You drop in two lines.
A <script> tag and a <div>. That's the integration.
The CAPTCHA that doesn’t spy on your users.
A 5-second mini-game your users will actually finish — no tracking, no “select all the buses”.
Loading widget
The same widget your users will see. Try it.
Free up to 5,000 verifications a month. No credit card.
- Made to feel human
- Privacy-first
- Fast integration
Build01
See the install path
Jump straight to the page markup and the verify call instead of reading the whole pitch first.
Open integration →Trade-off02
Compare it to reCAPTCHA
Check the UX, privacy, and bundle-weight differences without leaving the landing page.
Open comparison →Proof03
See what we refuse to collect
Go straight to the privacy posture and the public verification story that supports it.
Open trust →Plan04
Price the rollout fast
See the free-to-paid path, white-labeling, and support tiers before you commit time.
Open pricing →Live, served by Playtcha across the public web in the last 30 days.
0 verifications0 rejected attempts
How it works
Three things happen, in this order.
Your user plays a tiny game.
They get one short game from the rotation, with no immediate repeats. It finishes in seconds and feels like part of your product instead of a punishment.
Your server verifies the token.
One POST to /v1/verify. We say yes or no. You decide what to do.
That’s it. No SDK required.
Why users actually finish it
The goal is not to win an arms race in public copy. The goal is to stop common abuse without making real people hate your form.
No image-grid punishment.
Users get a short game up front, not an invisible score that may suddenly turn into fire hydrants and buses.
Fast enough for signup flows.
The goal is a few seconds of friction, not a side quest. That matters on mobile, checkout, and auth screens.
Feels like part of your product.
Branding controls and a compact widget make it look deliberate instead of pasted in from a third party.
Honest about the trade.
We are not claiming magic or an unbeatable moat. The bet is better user experience, cleaner privacy posture, and enough verification for real-world abuse.
Pick the trade-off you actually want
If your real question is what feels better for customers, start with the direct comparisons instead of another long vendor checklist.
Experience guide
Turnstile vs Playtcha
Invisible giant-vendor flow versus a lighter, visible check that feels more human.
Experience guide
hCaptcha vs Playtcha
Classic image-grid replacement versus a shorter, less hostile verification moment.
Experience guide
Friendly Captcha vs Playtcha
Two privacy-first approaches: disappear entirely or show up briefly in a way that feels better.
Why not just use reCAPTCHA?
Because the best CAPTCHA is the one real users finish without resentment.
| Playtcha | reCAPTCHA v3 | |
|---|---|---|
| How it feels | A short game users can finish right away. | An invisible score until it turns into an image grid. |
| Tracks user behavior | No | Yes |
| Sends data to ad network | No | Yes |
| Bundle weight | ~14 KB gzipped. | ~250 KB+. |
| Works without third-party cookies | yes | Degraded. |
| GDPR / CCPA paperwork required | Minimal. | Yes — DPA + cookie consent. |
We are not trying to out-Google Google on abuse telemetry. The product bet is better user experience, cleaner privacy posture, and enough layered verification for normal web flows.
Numbers from public sources, March 2026. We will keep this honest as both products evolve. If something here is wrong, tell us.
Integration
Two lines on the page. One POST on your server. That’s it.
On the page
On your server (Node example)
Server-side check is the security guarantee — without it, an attacker can fake the front-end token. Want the full language versions? Open the quickstart →
Simple pricing. No surprises.
Start free. Upgrade when you need more volume, white-labeling, or the full game lineup.
Free
Best for side projects and first integrations
€0
Enough volume to test the full verification loop in production without a card.
- Verifications/mo
- 5,000
- Domains per project
- 1
- Games included
- 4 rotating games
- Widget branding
- Powered by Playtcha
- Email support
- Community
Starter
Best for production signup and auth flows
€4.99 /mo
The clean upgrade when the widget is already part of your product and you want white-labeling.
- Verifications/mo
- 50,000
- Domains per project
- 5
- Games included
- All 8 games
- Widget branding
- White-label
- Email support
- 48h
Business
Best for teams shipping at real volume
€9.99 /mo
For customer-facing products that want the full game pool.
- Verifications/mo
- 500,000
- Domains per project
- 25
- Games included
- All 8 games
- Widget branding
- White-label
- Email support
- 24h
No credit card for Free. Stay on it forever if it fits.
If you exceed your tier we warn you at 80% and 100%. We never break your site silently.
Paid tiers can disable the powered-by chip per project from the dashboard, so white-label branding is a real product feature today, not a sales promise.
EU consumers: subscribing to a paid plan is a distance contract. You have a 14-day right of withdrawal. See the refund & withdrawal policy for how to cancel and the model withdrawal form.
Availability without an SLA number
Four-nines numbers are easy to print and hard to verify. We’d rather tell you exactly how our outages affect your form, and give you the code that makes the promise true.
Designed to fail open.
When our verifier is unavailable, the documented server-side pattern treats the user as human instead of rejecting them. See failure handling for the exact code.
Your signup form never breaks because of us.
A Playtcha outage shouldn’t become your downtime. Our contract with you is the snippet, not a four-nines number we can’t verify from outside.
Project-owner email at Sev-1 (coming soon).
Project owners will get an email when a Sev-1 incident is declared and when it resolves. The alerting pipeline is in progress; the trust page will list the trigger criteria once it’s live.
Honest framing on bot tolerance during outages.
Fail-open means we accept a small amount of bot traffic during our own outages so your form keeps working. For high-stakes flows that can’t tolerate that, opt into fail-closed with PLAYTCHA_FAIL_CLOSED=1.
What we refuse to collect
The experience gets better when verification doesn’t double as surveillance. This is the short list. The long list is in our privacy policy.
No behavioral tracking.
We don't measure mouse paths, scroll, or time-on-page.
No third-party cookies.
Nothing on your site loads from an ad network because of us.
No data sold or shared.
Telemetry stays in our database. We have nothing to sell.
No fingerprinting.
We don't compute device identifiers. We don't need them.
Questions developers actually ask
Are you claiming stronger security than the giants?
No. Google and Cloudflare have larger abuse teams and more telemetry than we do. Playtcha's bet is different: better user experience, better privacy posture, and enough layered verification for normal signup, auth, and contact-form abuse. Pair it with rate limits and sane app-level defenses.
Can a bot still beat the games?
A determined attacker can spend money on human solvers or build for the exact widget, just like with any other CAPTCHA. We rotate games, randomize the challenge, and bind each run to short-lived single-use tokens so trivial automation is much harder, but we do not market this as unbeatable.
What happens if Playtcha goes down?
Your form keeps working. Playtcha is designed to fail open: when our verifier is unavailable, the documented server-side pattern treats the user as human instead of breaking the form. High-stakes flows can opt into fail-closed with an env var. The full contract is in our failure-handling guide at /learn/failure-handling.
Can I self-host?
Not at the moment. We host both the widget and the verification backend. If you have hard data-residency requirements, email support@playtcha.com and we'll talk through what's possible.
Is the user's audio / camera ever used?
No camera or microphone. The shipped widget is mouse, keyboard, or touch only.
What about screen-reader users?
The widget has better focus management, keyboard support, and larger mobile touch targets than traditional image CAPTCHAs, but it is still a visual minigame product. We do not ship a non-visual completion path today.
How is this priced compared to reCAPTCHA Enterprise?
reCAPTCHA Enterprise is roughly €0.92 per 1,000 assessments ($1 USD) past its 10,000/month free tier. Our Business plan is roughly €0.02 per 1,000. Numbers as of May 2026.
