Google reCAPTCHA is a widely used CAPTCHA security service to protect websites from fraudulent activity and bots. Its purpose is to distinguish real users from automated bots.
Like other CAPTCHA services, reCAPTCHA is often implemented to secure web forms, login pages, and checkout processes from unwanted requests, unauthorized access and bot attacks.
However, Google reCAPTCHA has faced criticism regarding privacy and user experience. This is why many website owners are searching for alternatives to reCAPTCHA. The website owners focus on options that enhance privacy, user experience and accessibility.
Continue reading this blog post to find reCAPTCHA alternatives that meet your needs.
3 reCAPTCHA Alternatives
Friendly Captcha for privacy-compliant and user-friendly bot protection
hCaptcha for funny image-based CAPTCHA challenges
MTCaptcha for text decryption CAPTCHA challenges
Why Pick a reCAPTCHA Alternative?
reCAPTCHA is a service provided by Google. Google is a US technology company that is specialized in online advertising and search engine technology. Google has been involved in the cybersecurity industry from the very beginning with reCAPTCHA. The text-based reCAPTCHA v1 was followed by reCAPTCHA v2 and reCAPTCHA v3.
With reCAPTCHA v2, users must select traffic lights or bicycles from a grid of nine images. These visual challenges are presented whenever a user behaves abnormally and is therefore considered suspicious. Invisible reCAPTCHA v3 doesn’t need user interaction for users acting “normal”. Instead, it tracks the user’s behavior to create a risk score if the user seems to be a human user or a bot.
Whether reCAPTCHA v2 or v3, every reCAPTCHA type comes with limitations. With reCAPTCHA v2, website operators lose user experience and CAPTCHA accessibility due to image recognition tasks.
With reCAPTCHA v3, too much personal data is collected. Cookies are stored for this purpose, which requires the user’s prior consent. reCAPTCHA v3 aims to be an invisible reCAPTCHA tool. However, as soon as Google is unable to collect enough data or a user seams to be suspicious, reCAPTCHA v2 with its image recognition tasks is all too often used as a fallback solution.
Here are some of the key limitations:
Bot protection should not compromise user privacy. reCAPTCHA has to collect and analyze personal information about a user to decide whether the user is a human or a bot. This involves the use of various cookies (_GRECAPTCHA), which has been criticized by data protection authorities around the world. Implementing Google reCAPTCHA leads to privacy concerns for operators who want to avoid privacy risks and comply with privacy standards such as GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA.
Transparency is not optional, it is required by law. Google isn’t very transparent about what data it collects and where it’s processed. They do not have a separate privacy policy for reCAPTCHA, there is only one privacy policy for all of their services that doesn’t mention reCAPTCHA explicitly. Especially websites and web services targeting EU users face challenges in complying with GDPR.
Complete exclusion of individual visitors or additional image labelling creates a poor user experience. Google reCAPTCHA leaves the responsibility to run additional checks for risky users to the website owner. Website owners can decide to exclude some visitors or to solve additional image recognition tasks with a risk score above a certain threshold, but this will result in a terrible user experience for those visitors.
A lack of accessibility in CAPTCHA excludes too many people. The image recognition tasks in reCAPTCHA v2 are not accessible to the visually impaired. Audio alternatives and screen reader compatibility are also lacking in many places. The signal-based reCAPTCHA v3 tests mostly in the background. But once user behavior is deemed critical, an additional image recognition task is typically used for verification.
There are good reasons to look for Google reCAPTCHA alternatives. Let us take a closer look at other CAPTCHA services.
| Feature | reCAPTCHA | Friendly Captcha | hCaptcha | MTCaptcha |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Bot protection |
Behavioral analysis and image recognition tasks |
Advanced proof-of-work cryptography |
Image-based recognition tasks |
Text-based decryption |
|
Privacy compliance |
Limited; uses cookies and collects user data |
Fully privacy-compliant; no HTTP cookies; no fingerprinting |
Limited; uses cookies |
limited transparency |
|
Accessibility |
Limited accessibility |
Full accessibility |
Limited accessibility |
Limited accessibility |
|
Best for |
General-purpose; widely recognized |
Privacy-focused, user-friendly applications |
Casual, low-security scenarios |
Low-security scenarios |
The Best reCAPTCHA Alternative for Privacy-Compliant and User-Friendly Bot Protection: Friendly Captcha
Friendly Captcha Pros:
Friendly Captcha respects the user’s privacy and is compliant with international data protection laws such as GDPR, CCPA or HIPAA.
