Shield
How Shield Compares
Free like Turnstile, scored like reCAPTCHA v3, private like nothing else. See how Shield stacks up against every alternative.
Feature Comparison
A detailed breakdown of Shield vs the most popular verification providers.
| Feature | Edge Shield | Turnstile | reCAPTCHA | hCaptcha | Friendly Captcha |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, unlimited | Free | Free to 10k/mo | Free tier | Paid (free for non-commercial) |
| Confidence score | 1–100, every call | ✗ | 0.0–1.0 (v3) | Enterprise only | ✗ |
| Visual puzzles | Never | Never | v2 fallback | Yes | Never |
| Invisible mode | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ (v3) | Paid | ✓ |
| Proof-of-work challenges | ✓ | Partial | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| No ad-tech tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| No per-visitor data stored | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Open-source widget | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Independent of big-cloud ecosystem | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Turnstile-compatible siteverify | ✓ | — | ✗ | Partial | ✗ |
| Works without account lock-in | ✓ | Cloudflare account | Google account | ✓ | ✓ |
Competitor capabilities and pricing based on publicly available information and may change.
What actually sets Shield apart
Four differences that matter more than any feature checkbox.
A score, not just a verdict
Every other free option gives you pass/fail at best. Shield returns a 1–100 humanity score on every verification, so your application can make graduated decisions — auto-approve humans, step up uncertain traffic, redirect legitimate AI agents to your API, or block abuse. Built for a web where automation isn't automatically the enemy.
Nothing to leak
Turnstile, reCAPTCHA, and hCaptcha all store per-visitor data somewhere. Shield architecturally cannot: signals are scored in memory and discarded, and only hourly aggregates are persisted. Privacy compliance becomes a non-event.
No ecosystem lock-in
Shield is a standalone service. It doesn't require routing traffic through our network, doesn't deepen a cloud dependency, and its siteverify format is Turnstile-compatible — so leaving is as easy as arriving. We'd rather keep you with quality than with switching costs.
Built to be unnoticeable
A dependency-free widget under 15KB that does its work in a Web Worker. No layout shift, no main-thread jank, no Core Web Vitals penalty — lighter than every mainstream alternative.
Provider by provider
Every provider has strengths. Here's an honest look at each — and where Shield wins.
Shield vs Cloudflare Turnstile
The CAPTCHA alternative that popularised invisible verification, free within the Cloudflare ecosystem.
Strengths
Limitations
The Shield advantage: Shield matches Turnstile's modes and siteverify format exactly — then adds a 1–100 humanity score, an open-source widget, and zero per-visitor data. Migration is a URL and key swap.
Shield vs Google reCAPTCHA
The incumbent. v2 shows image puzzles; v3 scores traffic invisibly — with Google's tracking along for the ride.
Strengths
Limitations
The Shield advantage: Shield gives you what v3's score offers without the tracking, the puzzles, or the assessment cap — and without wiring Google into every page of your site.
Shield vs hCaptcha
A privacy-focused reCAPTCHA alternative, but one that still leans on visual puzzles for verification.
Strengths
Limitations
The Shield advantage: Shield never shows a puzzle — verification is proof-of-work plus signals, not human labelling labour. Invisible mode and the humanity score are free for everyone.
Shield vs Friendly Captcha
A European privacy-first CAPTCHA built on proof-of-work, philosophically closest to Shield.
Strengths
Limitations
The Shield advantage: Shield takes the same privacy-first, proof-of-work approach and makes it free for commercial use — with adaptive risk scoring and a humanity score on top.
Migrating takes minutes. Staying is optional.
If you're on Turnstile, the siteverify response is identical — swap a URL and two keys. If you're on reCAPTCHA or hCaptcha, the widget drops into the same place on your forms.
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