Cloudflare CAPTCHA
Shares rank 3 of 6 captcha services by recommenders
People 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.
People 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.
28 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 22
- approval share
- 21%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Better than Google reCAPTCHA
“the CloudFlare CAPTCHAs are a nuisance, but they're so much better than the Google reCAPTCHAs they replaced”
Comment from 27 Dec 2025 in “Cloudflare Is Ruining the Internet” “I'll take a one-click cloudflare captcha over Google bullshit 10/10 times”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “Surely no brand is more hated by web users that Cloudflare” One-click, user-friendly challenge
“I'll take a one-click cloudflare captcha over Google bullshit 10/10 times”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “Surely no brand is more hated by web users that Cloudflare” “the only user friendly captcha of them all”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Google Cloud fraud defense, the next evolution of reCAPTCHA”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Fails on some browsers and devices
“I can't get past Cloudflare's captcha for the past 2-3 years (on Firefox)”
Comment from 27 Dec 2025 in “Cloudflare Is Ruining the Internet” “only certain blessed devices and browsers can seem to actually pass it”
Comment from 25 Jul 2026 in “Who does Anubis actually stop?” “their captcha is broken for me on my main browser for years”
Comment from 25 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Just Fucking Use Cloudflare – A satirical guide to the CF stack” - Comment from 4 Aug 2026 in “Security Is Hard, Y'all”
- Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “We found a division by zero bug in FFmpeg with a vibecoded fuzzer”
Shows up too often, even on government sites
“always great when you visit an official government website and are greeted with a Cloudflare captcha”
Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “H.R.8250 – To require operating system providers to verify the age of any user” “I already don't bother with the Cloudflare ones half the time and just close the page.”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Google Cloud fraud defense, the next evolution of reCAPTCHA” “you will encounter cloudflares' captcha checkbox everywhere and all of the time”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities” - Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “Remote Attestation”
Opaque, discriminates against some users
“Everybody else gets to enjoy CloudFlare captcha, even when doing crawling at reasonable speeds.”
Comment from 31 Jan 2026 in “Disrupting the Largest Residential Proxy Network” “It's an opaque risk-based thing, which is the worst.”
Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “We found a division by zero bug in FFmpeg with a vibecoded fuzzer” “the Cloudflare CAPTCHAs discriminate in various ways”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “The mechanical latching memory of an adhesive tape” Gets stuck in endless loops
“Cloudflare captcha = infinite loop of captchas (if it doesn't work on the first try).”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March” “Being trapped in an infinite captcha loop will really grind your gears”
Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “We found a division by zero bug in FFmpeg with a vibecoded fuzzer”
Other captcha services people recommend
The four most recommended other captcha services, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Turnstile | 33 | 86 | 28% | 10 | — | — |
| Google reCAPTCHA | 15 | 158 | 9% | 7 | — | — |
| Cloudflare CAPTCHAThis page | 6 | 22 | 21% | 4 | — | — |
| hCaptcha | 6 | 10 | 38% | 4 | — | — |
| Google Cloud fraud defense | 6 | 54 | 10% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
28 of the 29 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“we're just hitching our wagons to these companies' stars.”
“It's an opaque risk-based thing, which is the worst.”
“would just max out one CPU indefinitely”
“cloudflare requires me to work for them”
“Being trapped in an infinite captcha loop will really grind your gears”
“Cloudflare doesn’t work most of the time for me.”
“increasingly invasive Cloudflare captcha”
“the cloudflare captcha is really the bane of my existence”
“the Cloudflare CAPTCHA HackerOne uses seems to be broken”
“only certain blessed devices and browsers can seem to actually pass it”
“the already-pervasive Cloudflare CAPTCHA nagwalls”
“Cloudflare captchas have made the internet unusable for me”
“It's not worth the waiting game.”
“the Cloudflare CAPTCHAs discriminate in various ways”
“I already don't bother with the Cloudflare ones half the time and just close the page.”
“the only user friendly captcha of them all”
“you will encounter cloudflares' captcha checkbox everywhere and all of the time”
“I'll take a one-click cloudflare captcha over Google bullshit 10/10 times”
“every single time I use incognito mode on my browser, somehow. I hate it profoundly.”
“I actually get excited when I see Cloudflare's captcha”
“always great when you visit an official government website and are greeted with a Cloudflare captcha”
“I already use them for some of my websites.”
“we don't care about mature and stable web standards”
“Cloudflare captcha = infinite loop of captchas (if it doesn't work on the first try).”
“Everybody else gets to enjoy CloudFlare captcha, even when doing crawling at reasonable speeds.”
“the CloudFlare CAPTCHAs are a nuisance, but they're so much better than the Google reCAPTCHAs they replaced”
“I can't get past Cloudflare's captcha for the past 2-3 years (on Firefox)”
“their captcha is broken for me on my main browser for years”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.