Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

hCaptcha VS DataDome

Compare hCaptcha VS DataDome and see what are their differences

hCaptcha logo hCaptcha

Do you use a captcha to keep out bots? hCaptcha is a drop-in replacement for reCAPTCHA that earns website owners money and helps companies get their data labeled.

DataDome logo DataDome

DataDome provides innovative technology and human expertise to block bad bots.
  • hCaptcha Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-28
  • DataDome Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-06-17

DataDome

Pricing URL
-
Release Date
2015 January
Startup details
Country
France
City
Paris
Founder(s)
Benjamin Fabre
Employees
10 - 19

hCaptcha features and specs

  • Privacy
    hCaptcha prioritizes user privacy and does not sell user data to third parties, unlike some other CAPTCHA services.
  • Security
    It offers strong bot detection capabilities, making it difficult for automated systems to bypass.
  • Monetization
    hCaptcha allows website owners to earn revenue by solving CAPTCHAs, since they contribute to datasets used for machine learning training.
  • Customization
    The platform provides various customization options so that website owners can tailor the CAPTCHA to their specific needs and branding.
  • Accessibility
    hCaptcha has features designed to be accessible to users with disabilities, including audio CAPTCHAs.

Possible disadvantages of hCaptcha

  • User Experience
    Some users find hCaptcha challenges to be more difficult and time-consuming than other CAPTCHA systems.
  • Integration
    While widely compatible, some developers may find the initial integration process to be more complex compared to other solutions.
  • False Positives
    There may be instances where legitimate users are incorrectly flagged as bots, leading to a frustrating user experience.
  • Learning Curve
    New users or administrators might face a bit of a learning curve when first deploying or managing hCaptcha.
  • Limited Analytics
    hCaptcha's analytics and reporting features may not be as comprehensive as those offered by some competitors.

DataDome features and specs

  • Advanced Bot Protection
    DataDome provides real-time bot detection and mitigation, offering advanced solutions to prevent malicious traffic and automated attacks.
  • Machine Learning Algorithms
    Utilizes sophisticated machine learning algorithms to continuously analyze and adapt to new threats, ensuring up-to-date protection.
  • Comprehensive Dashboard
    Offers a user-friendly and detailed dashboard for monitoring bot activities and understanding traffic patterns in real-time.
  • Ease of Integration
    Provides easy integration with various platforms and services via APIs, making it accessible for most IT infrastructures.
  • Low Latency
    Designed to add minimal latency to web traffic, ensuring that legitimate user experience is not adversely affected.
  • Global Coverage
    Has a globally distributed network to protect assets across different geographical locations effectively.
  • Customization Options
    Offers extensive customization to set specific rules and configurations tailored to unique business needs.
  • 24/7 Support
    Provides round-the-clock technical support to address any issues or queries, ensuring continuous protection without downtime.

Possible disadvantages of DataDome

  • Cost
    DataDome's advanced features come at a premium price point, which may be a significant investment for smaller businesses.
  • Complexity
    The array of features and customization options can introduce a learning curve, requiring time and expertise to fully leverage its capabilities.
  • False Positives
    Despite advanced algorithms, there can still be instances of false positives, where legitimate traffic may be flagged as suspicious.
  • Platform Dependency
    Effectiveness can vary depending on the specific platform or technology stack, potentially necessitating adjustments or additional configurations.
  • Resource Intensive
    Requires adequate resources and infrastructure to handle its comprehensive functionalities and data processing needs.

Analysis of hCaptcha

Overall verdict

  • hCaptcha is a strong choice for websites looking to enhance security and user privacy. It balances usability with effectiveness, making it a reliable alternative to other popular CAPTCHA services. However, like any CAPTCHA, it may still pose accessibility challenges to some users, and implementation effectiveness can vary depending on user needs and website configurations.

Why this product is good

  • hCaptcha is considered a good option for several reasons. It focuses on privacy and security while providing protection against bots and fraudulent activity. Unlike some other CAPTCHA services, hCaptcha doesn’t track users across the web, making it favorable for privacy-conscious users. Additionally, hCaptcha often provides quicker load times and can be more user-friendly, depending on the implementation. It offers robust protection and flexibility for website owners, with the added advantage of allowing site owners to earn revenue when visitors solve CAPTCHAs, as businesses pay to train AI models using the data collected.

Recommended for

  • Websites prioritizing user privacy
  • Businesses wanting monetization opportunities
  • Developers seeking a GDPR and CCPA compliant solution
  • Webmasters looking for alternatives to Google's reCAPTCHA
  • Owners of sites facing high traffic from automated bots

Analysis of DataDome

Overall verdict

  • DataDome is generally regarded as a reliable and effective tool for bot protection, with many positive reviews highlighting its ease of use, quick deployment, and comprehensive security features. It is suitable for businesses looking to enhance their web security measures against automated attacks.

Why this product is good

  • DataDome is considered a good option for bot protection due to its advanced machine learning algorithms that detect and mitigate malicious traffic in real-time. It provides comprehensive protection against various types of bot attacks, such as credential stuffing, web scraping, and account takeover. Furthermore, DataDome's solution is designed to be easy to integrate into various web platforms and offers scalability for businesses of different sizes.

Recommended for

  • E-commerce businesses that need to protect their online stores from scraper bots and account takeover attacks.
  • Media companies seeking to safeguard their content from unauthorized scraping and data extraction.
  • Financial institutions that require strong defenses against credential stuffing and fraud.

hCaptcha videos

How To Setup hCaptcha For WordPress 2020 - reCaptcha Alternative hCaptcha - reCaptcha Paid Service?

