Chat
Is Crisp GDPR compliant?
Crisp may only run after the visitor has agreed. It is not strictly necessary for the website to work, so loading it on arrival, before any choice, is the single most common way sites get this wrong.
- Category
- Chat
- Needs consent
- Yes
- Leaves the EEA
- No
- Can be self-hosted
- No
- Recognised by
- crisp.chat
- Typical cookies
- crisp-client/*
What does Crisp do?
A French live chat with a generous free tier, common on small sites. Data stays in the EU on its European plan, but the widget still stores identifiers before anyone opens it.
Does Crisp need consent?
Yes. Crisp is Chat, which is never strictly necessary for a website to function. Under ePrivacy Article 5(3), and its national transpositions, storing or reading anything on the device for that purpose requires consent first, and that consent has to be as easy to refuse as it is to give.
ePrivacy Art. 5(3) · TDDDG § 25 (DE) · TKG 2021 § 165(3) (AT) · GDPR Art. 6(1)(a)
Does Crisp send data outside the EEA?
No. Crisp keeps processing inside the EEA, which removes the third-country question entirely. You still have to name it as a recipient in your privacy policy.
How do we detect Crisp?
We load your page in a real browser as a first-time visitor who clicks nothing, then look at what it contacted. Crisp is recognised by requests to crisp.chat, and we report whether it merely loaded or actually sent data, and whether it set a cookie before any choice was made.
Check your websiteThis describes the service as it is normally deployed. Your own configuration decides what actually happens, which is what a scan of your site shows. Not legal advice.