Friendly Captcha is a truly invisible CAPTCHA and works without manual user interaction.
Friendly CAPTCHA challenges devices, not people. That’s why it’s truly accessible and complies with WCAG, ADA and EAA.
Friendly Captcha Cons:
A free version is only available for small websites.
Friendly Captcha is the best privacy-compliant alternative to reCAPTCHA for those who need to protect websites and applications from bots and spam.
Friendly Captcha provides a modern proof-of-work CAPTCHA that generates a cryptographic puzzle. The user’s device must solve it in the background. Bots will fail to find the correct solution in a reasonable amount of time.
Real humans will not recognize the truly invisible CAPTCHA at all because Friendly Captcha works completely in the background. Therefore, the user-friendly CAPTCHA service does not slow down the user, and requires no manual interaction. This friendly approach combines CAPTCHA accessibility with security, and no one is left out.
Friendly Captcha offers smooth user experience and makes CAPTCHA accessible to all users, including the elderly and those with visual impairments. For risky users and bots, Friendly Captcha automatically scales the difficulty of the background challenges. This approach makes Friendly Captcha an accessible CAPTCHA that complies with regulatory frameworks such as WCAG, ADA, AODA or EAA.
From a privacy perspective, Friendly Captcha is transparent how data is processed and where it is stored. By contrast, Google is not particularly known for respecting the privacy of its user’s and relies on data collection to support its advertising business. The use of Google reCAPTCHA cookies is considered critical under GDPR and ePrivacy laws, and typically results in the need for user consent, creating additional integration challenges for website owners.
Friendly Captcha is an EU CAPTCHA provider, built and hosted in Germany, and does not rely on any third parties outside of the EU. This means that your users’ data will never leave the European Union.
See our CAPTCHA comparison to find out the differences between Friendly Captcha and reCAPTCHA. Click here to sign up for a free trial month of Friendly Captcha.
The Best reCAPTCHA Alternative for Funny, Image-Based Challenges: hCaptcha
hCaptcha Pros:
hCaptcha is free of charge for small website owners.
Funny image recognition tasks where you click on laughing dogs instead of traffic lights or buses.
hCaptcha seems to take privacy seriously and minimizes data collection.
hCaptcha Cons:
hCaptcha uses cookies, raising privacy concerns.
Accessibility with a passive hCaptcha experience comes with less security against bot attacks.
hCaptcha is a suitable reCAPTCHA alternative for those who want to combine cybersecurity for their website with funny visual puzzles.
hCaptcha is an American CAPTCHA provider that specializes in machine learning in the field of image recognition. hCaptcha’s image labeling tasks require the user to recognize laughing dogs or even cookies in the shape of a dog.
Bot protection is available with hCaptcha without a checkbox widget. Initially, the hCaptcha client/server interactions take place in the background. Once a user is detected as suspicious, a hCaptcha image based challenge is still presented.
hCaptcha Enterprise customers can combine their “no checkbox” configuration with passive difficulty, but at the expense of security compared to image recognition challenges.
hCaptcha promises to be GDPR compliant and compliant to other international laws, and also discloses what personal information is being collected. However, hCaptcha requires cookies to work properly. These cookies, without prior user consent, are considered critical when it comes to complying with privacy laws, such as GDPR and CCPA.
To use hCaptcha, the website owner must embed and dynamically load a script from the hCaptcha servers. This means that each user’s browser will send a request to hCaptcha’s servers, download the script, and execute it on their local machine.
This is a risk because the request already sends personal information about the user to the hCaptcha servers, and it also creates an unnecessary attack surface. Attackers can potentially modify this script and inject arbitrary code into the browser of any user visiting the site to steal their information.
Want to learn more about hCaptcha vs. reCAPTCHA? Go to the CAPTCHA alternatives comparison.
The Best reCAPTCHA Alternative for Text Decryption Challenges: MTCaptcha
MTCaptcha Pros:
With limited accessibility, the text-based CAPTCHA challenges are created for the color blind.
MTCaptcha works with dedicated servers in China.
MTCaptcha is easy to implement without major customization. For example, it is not necessary to define risk scores.
MTCaptcha Cons:
Text-based CAPTCHA challenges are not user-friendly, causing CAPTCHA accessibility problems.
Insufficient bot protection, which is only effective against outdated bots, and for basic spam protection.
MTCaptcha is another type of visual CAPTCHA. As an reCAPTCHA alternative, MTCaptcha is a CAPTCHA tool that offers text-based decryption tasks.
