Friendly Captcha alternative: Bot Protection

Friendly Captcha is a privacy-first CAPTCHA from Germany: a widget on your form has the visitor's device solve a cryptographic puzzle, harder for riskier visitors, and your server checks the result. Bot Protection has no widget: your server asks it at sign-up, sign-in and checkout, gets a decision with its reasons, and lets everyone through if it is down. This page compares the two, for anyone weighing Bot Protection as a Friendly Captcha alternative.

At a glance

	Bot Protection	Friendly Captcha
How it works	A tag on your pages reads how the browser behaves; before a sign-up, sign-in or checkout your server makes one call and gets a decision.	A widget serves a cryptographic puzzle that the visitor's device solves; a risk score raises the puzzle's difficulty. Your server verifies the result at Friendly Captcha's siteverify endpoint.
What your visitor sees	Nothing.	The widget. In its default Smart mode it decides whether a click is needed; One-click always asks for one, and Zero-click never does, at some cost in protection. A hidden widget still needs Friendly Captcha's notice shown.
In your request path	No. Your server calls it with your own timeout.	No. The browser fetches the puzzle; your server calls siteverify.
What your server gets	A class (human high to bot high), a bot score, the reasons, and an action: allow, challenge or block.	Success or failure, an event ID, and when and where the puzzle was solved. Risk scores from 1 to 5 come with Risk Intelligence, on the Advanced and Enterprise plans, and in this answer only as a paid add-on.
When it is down	Your server lets the visitor through: fail open.	Its docs advise the same: if siteverify answers with anything but 200, accept the visitor and alert yourself.
Watch before it blocks	Yes: in monitor mode every answer is allow, with what block mode would have done.	The docs describe no such mode: your server acts on each result as it comes.
Price to start	A 14-day free trial with 20,000 decisions, then $29 a month for 1 million.	Free for non-commercial sites, up to 1,000 requests a month. Starter €9 a month for 1,000, Growth €39 for 5,000, Advanced €200 for 50,000, each with a 30-day trial; Enterprise, with unlimited requests, through sales.
Integration	The tag, and one call from your server; a prompt for your coding agent does both.	The widget in each form, and a server-side check of its response.
Where it runs	Servers in the EU (Germany); IPs and tokens are kept only as keyed hashes.	A global service by default; a dedicated endpoint in Germany on the Advanced and Enterprise plans. It does not rely on tracking or cookies.

When Friendly Captcha is the better choice

You want a visible, privacy-first CAPTCHA on a form, and a yes or no is enough.
Your site is non-commercial with little traffic, and the free plan covers it.
A widget, and now and then a click, is fine for your visitors.

When Bot Protection is the better choice

You want to know why: the class, the score and the reasons on every answer, without a plan upgrade.
You protect sign-up, sign-in and checkout with nothing for the visitor to see or click, and start in monitor mode to see what would be blocked.
Your volume runs to hundreds of thousands a month: $29 a month covers 1 million.
You want farms caught: groups of sessions that share a network, a device or a rhythm, which one puzzle at one form cannot see.

Using both

Bot Protection's challenge action is where a challenge belongs. Ask Bot Protection first; for the few visitors it answers challenge, show the Friendly Captcha widget, and let the rest through untouched.

Questions

Is Friendly Captcha a CAPTCHA without puzzles to solve?

The visitor solves nothing: the device solves a cryptographic puzzle in the background. Depending on the widget mode, the visitor may be asked for one click.

Does Bot Protection keep data in the EU like Friendly Captcha?

Bot Protection runs on servers in Germany. Friendly Captcha's dedicated endpoint in Germany comes with its Advanced and Enterprise plans; its default endpoint is global.

Sources

Checked on the vendor's own pages on 14 November 2026; prices change, so check theirs before you decide.

Bot Protection: the quickstart, pricing, and every comparison.