hCaptcha Pricing 2026 (with Free Cost Calculator)

How much does hCaptcha cost?

hCaptcha Pro starts at $139/month and includes 100,000 evaluations. Billed yearly, Pro is $99/month. Beyond the included volume the hCaptcha price is a further $0.99 per 1,000 evaluations. The free hCaptcha Basic plan remains available without analytics, custom themes or the low-friction passive mode.

The hCaptcha calculator above returns your projected monthly bill in seconds — enter your evaluation volume and it applies hCaptcha's current pricing.

hCaptcha pricing tiers (2026)

From hCaptcha's pricing page (2026). Enterprise pricing is quoted per contract.

Why teams leave hCaptcha in 2026

hCaptcha positions itself as the privacy-first reCAPTCHA alternative, but in practice several choices push teams to switch. Four reasons that come up repeatedly:

1. $139/month jump with no middle tier. There is nothing between the free Basic plan and Pro at $139/month. A small SaaS on 20,000 evaluations/month either accepts the image-puzzle UX of the free tier or moves to Pro pricing for hobby-scale traffic. Annual billing brings Pro down to $99/month; still a step change from free.
2. GDPR posture doesn't hold up under scrutiny. hCaptcha is operated by US-based Intuition Machines and collects IP, interaction timing, mouse/gyroscope data, browser and hardware fingerprints. EU deployments rely on the fragile EU–US Data Privacy Framework post-Schrems II. See hCaptcha GDPR concerns for the full analysis.
3. Risk scores live on Enterprise. hCaptcha's pricing page puts risk scores and the full passive mode on the Enterprise plan — not Pro. Mid-market teams paying $139/month for Pro still can't tune the detector or export a per-request risk score.
4. Accessibility remains a persistent complaint. Image challenges are the default for most users. The text-challenge alternative is opt-in per site rather than universal, and screen-reader flows have long been reported as broken — a real conversion issue on any site with an accessibility commitment.

hCaptcha vs Prosopo

Prosopo is a specialist bot and agent trust platform. Where hCaptcha returns a pass or fail, and a risk score only on Enterprise, Prosopo returns a verdict with the reason attached — Inconsistent hardware readings for device, Solver service detected, Synthetic interaction timings, HTTP header fingerprint mismatch — on a proprietary detector library with a decision-machine architecture that gets new detectors to production in days rather than SDK release cycles. Prosopo pricing starts free at 10,000 requests a month with no image challenges served to real users, then $39/month at 100k — a genuine middle tier between free and enterprise. Every paid plan includes a spam filter that hCaptcha doesn't. Open-source client stack. UK-incorporated. GDPR-native. EU-only processing on Enterprise and Custom. If you're evaluating hCaptcha pricing against reCAPTCHA see the Google reCAPTCHA pricing calculator and the best captcha comparison.

FAQs about hCaptcha pricing

Is hCaptcha free?

hCaptcha Basic is free, but it doesn't include analytics, custom themes or the low-friction passive mode. For those you need Pro, at $139 a month or $99 a month billed yearly.

How does hCaptcha pricing compare to reCAPTCHA?

reCAPTCHA is free up to 10,000 assessments/month, then $8 flat to 100,000 and $1 per 1,000 above. hCaptcha Pro is $139/month with 100,000 evaluations included, then $0.99 per 1,000. reCAPTCHA costs less at every volume up to about 13.2 million a month, because hCaptcha's $139 base outweighs its 1-cent-per-1,000 saving until then.

Does hCaptcha Pro cost include Enterprise features?

No. Risk scores, the passive (no-CAPTCHA) mode, enterprise SLAs and SAML SSO are Enterprise features, quoted separately. The $139 hCaptcha price covers the Pro tier only.

What is the hCaptcha free limit?

hCaptcha does not publish a request limit for Basic. Analytics, custom themes and the low-friction passive mode start on Pro, at $139 a month or $99 a month billed yearly. Risk scores are Enterprise only.

How much does hCaptcha Enterprise cost?

hCaptcha Enterprise pricing is custom and quoted per contract. It adds risk scores, a passive (no-CAPTCHA) mode, protection against advanced persistent threats, enterprise SLAs, a multi-user dashboard with SAML SSO, and reporting APIs. Enterprise buyers evaluating hCaptcha at this level should also see the Prosopo vs hCaptcha comparison.

hCaptcha vs Prosopo, reCAPTCHA and Cloudflare Turnstile as a captcha vendor

hCaptcha Pro is $139/month, or $99/month billed yearly, with 100,000 evaluations included, then $0.99 per 1,000 above. reCAPTCHA is free up to 10,000 assessments/month and paid above (see the reCAPTCHA pricing calculator). Cloudflare Turnstile is free with no request cap, for up to 20 widgets (see the Cloudflare Turnstile pricing page). Prosopo starts free at 10,000 requests a month and is the specialist option for operators who want every block to come with a reason in plain words rather than a numerical risk score, on a proprietary detector library that reaches production in days rather than SDK release cycles. Bot protection starts on the free tier; the spam filter comes with Professional, and Access Rules come with Enterprise (Prosopo Protect, from $1,990 a month), which also covers your API and whole site. Open-source client stack. UK-incorporated. GDPR-native. EU-only processing on Enterprise and Custom.