92% of Fortune 500 Sites Have Terms and Conditions [2026]

92% of Fortune 500 companies have a terms of use page live on their website, according to Greenberg Traurig’s 2023 audit of major corporate sites. That is the closest thing to a hard number for how many websites carry a terms and conditions page, though it only covers the most heavily lawyered slice of the internet. The rest of the roughly 1.49 billion hostnames Netcraft counted in June 2026 face none of that legal review, so the real answer for the wider web is almost certainly lower and effectively unmeasured.

Below is what the audited data actually shows: how terms of use adoption compares to other legal pages on the same sites, how often shoppers even open the page, and what that means if you are publishing one without a corporate legal team behind you.

How many Fortune 500 companies have a terms and conditions page?

92% of Fortune 500 companies have a website terms of use page in place, and 8% do not, according to a study published by law firm Greenberg Traurig in June 2023. The finding comes from an ongoing audit the firm’s Data, Privacy and Cybersecurity Practice has run since at least 2020, visiting the websites of roughly 555 companies (firms that ranked in the Fortune 500 within the past five years, plus additions to cover industries the list otherwise underrepresents) and recording what each one actually publishes.

Figure 1: Adoption rate by legal page type, Fortune 500 companies. Source: Greenberg Traurig, 2022-2024 installments.

Terms of use is the single most common legal page in the audit, ahead of an updated privacy policy and well ahead of a cookie banner. A cookie banner needs ongoing consent-management infrastructure and a defensible legal basis for every tracking technology on the page, while a terms of use page is largely a one-time drafting exercise, which likely explains part of why adoption sits so much closer to universal.

The 92% figure is the clearest large-sample answer to how many websites have terms and conditions that currently exists, but a Fortune 500 company is not a representative website. It has in-house counsel, class-action exposure, and an audit like this one checking its work.

How often do shoppers actually open a terms and conditions page before buying?

Only 9.4% of shoppers voluntarily click through to open a terms and conditions link when it is not required, according to the European Commission’s 2016 study of consumer attitudes toward online terms, which ran live checkout experiments with more than 13,000 respondents across 12 EU member states. Having the page and anyone actually reading it turn out to be two very different numbers.

The European Commission researchers varied whether the terms and conditions had to be scrolled through by default or could only be reached through an optional link. When opening the page was optional, just 9.4% of shoppers bothered to click. When scrolling through it was built into the checkout flow itself, 77.9% of shoppers reported at least scanning it. Regardless of which format the store used, between 90% and 95% of shoppers in the same experiments went on to accept the terms and complete their purchase anyway.

That reading gap is covered in far more depth in Terms and Conditions Statistics 2026, and the exact time people spend on the page once they open it is broken down in How Long Does It Take to Read Terms and Conditions?. Publishing the page satisfies the legal exposure question; getting anyone to read it is a separate, mostly unsolved problem.

Why doesn’t Fortune 500 adoption represent the rest of the web?

Because the audited pool is small and unusually well-resourced next to the web as a whole. Netcraft’s June 2026 Web Server Survey counted 1,489,396,284 websites across 304,146,307 unique domains, and separately estimates that roughly 75% of hostnames are parked, duplicate, or otherwise inactive, leaving around 372 million genuinely maintained sites. No comparable audit has ever visited a representative sample of that population and recorded whether each one publishes terms and conditions.

Figure 2: Illustrative positioning of site types by legal exposure and legal resources, based on the factors the studies above describe, not a measured survey. Source: synthesized from Greenberg Traurig and Netcraft data above.

A full count of how many websites exist is a solved question with a primary source behind it. How many of those sites publish terms and conditions is not, and the gap between the two questions is exactly the difference between a company with a general counsel and one without.

What percentage of Fortune 500 terms of use include an arbitration clause?

28% of Fortune 500 companies include an arbitration provision inside their terms of use, per Greenberg Traurig’s follow-up study, first reported in August 2023 and refined with a provider breakdown in April 2024. Arbitration clauses route disputes to a private arbitrator instead of a courtroom, and the companies that use one are not evenly split on which provider they name.

Figure 3: Provider share among the 28% of Fortune 500 companies whose terms of use include an arbitration clause. The three categories total 98%, not 100%, since Greenberg Traurig’s report did not break out the remaining share. Source: Greenberg Traurig, April 2024.

The American Arbitration Association leads by a wide margin at 56%, with JAMS a distant second at 36%. A smaller group, 6%, requires arbitration without naming a specific provider at all, leaving that choice open until a dispute actually happens.

How has Fortune 500 legal-page adoption changed since 2020?

Cookie banner adoption grew noticeably between 2020 and 2022, while terms of use had already been close to universal the whole time, according to Greenberg Traurig’s ongoing research series on the same audited company pool.

