Friendly Captcha

Friendly Captcha is a German bot-protection service that replaces visible CAPTCHA challenges with an invisible proof-of-work puzzle. The widget solves the puzzle in the background while the visitor fills in the form, and the resulting token is verified server-side. It sets no cookies and stores no personal data from end users, and carries ISO 27001, GDPR and WCAG 2.2 AA conformance.

Paid plans run from EUR 9 per month for one domain and 1,000 requests to EUR 200 per month for 50 domains and 50,000 requests. Risk intelligence, smart difficulty scaling and dedicated EU-only data centres are features of that top tier; the default service runs across data centres in the EU, the US and Asia. A free plan exists for non-commercial sites at 1,000 requests a month.

Friendly Captcha GmbH is registered at Am Anger 3-5, 82237 Wörthsee in Bavaria, at the Munich register court under HRB 260542, with Benedict A. Padberg as managing director. Padberg and Guido Zuidhof founded the company in 2020 after running into the limits of conventional CAPTCHAs. German GmbH accounts are not obtainable with public tooling, so there is no filed revenue or headcount figure for it.

The widget sets no challenge the visitor can see or hear. It issues each browser a cryptographic proof-of-work puzzle that is solved in the background while the form is being filled in, and pairs that with a network of risk signals, which the company describes as a two-layer defence. It sets no HTTP cookies and stores no personal data, which is the entire argument against reCAPTCHA. The company is certified to ISO 27001, and the widget is certified to WCAG 2.2 Level AA and claimed conformant with BITV 2.0, the European Accessibility Act, the ADA and the UK Equality Act — an unusually strong accessibility position for a CAPTCHA, and the reason it appears in public-sector procurement.

Pricing starts with a free non-commercial plan capped at one domain and 1,000 requests a month, and a free open-source plan that lifts that to 50 domains and 50,000 requests while adding dedicated data centres and user management. Their commercial equivalents are Starter at EUR 9 a month and Advanced at EUR 200; Enterprise adds unlimited volume, single sign-on, audit logs and a self-hosted endpoint option. Worth noting before signing: dedicated EU-only processing is a feature of the open-source and Advanced tiers upward, not of the entry plan.