Prosopo Procaptcha vs Google reCAPTCHA

Prosopo Procaptcha vs Google reCAPTCHA: A Comprehensive Comparison for Web Security

Begone, bots!

If you’ve got any sort of form on the internet, you’ll eventually have to protect yourself against bots. Whether it’s scalping tickets, comment sections, or even attacks on login forms, it’s important to differentiate between human and non-human traffic.

The most popular CAPTCHA service, Google’s reCAPTCHA, is a powerful tool, but has some notable downsides.

The case against Google’s reCAPTCHA

Centralisation and Data Privacy Concerns

All verification requests go through Google's servers, making it a centralised system. Your site’s users don’t want to hand all their data over to Google if they don’t have to - the privacy concerns here are inevitable.

Price

If you reach the levels of traffic that you’re probably aiming for, reCAPTCHA can quickly get very expensive.

Image Labelling Over Verification

Human verification is not the main aim of CAPTCHA for Google - data labelling is. Google is more than happy with supplying a poor user experience and letting false positives through, as long as it helps build their closed-source library of labelled images.

Overzealous Blocking

reCAPTCHA often blocks users who use VPNs, proxies, or Tor, mistaking them for automated traffic. Individuals who care about their privacy, often the most technical and valuable users, should not have their online experience damaged.

It doesn't work!

reCAPTCHA is not infallible. Bots can still get through, and it can be a frustrating experience for users. Some of the most popular browser automation tools can easily bypass reCAPTCHA with no extra configuration.

Prosopo Procaptcha

Better Value

Procaptcha's dynamic frictionless mode has a generous free tier of 10K requests, allowing your users to verify themselves without having to complete image labelling tasks - we leave that for the bots! Our paid plans are also significantly cheaper than reCAPTCHA.

Bot protection first

Prosopo isn’t building closed-source datasets and has no incentive to put image labelling first. We provide security against bots first and foremost.

Use your VPN, be private on the internet

Prosopo’s CAPTCHA is privacy-oriented and does not discriminate against users protecting themselves online with a VPN.

OK that sounds pretty good actually, how do I set it up?

Prosopo CAPTCHA is a drop-in replacement for reCAPTCHA - setup couldn’t be more simple. We have a comprehensive setup guide here: Prosopo Procaptcha Setup Guide.

If you have any questions or issues, feel free to reach out at hello@prosopo.io! We’re always excited to engage with our community and are happy to help with any setup or issues.