reCAPTCHA is a Google service that helps protect websites from spam and abuse. A CAPTCHA is a Turing test to distinguish between humans and robots. Previously it was almost free for most sites; The price is about to change significantly on April 1, 2024.
While I previously enjoyed the free tier's high limits of 1 million free trials per month, resulting in near-universal installation across millions of websites, this appears to be about to change.
Google reduces free trials from 1 million to just 10000 per month for both enterprise recaptcha service and previously “free recaptcha service”, which is a 100x allocation reduction, renames no-cost recapcha plan to reCAPTCHA - lite “reCAPTCHA standard” plan which comes with up to 100,000 assessments for $8 per month.
reCAPTCHA Enterprise users will continue to pay $1 per 1,000 assessments after the first 10,000 free assessments (also reduced from $1 million free per month previously).
Being a core service for many websites, reCAPTCHA's upcoming pricing change will cause many developers and businesses to evaluate their current usage.
