hCaptcha Alternatives: 5 Options Compared

hCaptcha alternatives compared

Five names come up again and again when teams move away from hCaptcha: Cloudflare Turnstile, Google reCAPTCHA, Friendly Captcha, ALTCHA and TrustCaptcha. The table puts them next to hCaptcha on the points that usually decide: what the visitor has to do, cookies, where the company and the data sit, and what it costs.

Prices per month. ALTCHA and TrustCaptcha prices exclude VAT.

What is the best hCaptcha alternative?

There is no single best hCaptcha alternative; the right one depends on why you are leaving. If privacy and EU hosting matter most, look at TrustCaptcha, Friendly Captcha and ALTCHA, three EU companies that set no cookies. If you mainly want to get rid of image puzzles without paying, Cloudflare Turnstile is free with unlimited challenges. If budget decides at low volume, reCAPTCHA’s first 10,000 assessments a month are free.

A few details change the picture once you look closer:

• If you need EU hosting, check the plan, not just the vendor. Friendly Captcha’s EU-only endpoint needs the Advanced plan (€200 a month); on smaller plans, requests may be served from outside the EU. TrustCaptcha processes every plan in EU data centers, and ALTCHA’s Cloud runs entirely in the EU.
• If you want no visible challenge at all, Turnstile’s non-interactive and invisible modes never ask the visitor to do anything, while its managed mode can show a checkbox. reCAPTCHA v3 never shows a challenge, but it sends visitor data to Google.
• If you want open source, ALTCHA is the fully open option: MIT-licensed and free to run on your own servers. Friendly Captcha publishes its widget code and offers a self-hosted endpoint on Enterprise, but the service itself is not open source.
• If you want the lowest price, Turnstile and reCAPTCHA have free tiers for commercial sites. Friendly Captcha and TrustCaptcha are free only for non-commercial sites.

Why teams replace hCaptcha

hCaptcha works, and for many sites it is a reasonable choice. Three things push teams to look elsewhere.

The first is the image challenge. On the free Basic plan hCaptcha runs in Always Challenge mode, so every visitor picks images before the form goes through. The 99.9% passive mode starts with Pro, and the fully passive no-CAPTCHA mode is reserved for Enterprise. Invisible mode is available on every plan, but the visitor still gets a challenge whenever they meet hCaptcha’s challenge criteria.

The second is where the data goes. hCaptcha belongs to Intuition Machines, Inc., a US company, and says data may be stored and processed in any country where it has facilities, including the USA. Transfers rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses. hCaptcha also says it processes most data on regional servers and stores analytics data in the EU, and its cookies are labeled strictly necessary. For the legal side, see is hCaptcha GDPR compliant?

The third is accessibility. hCaptcha offers email verification and text-based challenges in over 100 languages for people who cannot solve image tasks. That helps, but it is still an extra step that a CAPTCHA without a puzzle does not need.

The five hCaptcha alternatives

1. Cloudflare Turnstile

Turnstile is Cloudflare’s replacement for the classic CAPTCHA. It runs small non-interactive JavaScript challenges in the browser, including proof-of-work and checks of web APIs, and shows no images or text to decipher. In managed mode it decides between a silent check and a checkbox based on the visitor’s risk. Turnstile works on any website; you do not have to route your traffic through Cloudflare or use its other services.

The free plan covers up to 20 widgets with 10 hostnames each and unlimited challenges. Enterprise adds unlimited widgets, longer analytics and the option to remove Cloudflare’s branding. Cloudflare says Turnstile meets WCAG 2.2 AA.

It suits teams that want a free, low-friction hosted CAPTCHA and are comfortable with a US provider. The catch is on the data side: Cloudflare, Inc. is based in San Francisco, so transfers need a legal review, and it acts as a controller for the signals it uses to improve Turnstile. More options are in our guide to Cloudflare Turnstile alternatives.

