Cookie Policy

Third-party cookies and our ad partner

Our advertising cookies are set by a third-party ad partner, not by us — and they follow that partner's published policy, which we link to in the banner.

Like most ad-funded sites, we work with an advertising partner that serves ads and measures their performance. When you consent to advertising cookies, that partner may set cookies on your device to measure how often an ad is shown, prevent the same ad appearing too frequently, and report aggregate performance back to advertisers. These cookies are governed by our partner's privacy policy, which is linked from our consent banner — we don't control their retention or their broader data practices, though we require them to operate within UK GDPR and PECR as a condition of working with us.

If you'd rather not be tracked by any single ad partner across the web, the cleanest route is to choose 'Essential only' in our banner, which blocks all advertising cookies from loading. You can also use your browser's anti-tracking features (Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention, Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection, Chrome's third-party cookie phase-out) or your ad partner's own opt-out page. Any of these stops the partner's cookies from following you beyond this site.

What 'essential' really means

An 'essential' cookie is one the site literally can't function without — not one we'd simply prefer to keep. The category is narrow by law, not by our choice.

Under PECR and the ICO's guidance, 'strictly necessary' cookies are only those needed to deliver a service the user has explicitly requested. For us, that's a small set: the cookie that remembers your consent choice (so we don't show you the banner on every page), session cookies that keep the site working as you move between pages, and security cookies that protect against abuse. These don't need consent because the site can't operate without them.

What doesn't count as essential, even though some sites treat it that way: analytics cookies, advertising cookies, and any cookie whose job is to remember you for marketing or personalisation. Those all need your positive opt-in under PECR, which is why they only load after you accept them in our banner. We've kept the 'essential' category narrow on purpose, because anything broader would be us making a choice that the law says is yours to make.

Consent Mode and how your choice is communicated

When you choose 'Essential only', our banner signals that choice to our analytics and advertising partners so they restrict their processing accordingly — and if you accept all, the same signal tells them they may operate as normal.

Most modern advertising and analytics tools — including the major platforms site owners commonly use — support a signal known as Consent Mode, which carries the user's consent state to the tool on every page load. Our banner integrates with that signal: 'Accept all' tells the tools they may set cookies and process data as usual; 'Essential only' tells them to operate in a restricted mode that sends only the minimal, privacy-preserving pings needed to model aggregate traffic without identifying you. This keeps the consent state consistent across all the tools the site uses, rather than relying on each tool to guess.

The practical effect is that your choice actually does something rather than disappearing into the page. If you decline, the restricted-mode signals mean our analytics and advertising partners don't build a profile of you from this site, and any cookie they'd otherwise set is not set. If you change your mind later, the updated choice is signalled on your next visit, and the tools adjust to match. You don't need to understand the underlying signals — the banner handles it — but it's worth knowing the mechanism exists, because a banner without Consent Mode would leave the choice only half-implemented.

Consent Mode is not a substitute for the legal basis under PECR; it's the technical layer that carries the consent you've given (or withheld) to the tools that need to respect it. The legal basis remains your positive opt-in via the banner, captured before any non-essential cookie loads, and Consent Mode simply ensures that decision is enforced consistently downstream.

How long cookies last, and how to clear them

Essential cookies last only as long as they need to — a session or, for your consent choice, up to 12 months — and you can clear every cookie on this site in two clicks via your browser settings at any time.

The cookie that remembers your consent choice typically persists for up to 12 months, so you're not re-shown the banner on every visit; after that it expires and the banner reappears, giving you a fresh choice. Session and security cookies are short-lived by design and expire when you close your browser or shortly after. Analytics and advertising cookies, where you've consented, follow the retention rules set by our analytics and advertising partners — usually a maximum of 13 to 14 months for advertising-related identifiers, with the exact lifespan published in each partner's own policy, linked from the banner.

If you want everything gone regardless of category, the most thorough route is your browser's 'clear browsing data' function, which removes every cookie for this site (and any others you select) in one pass. After clearing, the banner will reappear on your next visit because the cookie that remembers your choice has gone with the rest. The calculators themselves keep working throughout — they never relied on cookies in the first place.

For partial control, the cookie controls in the footer let you switch between 'Accept all' and 'Essential only' without clearing anything. That changes which categories load on future visits, though any data already collected under a previous consent remains governed by our retention approach in the privacy policy. For ad-specific opt-outs, most major ad partners run their own settings pages where you can turn off interest-based advertising across every site you visit, not just ours.

Cookies and children

The site isn't directed at under-16s and we don't knowingly set non-essential cookies for them — if you believe a child has consented in error, contact us and we'll clear that consent.

Because car finance is an adult product, our content is written for over-18s, and we apply a 16 threshold in line with our privacy policy. We don't design non-essential cookies to appeal to children and we don't knowingly allow anyone under 16 to consent to them. If you're a parent or guardian and you believe a child has granted consent through our banner in error, email hello@carfinancecalculator.uk and we'll withdraw that consent and remove the associated identifiers.

Updates to this policy

If we add, remove, or change a cookie, we'll update this page and the date it was last reviewed.

We won't quietly introduce a new tracking cookie without updating this policy and, where it's non-essential, securing your consent via the banner. Where a change only affects which specific cookie an existing partner sets (for example, a renamed identifier for the same purpose), we'll update the detail without seeking fresh consent; where a change introduces a new purpose or a new partner, that goes through the banner. For the broader picture of how we handle data, see the privacy policy, and for anything you'd like to raise directly, our contact page has the details.