Which WordPress plugins set cookies?

Analytics, advertising, social sharing, chat, and form plugins commonly set cookies, and so do many sliders, popups, and embeds. WordPress core itself sets cookies only for logged-in users and commenters, so on a typical site nearly every tracking cookie comes from a plugin or a third-party script a plugin loads.

The usual suspects

Analytics plugins that load Google Analytics or similar tools set measurement cookies. Marketing plugins add advertising pixels. Social media plugins load platform trackers. Live chat, A/B testing, popup, and email capture plugins typically store identifiers. Even some gallery and video plugins call home to external CDNs.

Plugins you would not expect

Contact form plugins sometimes set cookies for spam protection. Comment and spam-filtering tools may too. WooCommerce sets cart and session cookies, which are strictly necessary and exempt, but its marketing extensions are not. The rule of thumb: anything that talks to an outside service can set a cookie.

Finding your site's real list

Plugin documentation rarely lists cookies accurately, and updates change behavior. The reliable method is a scan: crawl the site, record every cookie and which script set it, then map those back to plugins. That gives you the true inventory your consent banner and cookie policy need.