Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

reCAPTCHA VS hCaptcha

Compare reCAPTCHA VS hCaptcha and see what are their differences

reCAPTCHA logo reCAPTCHA

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

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.
  • reCAPTCHA Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-19
  • hCaptcha Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-28

reCAPTCHA features and specs

  • Security
    Provides advanced protection against bots and automated abuse, leveraging Google's machine learning algorithms to differentiate between human and automated access.
  • Ease of Implementation
    Simple to integrate into web applications with clear documentation and example code provided by Google.
  • User Experience
    reCAPTCHA v3 runs in the background without user interaction, offering a seamless experience for legitimate users.
  • Constant Improvement
    Google continuously updates reCAPTCHA to adapt to new threats and improve its distinguishing capabilities.
  • Accessibility
    Includes alternative challenges like audio CAPTCHA for visually impaired users.

Possible disadvantages of reCAPTCHA

  • Privacy Concerns
    Requires users to interact with Google, raising potential privacy issues due to data sharing and tracking.
  • Usability Issues
    Some forms of reCAPTCHA, particularly image challenges, can be difficult and frustrating for legitimate users.
  • Resource Intensive
    Can add extra load times and resource demands to web pages, particularly when complex challenges are used.
  • False Positives
    Legitimate users can occasionally be misidentified as bots, causing access issues and frustration.
  • Dependency on External Service
    Requires reliance on Google's infrastructure, making it a potential single point of failure if Google's servers experience downtime or issues.

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.

reCAPTCHA videos

Introducing reCAPTCHA v3

More videos:

  • Review - reCAPTCHA V3
  • Review - Kolotibablo- Recaptcha review- free without investment home based online job

hCaptcha videos

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

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to reCAPTCHA and hCaptcha)
SPAM Protection
46 46%
54% 54
Captcha
45 45%
55% 55
Security
48 48%
52% 52
Security & Privacy
43 43%
57% 57

User comments

Share your experience with using reCAPTCHA and hCaptcha. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

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

reCAPTCHA Reviews

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
Since Cloudflare's earliest days, we have used Google's reCAPTCHA service. ReCAPTCHA started as a research project out of Carnegie Mellon University in 2007. Google acquired the project in 2009, around the same time that Cloudflare was first getting started. Google provided reCAPTCHA for free in exchange for data from the service being used to train its visual identification...

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...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, hCaptcha seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 4 times since March 2021. 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.

reCAPTCHA mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of reCAPTCHA yet. Tracking of reCAPTCHA recommendations started around Mar 2021.

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 / almost 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

What are some alternatives?

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

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.

CleanTalk - Spam protection for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and any other websites

Solve Media - Solve Media's cost per engagement platform offers advertisers branded CAPTCHA and skippable Pre-Roll while providing publishers with enhanced security and a new revenue solution.

DataDome - DataDome provides innovative technology and human expertise to block bad bots.