Seven options, ranked, with the plan and price each one lists on its own pricing page.
| Free | Paid from | Puzzle shown | Sees VPN, proxy, Tor | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IPScanner form gate | 30,000 checks a month, monitor mode | $19/mo (blocking) | None, no widget | Yes, nine traffic classes |
| Cloudflare Turnstile | Unlimited challenges | Enterprise, sales | Managed mode may show a checkbox | No |
| Prosopo Procaptcha | 10,000 requests a month | $39/mo | Invisible check, challenge types if needed | Network filtering on Free, VPN and proxy filtering on Professional |
| Friendly Captcha | Non-commercial sites | 9 EUR/mo | Proof of work, no image tasks | Risk data on Advanced |
| hCaptcha | Basic plan | $139/mo ($99 billed yearly) | Checkbox and image challenge | VPN and proxy attributes on Enterprise |
| ALTCHA | Open-source widget | 47 EUR/mo (Cloud) | Silent proof of work | Threat data on paid products |
| CleanTalk | 7-day trial | $12/yr per site | None | Spam reputation, not network class |
1. IPScanner form gate
Best for: forms where you want to know which network each submit came from, and choose what happens to it.
One gate.js tag puts a single-use token in every form. Your server sends the token and your secret to /v1/gate/verify and gets a traffic class (scripted browser, AI agent, Tor, VPN, residential proxy, hosting and others) plus a suggested action. You set allow, flag or block per class in the dashboard, and a change applies on the next submit with no redeploy. Checks answer in 50 to 100 ms, and every submit lands in a log.
- Price: Free is 30,000 checks a month in monitor mode with a 7-day log. Blocking starts on Starter, $19 a month. Pro is $49, Business $129.
- Privacy: no cookies, no browser storage.
- Same account also covers the WordPress plugin, the Cloudflare Worker and the nginx, Traefik and Caddy setups.
Skip it if you need to block from day one without paying, or you want a challenge as a fallback for visitors your policy blocks. See the form gate page for the install steps.
Check an IP the way the gate would
2. Cloudflare Turnstile
Best for: the free option, and sites that already use Cloudflare.
- Price: Free is $0 with unlimited challenges, up to 20 widgets and 10 hostnames per widget. Enterprise is contact sales (unlimited widgets, ephemeral IDs, no Cloudflare branding).
- What it checks: pass or fail. It does not report VPN, proxy or Tor, and you cannot set a policy per network.
- It does not need your site to be behind Cloudflare.
Skip it if you want to know why a submit failed or treat VPN traffic differently from scripts.
3. Prosopo Procaptcha
Best for: the most free requests with network filtering included.
- Price: Free is 10,000 requests a month for one site, with three challenge types and bad-network blocking. Professional starts at $39 a month for 100,000 requests (up to $139 for 1 million) and adds VPN, proxy and email filtering, bot scores with reasons and up to 50 sites. Enterprise starts at $1,990 a month.
- One verification request per form submission.
Skip it if you do not want any widget in the page. Prosopo is the closest to the form gate on features, and its free plan is more generous for blocking than ours.
4. Friendly Captcha
Best for: European teams that want a proof-of-work widget and a published list of plans.
- Price: Starter 9 EUR a month (1 domain, 1,000 requests), Growth 39 EUR (5 domains, 5,000 requests), Advanced 200 EUR (50 domains, 50,000 requests), each with a 30-day trial. Free for non-commercial sites. Enterprise is custom.
- Describes itself as made in Europe and sets no cookies, per its own pages. Risk intelligence data starts on Advanced.
Skip it if you have many requests on a small budget: the Starter cap is 1,000 a month.
5. hCaptcha
Best for: teams that want a drop-in swap with a free plan.
- Price: Basic is free. Pro is $139 a month ($99 a month billed yearly) with 100,000 evaluations included, then $0.99 per 1,000. Pro adds a 99.9% passive mode and analytics. Enterprise adds risk scores and a rules engine, and is sold by sales. There is a 14-day Pro trial.
- Visitors may still see a checkbox or an image challenge on Basic.
Skip it if you want network data on a small plan: it sits on Enterprise.
6. ALTCHA
Best for: open source and self-hosting.
- Price: the MIT-licensed widget is free with no keys or limits. ALTCHA Cloud starts at 47 EUR a month (EU-hosted), Sentinel at 99 EUR a month (self-hosted), and the WordPress plugin at 18.90 EUR a month, each with a trial.
- Silent proof of work, no image tasks, no cookies per its own site.
Skip it if you want a dashboard, logs and network checks without running Sentinel yourself.
7. CleanTalk Anti-Spam
Best for: WordPress and other CMS forms where you only want spam gone.
- Price: $12 a year for one site, $69 a year for ten, $27 a month for unlimited sites. 7-day free trial, no card.
- It is not a CAPTCHA. It works in the background against a spam reputation database.
Skip it if your problem is scripted signups from VPNs and proxies rather than comment spam.
What reCAPTCHA costs now
Free up to 10,000 assessments a month per Google Cloud organization, a flat $8 up to 100,000, then $1 per 1,000. If you are under the free limit, the reason to move is the badge, the cookies or the score-only answer, not the bill.
Which one to pick
- Free and simple: Turnstile.
- Free, with network filtering: Prosopo.
- No cookies, EU vendor: Friendly Captcha or ALTCHA.
- Spam on a WordPress form: CleanTalk.
- No widget, and a say over VPN, Tor and scripted traffic: the IPScanner form gate. For signup forms, stopping fake signups covers the policy.
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