Modern captchas rarely rely on the puzzle alone. They score the visit first, using the IP address, the browser and the behaviour, and show a puzzle only when the score is doubtful. A trusted visitor often passes without seeing anything.
Seeing many captchas is a sign the site distrusts your address or your browser. A better address type lowers the number; so does slowing down. When a captcha is solved, the result is a token, and many sites accept it only from the address it was solved on.
The common systems are reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha and Cloudflare Turnstile. They look different and work alike: the page loads a script, the script judges the visitor, and the site receives a token that says whether the visitor passed.
Questions about captcha
Why do I get a captcha on every page?
The site scores your visit as doubtful: an address it distrusts, a browser that looks automated, or too many requests. Fix the cause and captchas become rare.
Does solving a captcha clear my IP address?
For a while, on that site. The token or cookie you receive proves a test was passed, and many sites accept it only from the address it was earned on.
Related terms
- Captcha solver
- A captcha solving service takes a captcha from your program, solves it with people or software, and returns the token the website asks for.
- Bot detection
- Bot detection is the set of checks a website runs to tell people from programs: the IP address, the browser fingerprint and the behaviour.
- IP reputation
- IP reputation is the trust a website places in an IP address, based on who owns it and how addresses like it have behaved before.
Read next: Why captcha tokens fail