invisible recaptcha versus captcha

Hi jschmidtsbss,

Great question. Google’s “invisible” and traditional reCAPTCHA options provide the same level of protection, but the big difference is how they look to your visitors.

Their traditional (v2) reCAPTCHA shows a checkbox that the user must check, while the “invisible” option just shows a small badge in the lower right corner of the page (so less obvious).

However, both will sometimes prompt users to complete the image questions you expect with reCAPTCHA (such as “click all images that show a bus”, that sort of thing).

Some site owners, though, don’t like those image questions, prefer to write their own questions, don’t want to use a Google service, or have a specific reason that reCAPTCHA won’t work well on their site. These are generally the cases where someone might prefer to use our Custom Captcha addon.

On a broader scale, though, Google’s reCAPTCHA does a really good job of preventing spam and we highly recommend adding it if you’re looking for spam prevention.

I hope that helps! ??

Jess, the “invisible option” always gave us the image question pop up.

Hi nanoprobes,

I sometimes go through long periods of time where every reCAPTCHA will require that I answer those image questions every time, too. At other times, I’ll go a whole day when I don’t have to answer any reCAPTCHA image questions. And then most of the time it will just feel sporadic.

So while I’m not sure exactly what combination of things let Google decide when the image question will appear, what you’re seeing isn’t unusual based on what I’ve seen (and it won’t necessarily behave the same way for other people, even for the exact same form).

Hopefully that helps ??