Cookieless analytics: how it works, and what you give up

Traditional analytics store an identifier in the visitor's browser so it can recognise them on the next visit. Cookieless analytics don't, and that changes both what you collect and what you can promise your visitors.

What agentlytics stores

• Nothing in the browser: no cookies and no local storage.
• No IP addresses and no browser identification strings. They are used to make a visitor id and are then discarded.
• Per visit: the page, the referrer, UTM tags, a country, and the names of the browser and operating system, such as "Firefox" and "Windows".
• A visitor id that changes every day: a hash of the site, the IP address and the browser string, salted with a secret that rotates daily, so it can't be used to follow someone from one day to the next.

What you give up

Because the id resets daily, a returning visitor counts as new each day, and a journey that spans several days can't be followed. Daily unique visitors are accurate; "unique visitors over a month" is not something this approach can offer. Funnels are matched within a single day for the same reason.

Do you need a consent banner?

It depends on where you and your visitors are, and on what else your site does. A tool that stores nothing in the browser avoids the most common reason for a banner, but this is not legal advice; check the rules that apply to you. The privacy policy lists exactly what is collected.

Bots and accuracy

Crawlers, link previews and headless browsers are dropped before they reach your numbers, and every visit must come from your own domain, so the counts reflect people.

More guides

• A website analytics MCP server: ask your agent about your traffic
• Add website analytics to your project with Claude Code
• Find out why your website traffic spiked
• Track clicks and find where visitors drop off, without writing code
• A simpler Google Analytics alternative for developers