The best captcha services, according to hackers
6 captcha services recommended in Hacker News comments over the past year, ranked by how many separate people recommend each one.
All captcha services
- Cloudflare TurnstileRecommended as a free, low-friction way to stop comment spam and bots. Critics say it fails against real headless browsers and blocks some real users.33recommend
- Google reCAPTCHASite owners use it to stop much bot traffic while often passing humans invisibly. Common caveat: privacy tools and non-Chromium browsers trigger repeated challenges.15recommend
- hCaptchaPeople recommend it for reliably blocking bots and form spam. The most common caveat is that its challenges are hard to solve and inaccessible to users with disabilities.6recommend
- Cloudflare CAPTCHAPeople prefer its one-click checkbox to Google reCAPTCHA and call it user friendly. Critics say it often loops endlessly, fails on some browsers, and appears too often.6recommend
- Google Cloud fraud defensePraised for telling humans from bots with little hassle and cutting bot abuse. Critics warn it requires mobile devices and extends Google's control of the web.6recommend
- AltchaPeople recommend it as an easy, self-hostable proof-of-work captcha without visual puzzles. Critics say bots can wait out the challenge and that it needs a paid plan to work.5recommend