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TL;DR

The following 6 speed tests do not place cookies at all: Astound speedtest, Cloudflare, Fast, Google Fiber, Internet Speed at a Glance and LibreSpeed. These speed tests are privacy-friendly based on cookie use.

On the other hand, these 6 speed tests are not privacy-friendly based on cookie use. They place an excessive number of cookies. Bandwidth Place, Broadband Speed Checker, Ookla Speedtest, SpeedCheck, SpeedOf.me and Toast.

 

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Method of measurement
  3. Speed tests to test
  4. The measurements
  5. Conclusions
 

Introduction

This test examines how many cookies are placed if all cookies are accepted. From a privacy perspective, the fewer cookies are placed, the better.

 

Method of measurement

For this test we visit the homepage of the speed test in Google Chrome, accept all cookies, and then count the number of cookies found with Get cookies.txt LOCALLY.

Because we suspect that the number of cookies placed may vary over time, we test the number of cookies placed several times (at different days) to get a better idea of the number of cookies placed (In our analysis we will use the minimum number of cookies counted).

 

Speed tests to test

Because this is a relative simple test, the unique speed tests as collected at ZOMDir will be tested.

 

The measurements

  1. Astound speedtest 0, 0, 0 cookies
  2. Bandwidth Place 19, 19, 19 cookies
  3. Bredbandskollen 2, 2, 2 cookies
  4. Broadband Speed Checker 17, 18, 17 cookies
  5. Cloudflare 0, 0, 0 cookies
  6. Comparitech 6, 6, 6 cookies
  7. DSLReports 8, 6, 8 cookies
  8. Fast 0, 0, 0 cookies
  9. Fireprobe 10, 10, 10 cookies
  10. Google Fiber 0, 0, 0 cookies
  11. Internet Speed at a Glance 0, 0, 0 cookies
  12. LibreSpeed 0, 0, 0 cookies
  13. M-Lab 4, 4, 4 cookies
  14. Meter.net 11, 12, 13 cookies
  15. N Perf 7, 7, 6 cookies
  16. Ookla Speedtest 26, 28, 28 cookies
  17. Open Speed Test 9, 9, 9 cookies
  18. SamKnows 5, 5, 5 cookies
  19. SpeedCheck 26, 25, 25 cookies
  20. SpeedOf.me 28, 27, 28 cookies
  21. SpeedOf.me API Sample Page 6, 6, 6 cookies
  22. SpeedSmart 4, 4, 4 cookies
  23. Speedtest4.PHP 0, 0, 0 cookies
  24. TestMy.net 13, 14, 14 cookies
  25. Toast 19, 19, 19 cookies
  26. Which Broadband Speed Test 13, 13, 12 cookies
  27. Xfinity xFi Speed Test 6, 6, 6 cookies

The bar chart below clearly shows which speed tests place many and which speed tests place few cookies.

A bar graph with the number of cookies per speed test

How many cookies is normal?

Research from 2018 shows that the median user receives around around 10 cookies per visited website.

To check whether 10 cookies per website is still correct in 2024, we do a short sample of a number of popular websites (after accepting all cookies).

  1. Google 6 cookies
  2. YouTube 6 cookies
  3. IMDb 6 cookies
  4. Wikipedia 4 cookies
  5. Reddit 8 cookies
  6. Yahoo 9 cookies
  7. Amazon 11 cookies
  8. Bing 17 cookies
  9. eBay 20 cookies
  10. Weather.com 20 cookies
  11. Fandom 42 cookies
  12. CNN 44 cookies
  13. GitHub 5 cookies
  14. MSN 15 cookies
  15. Canva 24 cookies
  16. Walmart 33 cookies
  17. DisneyPlus 26 cookies

Based on the above sample, the median of cookies placed per visited website is 15. Hence we concluded that 10-15 cookies per website is normal nowadays.

 

Conclusions

Based on the above measurements, we conclude that for the tested speed tests:

  1. The minimum number of cookies is 0
  2. The maximum number of cookies is 27
  3. The average number of cookies is 8.6
  4. The median of the number of cookies is 6

The 6 speed tests below fully comply with the cookie law because they do not use cookies at all:

  1. Astound speedtest
  2. Cloudflare
  3. Fast
  4. Google Fiber
  5. Internet Speed at a Glance
  6. LibreSpeed

The following 6 speed tests use more cookies than 'normal':

  1. Bandwidth Place
  2. Broadband Speed Checker
  3. Ookla Speedtest
  4. SpeedCheck
  5. SpeedOf.me
  6. Toast