Figure 4: Milestones from the same ongoing research project. Source: Greenberg Traurig, Data Privacy Dish blog, 2020-2024.

Cookie banners climbed 11 points, 34.2% to 45%, as more companies built out consent-management tooling for state privacy laws expanding past California. CCPA-updated privacy policies held almost flat, 71.8% to 71%, which reads less like stagnation and more like a population that had already hit its ceiling early. Terms of use, unmeasured before 2023 in this series, arrived already close to saturated.

Does every website actually need a terms and conditions page?

Company size and audit pressure explain most of the gap between Fortune 500 adoption and adoption everywhere else, but the underlying legal logic does not actually depend on company size. Any site that processes a transaction, hosts an account, or accepts user-generated content takes on liability, dispute-resolution, and intellectual-property questions a terms and conditions page is built to answer.

Figure 5: A basic decision path for whether a site needs a terms and conditions page. Source: general contract-law principles summarized from the studies above.

A purely informational brochure site carries less exposure than a store or a login-gated app, but it is not exposure-free, since even static content benefits from a liability disclaimer and a governing-law clause if a visitor claims to have relied on something the site said. You can generate a terms and conditions document covering acceptable use, liability limits, and dispute resolution without the in-house legal team a Fortune 500 audit assumes you have.

The Bottom Line

Terms of use is close to universal among the biggest public companies in America, at 92%, but that figure describes the segment of the web with the most legal review, not the web as a whole. No comparable large-sample audit exists for small businesses, personal sites, or the long tail of roughly 1.49 billion hostnames Netcraft counts, so the honest answer to how many websites have terms and conditions is that adoption is high where legal risk and company size are both high, and unmeasured everywhere else. Publishing the page and getting anyone to read it are also separate problems: even when scrolling through the terms is a required checkout step, fewer than four in five shoppers report even scanning it. A site that wants the legal protection this page provides needs to publish one regardless of size, since the liability exposure it addresses does not shrink just because the business is smaller.

Frequently Asked Questions

What percentage of websites have terms and conditions? No independent study has measured this across the entire web, but the best available data point is 92% of Fortune 500 companies, per Greenberg Traurig’s 2023 audit of major corporate websites. Adoption among the roughly 1.49 billion hostnames Netcraft counted in June 2026 is almost certainly far lower and effectively unmeasured.

How many Fortune 500 terms of use include an arbitration clause? 28% of Fortune 500 companies include an arbitration provision in their terms of use, per Greenberg Traurig’s 2023 and 2024 study updates. Of those, 56% name the American Arbitration Association, 36% name JAMS, and 6% include a clause without naming a provider.

Do shoppers actually open a terms and conditions link before buying? Only 9.4% voluntarily click open a terms and conditions link when it is optional, according to the European Commission’s 2016 study of more than 13,000 consumers across 12 EU countries. That share rises to 77.9% at least scanning it when scrolling through the page is a required checkout step.

Does a small business website need a terms and conditions page? Legal exposure does not scale down with company size. Any site handling a transaction, an account, or user-uploaded content carries the same liability, dispute-resolution, and acceptable-use questions a Fortune 500 site does, just without the 555-company audit pool tracking whether it published an answer.

Sources and References

1. Greenberg Traurig, LLP. (2023, June 7). “The Importance of Website Terms of Use: Insights from Greenberg Traurig’s Data on Fortune 500 Companies.” 92% of Fortune 500 companies have a website terms of use agreement in place, audited pool of roughly 555 companies.
2. Greenberg Traurig, LLP. (2024, April 29). “Fortune 500 Terms of Use Utilize Varying Arbitration Providers.” 28% include an arbitration provision; 56% name the American Arbitration Association, 36% name JAMS, 6% name no provider.
3. Greenberg Traurig, LLP. (2022, December 7). “How Many Websites Now Have Cookie Banners?” 45% of Fortune 500 websites used a cookie banner as of October 2022, up from 34.2% in December 2020.
4. Greenberg Traurig, LLP. (2022, November 18). “CPRA’s Effective Date is Around the Corner.” 71% of a 554-company Fortune 500 sample had updated their privacy policy for the CCPA as of October 2022.
5. European Commission. (2016, June). “Study on Consumers’ Attitudes Towards Online Terms and Conditions (T&Cs), Executive Summary.” Main study of 12,000 respondents across 12 EU member states, plus preliminary studies of 6,045 and 1,012 respondents in the Netherlands and Poland.
6. Netcraft. (2026, June). “June 2026 Web Server Survey.” 1,489,396,284 websites counted across 304,146,307 unique domains.

Note: All figures verified as of September 2026. The Greenberg Traurig figures come from an ongoing research series and are refreshed by the firm periodically; check for a newer installment before citing a specific percentage as current beyond 2026.