CaptchaKit vs Friendly Captcha: EUR 9 a month or pay what you want?

The short version

Friendly Captcha sells proof-of-work protection with no image labeling. Visitors do nothing visible: their browser does the work. The price follows your usage: you pay for the number of protected domains and the requests per month.

CaptchaKit works the other way around. The visitor plays a short game, and you pay once, at a price you name, for access that covers unlimited domains. If you run many sites or have bursts of traffic, that structure matters.

How the prices scale

Friendly Captcha's Starter is EUR 9 a month for 1 protected domain and up to 1,000 requests a month, with a 30-day free trial. Growth is EUR 39 for up to 5 domains and 5,000 requests. Advanced is EUR 200 for up to 50 domains and 50,000 requests, and adds automatic risk detection, EU-only data centers and a 99.9% uptime figure. Enterprise is custom. Prices as of October 2026.

A small business with one site and a contact form fits Starter. A shop with several storefronts, or a signup flow that gets spiky, crosses 1,000 requests quickly. At that point you are comparing tiers by volume.

CaptchaKit's pricing has no per-request tier on the pack. You name the price once, for the full pack of 18 games or a single game, and the access is lifetime with unlimited domains. Business is $29 a month if you want analytics and team features.

The free tier question

Friendly Captcha's free tier is for non-commercial websites with low traffic: 1 protected domain and up to 1,000 requests a month. A commercial site starts at Starter. That is worth knowing before you build on it, because the free tier can look like a general free plan at a glance.

CaptchaKit is pay what you want: you set the amount, from $1.

Proof of work versus a game

Proof of work asks the visitor's device to solve a puzzle in the background, so most people never see a challenge. It suits forms where any visible step hurts. A game is visible by design. It takes between 6 and 20 seconds on average, depending on the title, and it gives you something to brand.

Both approaches finish with a server-side check. CaptchaKit's flow is a single-use challenge, a signed pass token that expires in 10 minutes and works once, and a POST to /api/verify. For the full flow see what is a game CAPTCHA.

Where Friendly Captcha is a good fit

Friendly Captcha is a good fit if you are EU-based or serve EU users and want EU-only data centers (on Advanced), want no image tasks, and have predictable volume that sits under the tier limits. Its 30-day trial makes it easy to test, and its invisible approach leaves the form untouched.

Where CaptchaKit is a good fit

CaptchaKit is a good fit when you run several sites, want a one-time cost, or want a visible challenge that suits your brand. The privacy policy states no advertising or tracking cookies, no fingerprinting and no cross-site tracking, with server logs kept up to 90 days. For a how-to, see the docs.

Which one at which traffic level

A small site with one domain and fewer than 1,000 requests a month fits Friendly Captcha Starter at EUR 9 a month, and the 30-day trial lets you check it. A non-commercial site could use the free tier. At around 5,000 requests a month across up to 5 domains, Growth at EUR 39 applies. Beyond 5,000 requests and up to 50,000, you are at Advanced, EUR 200 a month.

CaptchaKit's pack does not meter requests. If you run many domains or traffic that swings, a one-time price with unlimited domains is simpler to plan. If your volume is tiny and steady, EUR 9 a month may be the lower total for a while. Do the sums for your own year.

Switching from Friendly Captcha

Replace the widget markup with CaptchaKit's script tag and div, change the server check to POST /api/verify, and test every form. The docs show Node, Python and PHP versions. Remove the old keys once the new widget passes each test.

Questions

Sources

1. Friendly Captcha plans (checked 2026-10-17)
2. CaptchaKit documentation (checked 2026-10-17)
3. CaptchaKit pricing (checked 2026-10-17)
4. CaptchaKit privacy policy (checked 2026-10-17)
5. CaptchaKit on WordPress.org (checked 2026-10-17)

Related

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• CaptchaKit vs ALTCHA: hosted games or open source
• CAPTCHA without cookies: what each vendor states
• What is a game CAPTCHA? How it works, step by step
• CaptchaKit vs Cloudflare Turnstile: game or checkbox