DataDome videos

DataDome real-time bot protection Dashboard Demo

More videos:

  • Review - #FIC2020 [FT02] DATADOME - Security, webperf and bandwidth savings
  • Review - AWS & DataDome | Les conseils du fondateur #StartupMoments

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to hCaptcha and DataDome)
SPAM Protection
80 80%
20% 20
Security & Privacy
43 43%
57% 57
Captcha
100 100%
0% 0
Monitoring Tools
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare hCaptcha and DataDome

hCaptcha Reviews

  1. Stan
    · Founder at SaaSHub ·
    It's super easy, straightforward and shouldn't take you more than 20-40 minutes to integrate

    To summarise the process of migrating from reCaptcha to hCaptha:

    1. 👌 It's super easy, straightforward and shouldn't take you more than 20-40 minutes
    2. 👁 You are feeding less data to Google
    3. 💸 You earn crypto/money (I have no idea what's the potential though)

    Here it is my original review

    🏁 Competitors: reCAPTCHA
    👍 Pros:    Easy integration|Privacy concisous|You earn money

Cloudflare replaced reCAPTCHA with hCaptcha. I followed their example. It took me 18 min.
Cloudflare announced yesterday that they are moving away from Google's reCAPTCHA in favour of hCaptcha. In my opinion, that is huge! Given the amount of traffic transiting through CloudFlare. That has cut some significant level of vision from Google's all-seeing and tracking eye. Moreover, they are giving a good example for others to follow.
Source: dev.to
Moving from reCAPTCHA to hCaptcha
We evaluated a number of CAPTCHA vendors as well as building a system ourselves. In the end, hCaptcha emerged as the best alternative to reCAPTCHA. We liked a number of things about the hCaptcha solutions: 1) they don't sell personal data; they collect only minimum necessary personal data, they are transparent in describing the info they collect and how they use and/or...

DataDome Reviews

We have no reviews of DataDome yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

DataDome might be a bit more popular than hCaptcha. We know about 5 links to it since March 2021 and only 4 links to hCaptcha. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

hCaptcha mentions (4)

  • Figured out how to make HCaptcha work -- Instructions Inside.
    That's it, and HCaptcha will start working. I would imagine it's a better idea to add a specific site exception for hcaptcha.com, and I'm sure I will later, but just really didn't have the patience to do it via screen reader right now. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Discovering OpenZeppelin Defender features with an NFT Game
    Finally, we build a front end with a captcha feature with NextJS and hCaptcha. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
  • I can't log into Bitwarden.....
    I have Ublock and UMatrix running. Had to whitelist hcaptcha.com and bitwarden.com to get the challenge to pop up. Source: about 3 years ago
  • New Bungie store password reset broken :(
    First of all, you can stop trolling. It's not about the actual technology, as it may be hcaptcha.com for change or any others like that. It's about not relying on badly aged technology which is only creating problems for users, not for the bots, as this level of noise and numbers/letters is no longer an issue even for javascript-based AI. Source: almost 4 years ago

DataDome mentions (5)

  • 10 Best Practices for API Rate Limiting in 2025
    These advancements highlight how adaptive strategies are essential as APIs handle greater traffic and security challenges in 2025. As noted by DataDome:. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Website Bypasser doesn't work
    I think part of the problem is the SS bypass function is just not great. Another part might be not having everything whitelisted that needs to be. For example, using the NoScript browser plugin I can see that this webpage right here attempts connections to reddit.com, redditmedia.com, redditstatic.com, datadome.co, google.com and sentry.io. Source: over 2 years ago
  • What are you using lambda @ edge and cloudfront functions for ?
    We have AWS enterprise support, after weeks of trying to mitigate with WAF under the direction of AWS, they finally recommended DataDome to us (via AWS MarketPlace) and admitted that Shield/WAF isn't as advanced as their solution. Source: about 3 years ago
  • How to rate-limit website traffic
    There are specialized products like https://datadome.co/ (disclaimer: I know them) which are specialized in bot protection, they're probably too expensive for a personal use but maybe you can try reaching their support to see if there'd be a way to get it cheap for personal use. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2021)
    DataDome | NYC / Paris | Full Time | Onsite or Remote https://datadome.co https://docs.datadome.co/ Bot hunters is a full time job! With our SaaS cybersecurity technology, we detect and manage non-human traffic in real-time to protect our clients’ websites and APIs. Named as a Strong Performer by Forrester, DataDome is a growing cybersecurity pioneering in bot detection and protection for content publishers,... - Source: Hacker News / about 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing hCaptcha and DataDome, you can also consider the following products

reCAPTCHA - reCAPTCHA is a free security service that protects your websites from spam and abuse.

GeeTest CAPTCHA - GeeTest protects your websites, mobile Apps and APIs from bot threats.

MTcaptcha - Enterprise Captcha solutions

AuthKong - A reliable captcha service, offers advanced security to protect websites from spam and abuse while ensuring a user-friendly experience for legitimate visitors.

PerimeterX Bot Defender - PerimeterX Bot Defender prevents automated attacks by detecting and protecting against malicious web and mobile behavior.

UniqPin - UniqPin is a free for non-commercial use service which destiny improve ability of interfaces detect...