# Altcha

5 Hacker News commenters recommended Altcha and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People 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.

## Why people recommend it

- Easy to implement and self-hostable (1 comments): "I have heard good things about them. And it looks easy to implement and can be selfhosted which is great!!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47740041))
- No visual puzzles, accessible (1 comments): "they are not visual captchas (proof-of-work based) and very accesssible" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48072029))
- Seen as ending the CAPTCHA argument (1 comments): "Systems like Altcha put an end to this argument." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48663206))

## What people warn about

- Bots can wait out proof-of-work (1 comments): "That doesn't really work out in reality because bots are happy to wait 5 seconds or even 5 minutes for a PoW challenge to complete." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48663454))
- Stops nothing without paid subscription (1 comments): "does not stop anything unless you sign up for the monthly subscription pay per request plan from Altcha" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47744521))
- Has limits newer PoW captchas avoid (1 comments): "a more modern PoW captcha without the limits of Altcha" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47874124))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Cloudflare Turnstile](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cloudflare-turnstile.md): 33 recommend
- [hCaptcha](https://hackerapproved.com/p/hcaptcha.md): 6 recommend
- [Google Cloud fraud defense](https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-cloud-fraud-defense.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Altcha", https://hackerapproved.com/p/altcha/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).