With its text-based CAPTCHA tests, the CAPTCHA service MTCaptcha provides basic protection against automated bot attacks. According to MTCaptcha, it complies with international data protection laws. It also appears to be somewhat accessible, with screen reader compatibility and customisable themes. However, these approaches are far from sufficient to achieve true CAPTCHA accessibility.
To distinguish humans from bots, MTCaptcha requires users to decipher distorted letters. However, as technology and machine learning improve, these tests may be effective for older bot attacks. It does not provide protection against modern cyber threats.
Although the text-based MTCaptcha works for screen readers, it is often too difficult for visually impaired users to complete the test correctly. These tests exclude visually impaired users from many websites and web forms. They are classified as false positives and ultimately blocked.
The significant limitations associated with the use of MTCaptcha are also reflected in its market presence. MTCaptcha is not very well known. MTCaptcha can be a suitable reCAPTCHA alternative for websites with basic security needs.
Which Google reCAPTCHA Alternatives Are Best?
Exploitation of users’ personal data, lack of transparency and total exclusion of suspicious people – there are multiple factors for choosing Google reCAPTCHA alternatives, such as security, user experience, accessibility, and privacy. Each CAPTCHA provider solves this in a different way:
Friendly Captcha is a privacy-focused alternative to Google reCAPTCHA. Friendly Captcha is fully compliant with privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. The user-friendly and accessible CAPTCHA provider does not require prior user consent, and guarantees transparent and secure data processing.
hCaptcha scores with funny image recognition tasks. hCaptcha claims to be privacy compliant, but it still uses cookies, which require prior consent and are viewed critically by privacy experts.
Visual, text-based CAPTCHA tests are available at MTCaptcha. However, traditional CAPTCHA methods, which ask you to decipher distorted text, are a problem for accessibility and usability in general.
We have seen that there are several reCAPTCHA alternatives that verify human users and protect against bots and spam. Each CAPTCHA has its strengths, but Friendly Captcha stands out against hCaptcha and MTCaptcha.
Friendly Captcha pioneers a new CAPTCHA technology and is therefore the friendlier and better alternative to reCAPTCHA. It achieves this by focusing on usability, accessibility, and privacy without compromising on security.
If you want to try Friendly Captcha for yourself, you can watch the live demo or sign up for a free one-month trial to integrate Friendly Captcha into your websites.
FAQ
The best alternatives to reCAPTCHA depend on your needs. Friendly Captcha is a top choice for privacy compliance and accessibility, providing invisible, GDPR-compliant bot protection that doesn’t require user interaction. For simplicity, hCaptcha offers engaging image-based challenges, while MTCaptcha provides text-based solutions, though both have limitations with accessibility and privacy compared to Friendly Captcha.
Friendly Captcha seems to be a better alternative to reCAPTCHA. In contrast to Google reCAPTCHA, Friendly Captcha takes privacy and accessibility very seriously. Friendly Captcha doesn’t use HTTP cookies and doesn’t use persistent browser storage. Friendly Captcha as a security measure effectively keeps spam and bots out while maintaining UX, accessibility and data protection standards such as GDPR, and it does not track user data.
Instead of reCAPTCHA, you can use a variety of protection methods. These include rate limiting, fingerprinting, honeypots, image recognition, or managed bot protection solutions. To stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated bots, every company needs to find the right anti-bot software.
Friendly Captcha is the only sophisticated proof-of-work-based CAPTCHA on the market that combines cryptography and risk signals with full privacy protection to secure web forms from attacks. Instead of letting the user solve puzzles manually, Friendly Captcha generates a cryptographic puzzle in the background that is solved by the user’s browser. Based on technical signals, the difficulty of the puzzle can be scaled to make it harder for suspected bots to get through. Friendly Captcha is fully GDPR compliant and does not require prior user consent to operate.
While reCAPTCHA and most CAPTCHAs suffer from poor usability and accessibility, there are now modern solutions and alternatives to CAPTCHAs without these problems. Friendly Captcha is an alternative to traditional CAPTCHAs or reCAPTCHA. It scores with high security and privacy standards in compliance with GDPR, while ensuring an undisturbed UX.
There are several alternatives to reCAPTCHA that protect your website from unwanted access. These include honeypots, anti-spam plugins, fingerprinting and professional bot protection solutions. However, the first three options fall short when it comes to security and usability. A managed bot protection solution is Friendly Captcha. It is one of the most sophisticated proof-of-work-based solutions on the market. It is a GDPR-compliant, accessible and user-friendly alternative to reCAPTCHA.
