“Is Google reCAPTCHA still free in 2026?”
Is Google reCAPTCHA still free in 2026?
Short answer
Partly. Google's reCAPTCHA Essentials tier is free for up to 10,000 assessments per calendar month across your whole organization. Past that, Essentials requests return a 429 error. Premium is $8.00 flat for 10,001 to 100,000 assessments, then $1.00 per 1,000. Enterprise is $1 per 1,000 on a 12-month commitment. Checked October 2026 on Google Cloud docs.
Side by side
Google reCAPTCHA tiers as of October 2026
| Tier | Price | Commitment |
|---|---|---|
| Essentials | Free up to 10,000 assessments per calendar month, per organization | None. Requests return a 429 error past the cap until the next month. |
| Premium | $8.00 flat for 10,001 to 100,000 assessments, then $1.00 per 1,000 above 100,000 | Monthly, pay as you go. Applied when billing is enabled on your project. |
| Enterprise | $1 per 1,000 assessments as a fixed monthly volume commitment | Subscription, minimum 12 months |
What the three tiers cost
Google now sells reCAPTCHA inside Google Cloud as Essentials, Premium and Enterprise. Essentials costs nothing and is limited to 10,000 assessments per calendar month. Google's billing page says the allowance is per organization and counted across all accounts and sites inside it, so a second site does not get its own 10,000.
When your organization passes the cap, Essentials requests return a Resource Exhausted (429) quota error until the next calendar month. If you enable billing on your Google Cloud project, Premium applies: the first 10,000 stay free, 10,001 to 100,000 cost $8.00 flat, and above 100,000 you pay $1.00 per 1,000.
Enterprise is a fixed monthly volume commitment at $1 per 1,000 assessments, on a subscription with a minimum of 12 months. The Premium policy engine is limited to 3 rules. Enterprise gets the full engine.
A worked example
A site that gets 80,000 form assessments in a month would pay $8.00 on Premium. A site at 150,000 would pay $8.00 for the 10,001 to 100,000 band plus $1.00 per 1,000 for the 50,000 above, so $58.00 in total, using the figures on Google's tier page. Check Google's current billing page before you budget, because Google can change pricing.
Older v2 and v3 keys have their own quota: 1,000 calls per second or 1,000,000 per month on standard keys, according to the reCAPTCHA FAQ page, which Google marks as deprecated and last updated on 2026-04-02.
If you want a different price model
Several services have their own free plans: Cloudflare Turnstile (unlimited challenges, up to 20 widgets), hCaptcha Basic ($0), MTCaptcha and Prosopo (10,000 a month). See reCAPTCHA alternatives for a table with October 2026 prices.
CaptchaKit is another route: pay what you want, one time, for the pack of 18 arcade games or a single game, with lifetime access and unlimited domains. It is not a free tier, and the visitor plays a short game instead of clicking images. See CaptchaKit vs reCAPTCHA.
When free is enough, and when it is not
Free is enough if your organization stays under 10,000 assessments a month in total, you accept Google Cloud as the vendor, and your counsel is comfortable with the _GRECAPTCHA cookie. A personal site or a small shop with a few hundred form submissions a month is the typical fit.
It stops being enough when you run several sites under one organization, because the allowance is shared across them. It also stops when a spike, such as a bot flood, uses up the month's quota: on Essentials the next requests return a 429 error until the month turns over, and your forms may fail until then. Plan what your form does when the CAPTCHA service says no.
How to budget
Count monthly form submissions across all your sites, add the traffic bots will generate, and compare the sum against 10,000 and 100,000. Remember an assessment is a request from your server, so retries and abandoned forms count too. Put a calendar reminder to re-check Google's billing page twice a year, because tiers and names change; the reCAPTCHA FAQ page itself is now marked deprecated.
Other free plans, side by side
If Google's cap or cookie does not suit you, these free plans exist as of October 2026: Cloudflare Turnstile is free with unlimited challenges, up to 20 widgets and 10 hostnames per widget. hCaptcha Basic is $0. MTCaptcha Free covers 10,000 evaluations a month on 1 domain, with 7 days of dashboard history. Prosopo Basic covers 10,000 requests a month for 1 site. ALTCHA's open-source core is free under the MIT license if you self-host. Friendly Captcha's free tier is for non-commercial sites only, at 1,000 requests a month.
Free plans differ in what they leave out. MTCaptcha says invisible mode starts at its $29 Core plan. Prosopo keeps risk scores, network filtering and analytics for Professional. hCaptcha keeps passive mode, themes and analytics for Pro. Read the feature list, not just the price.
Questions
How many free assessments does reCAPTCHA give?
10,000 per calendar month on Essentials, per organization.
What happens when I go over 10,000?
On Essentials, requests return a 429 quota error until the next month. With billing enabled, Premium charges $8.00 flat for 10,001 to 100,000 assessments.
Is reCAPTCHA v2 still free?
Standard v2 and v3 keys have a quota of 1,000 calls per second or 1,000,000 per month per Google's FAQ, which is marked deprecated. Check your Google Cloud console for how your keys are billed.
Does reCAPTCHA need a billing account?
Essentials applies to projects without billing enabled. Premium applies when you enable billing.
What does an assessment mean?
It is one request your server sends to Google for a risk assessment of a visitor action. One form submission is usually one assessment.
Is there a one-time price alternative?
CaptchaKit is pay what you want, one time, with lifetime access. See pricing.
Is there a CAPTCHA with no monthly cap?
Turnstile's free plan lists unlimited challenges. CaptchaKit's pack is pay what you want, one time, with no per-request tier listed.
Sources
- Google reCAPTCHA tier comparison (checked 2026-10-17)
- Google reCAPTCHA billing information (checked 2026-10-17)
- Google reCAPTCHA FAQ (checked 2026-10-17)
- CNIL deliberation SAN-2023-003 on Legifrance (checked 2026-10-17)
- CaptchaKit pricing (checked 2026-10-17)
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