Procaptcha - GDPR Compliant CAPTCHA

What is a GDPR compliant CAPTCHA?

A GDPR compliant CAPTCHA is a bot-verification widget that meets the EU General Data Protection Regulation's requirements for lawful basis, data minimisation, transparency, and cross-border transfer. In practice that means: no third-party tracking cookies dropped without consent, no long-lived identifiers used to profile users across sites, no data sold to advertising networks, and a documented lawful basis for the personal data (typically just an IP address and short-lived session ID) that is processed.

Procaptcha is a captcha GDPR teams choose specifically because it avoids the compliance traps in Google reCAPTCHA and hCaptcha. It is cookieless by default, does not build a cross-site behavioural profile, offers EU-only processing, and does not require a consent-banner entry under the ePrivacy Directive.

Is Google reCAPTCHA GDPR compliant?

No — not by default. reCAPTCHA drops third-party Google tracking cookies, ties captcha requests to a persistent Google identifier, and processes data in the United States. Using it in the EU generally requires (a) collecting consent for those cookies via a banner, (b) declaring Google as a third-party processor in your privacy notice, and (c) reviewing your data-transfer basis under the Schrems II ruling. hCaptcha has a stricter privacy stance than reCAPTCHA but still sets third-party cookies and processes data in the US by default.

If you need a GDPR compliance captcha without any of that overhead, that's the gap Procaptcha was built for.

Why GDPR compliance matters for CAPTCHA

Most major CAPTCHA services were built for the US ad-tech market, and the data they collect — long-lived tracking cookies, behavioural fingerprints, cross-site identifiers — sits awkwardly inside European data-protection law. Using one of them isn't just a UX problem; it's a documented compliance risk that affects your DPA, your record of processing, and your privacy notice.

Procaptcha is built differently. It does the same job — telling real users from bots, including the CAPTCHA solver services and CAPTCHA farms that defeat commodity widgets — without the data minefield.

Minimal data by default

Procaptcha is engineered to do the verification job with the smallest possible data footprint:

• No third-party tracking cookies.
• No long-lived advertising identifiers.
• No cross-site behavioural profile.
• No data sold or shared with third parties.

Full details of what's retained and for how long are in our privacy policy.

How it compares to the alternatives

Designed for the rest of your compliance stack

Procaptcha plays nicely with the rest of your privacy and compliance work:

• Regional endpoints. EU-only and US-only verification endpoints are available if you need processing to stay in a specific region.
• No consent banner required. Because there's no tracking-cookie scope, you don't need to add Procaptcha to your cookie banner under the ePrivacy Directive.
• Drop-in replacement. The widget integrates the same way as the major incumbents — switch your site key, swap your script tag, done.

Common use cases

• Stop credential stuffing without burying users in tracking.
• Defend signup forms while keeping your privacy notice simple.
• Stop phishing without third-party tracking on your auth flow.

Integration reference

• Get started — site key setup, widget install, and first verification.
• Server-side verification — verify tokens in your backend.
• Framework integrations — React, Vue, Angular, Svelte and more.