and ethical decision they are making, thus happily choosing to engage in a deliberately misleading practice.
Meta investigation and fine
After a year-long investigation by the European Commission, Meta was fined on 23 April 2025 for failing to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The European Commission's investigation targeted Meta's consent-or-pay model because it failed to meet the DMA's criteria of reducing personalized data for targeted ads and it does not allow users to freely consent.[2] Consequently, Meta was fined with €228 million in the month of April, and in July, the European Commission warned that the social media company may face accrued daily fines if they continue employing this tactic.[3]
Other uses
News organizations
Many media outlets have adopted consent-or-pay throughout Europe, including:
In 2024, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) published a non-binding opinion on "Valid Consent in the Context of Consent or Pay Models Implemented by Large Online Platforms." The EDPB denotes that the consent-or-pay model does not constitute as valid consent and that appropriate alternative measures to the model should provide users with an "equivalent alternative". Additionally, they say that if a company wishes to use a payment model, then the opposing equal alternative should not involve processing personal data. Any choice in which users feel compelled to consent does not qualify as valid consent.[4]
Anu Talus, Chair of the EDPB, said:
"Online platforms should give users a real choice when employing 'consent or pay' models. The models we have today usually require individuals to either give away all their data or to pay. As a result most users consent to the processing in order to use a service, and they do not understand the full implications of their choices."[4]
Consumer advocates
This section is incomplete. This notice can be deleted once all the placeholder text has been replaced.
The effects of the consent-or-pay model vary widely.
Advertising Week reports only 30% of users accept the cookies after the GDPR[7]
(2023) According to The Drum, as much as 40% of users simply use a VPN[8]
(PG 2025) Meanwhile, "When users are equally offered the chance to "accept all" or "reject all" cookies, consent rates are typically somewhere around 70-80%, according to both Skovgaards and Contentpass founder Dirk Freytag.[1]
Alternative practices
The Guardian develops a new "contextual advertising" model that bases ads upon whatever page the user is currently viewing (i.e. food ingredients on a recipe page). They say, "It's a perfect advertising product for a privacy conscious brand and a brand doing the right thing." They report a 35% increase in clicks.[9]