2. Google reCAPTCHA

reCAPTCHA is now part of Google Cloud Fraud Defense. Version 2 shows the “I’m not a robot” checkbox and can follow up with image challenges; version 3 returns a score from 0.0 to 1.0 and never shows a challenge. The first 10,000 assessments a month are free per organization. Premium charges an $8 flat fee from 10,001 to 100,000 assessments and $1 per 1,000 above that; the details are in reCAPTCHA pricing.

It suits sites that already work with Google Cloud and want a familiar product with a large free allowance. Watch for the free tier’s limits: Essentials returns only four score levels (0.1, 0.3, 0.7 and 0.9). Google has acted as a data processor under its Cloud Data Processing Addendum since 2 April 2026, but the data still goes to Google, so transfers need a legal review, and the _GRECAPTCHA cookie remains. If reCAPTCHA is on your list too, compare the reCAPTCHA alternatives.

3. Friendly Captcha

Friendly Captcha GmbH is based in Wörthsee, Germany. Its CAPTCHA uses proof-of-work, sets no cookies and stores nothing in the browser’s persistent storage; IP addresses are anonymized with one-way hashing. Friendly Captcha says its widget is certified WCAG 2.2 AA by TÜV.

Non-commercial sites with low traffic can use it for free (one domain, 1,000 requests a month). Paid plans start at €9 a month for 1,000 requests, Growth costs €39 for 5,000 and Advanced €200 for 50,000; each paid plan has a 30-day trial.

It suits EU organizations that want a puzzle-free CAPTCHA from a German company. Watch for the plan you need: the EU-only endpoint, hosted in Germany, requires Advanced or Enterprise. Our page on the Friendly Captcha alternative compares it with TrustCaptcha in detail.

4. ALTCHA

ALTCHA is an open-source proof-of-work CAPTCHA under the MIT license, run by BAU Software s.r.o. in Czechia. It sets no cookies and does no fingerprinting. You can host the widget yourself at no cost, or use ALTCHA Cloud from €47 a month (1,000 requests a day), which processes data entirely within the EU. Self-hosted Sentinel starts at €99 a month. ALTCHA says the widget meets WCAG 2.2 AA.

It suits developers who want an open source CAPTCHA and full control over hosting. The trade-off is the work: if you self-host, you run, update and scale the service yourself.

5. TrustCaptcha

TrustCaptcha is built by Trustcaptcha GmbH in Munich. The browser solves a proof-of-work whose difficulty adapts to the request, and from the Solo plan bot detection and risk scoring decide how hard that work gets. TrustCaptcha sets no cookies, processes data in EU data centers and includes a Data Processing Agreement for every customer. The widget verifies on its own without a click; a fully invisible widget comes with the Captcha Branding add-on.

Hobby costs €8 a month for 1,000 verifications, Solo €36 for 10,000 and Team €168 for 50,000, excluding VAT. Non-commercial websites get a free plan with 500 verifications a month, and every plan starts with a 14-day free trial.

It suits EU businesses that want a puzzle-free CAPTCHA with EU hosting and risk scoring. Watch for the plan split: there is no free plan for commercial sites, and risk scoring and IP rules start with Solo, not Hobby.

hCaptcha pricing

hCaptcha has three plans. The free one is fine for testing and small sites that accept image challenges; most of what people switch to hCaptcha for, such as the passive mode, sits in Pro or Enterprise.

Prices in USD.

How hCaptcha compares with reCAPTCHA

Both are US services, and both set cookies they classify as necessary. reCAPTCHA is free for 10,000 assessments a month per organization, then charges an $8 flat fee up to 100,000 and $1 per 1,000 above that; its v3 score keys never show a challenge. hCaptcha’s free plan states no volume limit but always shows image challenges, and the passive mode costs at least $99 a month. Which one costs less depends on your traffic. The full side-by-side, with Turnstile included, is on our hCaptcha vs reCAPTCHA comparison.

Try TrustCaptcha

If you are replacing hCaptcha because of image puzzles or because of where the data goes, TrustCaptcha removes both. Start your 14-day free trial and test it on your own forms; non-commercial websites can use it for free.