First vs Third-Party Cookies
Oct 17, 2025
Understanding the difference — and why it matters for compliance and tracking accuracy
What Are Cookies?
Cookies are small text files stored in your browser that remember information about your visit. They make the web smoother — keeping you logged in, remembering your basket, or saving your preferred language. But cookies also play a major role in analytics, advertising, and compliance — and that’s where the real complexity begins.
First-Party Cookies
First-party cookies are created and stored by the website you’re visiting. They’re tied to that website’s own domain and can’t be accessed by others.
They’re typically used for:
Session management: remembering login states or basket contents
Site preferences: storing language, theme, or location settings
Analytics: tracking page views, events, and conversions
It’s worth noting that while first-party cookies are often associated with strictly necessary or performance functions, that’s changing. A growing number of analytics and marketing tools now use first-party cookies to help maintain data quality after third-party cookies are phased out.
👉 However, being first-party doesn’t automatically make a cookie exempt from privacy law.
It simply changes who can see the data — not whether consent is required. If that cookie is used for analytics, marketing, or profiling, user consent is still required under GDPR and similar laws.
Third-Party Cookies
Third-party cookies come from domains other than the one you’re visiting. They’re most often used for:
Advertising and remarketing across websites
Social embeds and widgets (e.g. “Like” buttons)
Cross-site analytics for aggregated campaign tracking
Because they allow external parties to follow users across multiple sites, these cookies are under increasing scrutiny — and most browsers now block them by default.
This industry shift is driving the move towards first-party data, Consent Mode, and server-side tagging — giving website owners more control and transparency.
The Rise of Server-Side Tracking
Server-side tracking replaces browser-level cookie drops with data sent securely through your own domain — often referred to as a tag gateway.
Instead of third-party tags firing directly in the user’s browser, data passes through your server, where you control what’s shared. This can improve both privacy compliance and data quality, but it must still respect user consent choices.
We’ll cover this in depth in our next article:
➡️ [Server-Side Tagging & Tag Gateways Explained] (coming soon)
How CookieChest Helps
CookieChest ensures cookies and scripts load only when they should — protecting user privacy and your tracking accuracy.
✅ First-party analytics configured through Google Tag Manager
✅ Third-party scripts automatically blocked until consent
✅ Full Consent Mode V2 integration
✅ Optional server-side and tag gateway setup for advanced compliance
With CookieChest, you don’t have to choose between accurate data and privacy — you can have both.
What This Means for You
If your website uses Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, or advertising tags, you’re likely dealing with both first- and third-party cookies. Misconfiguring them could mean:
Tracking before consent (non-compliant)
Under-reporting data due to blocked scripts
Loss of user trust or potential fines
CookieChest takes care of all of that — so you can focus on your business while we handle the technical compliance.