Cloudflare has replaced CAPTCHAs

Publish Date:

Cloudflare announces in their Blog that they have replaced all CAPTCHAs with their not-a-bot-user-verification called Turnstile.

When they show up, CAPTCHAs are a hassle for human users. The visual challenges are often annoying, sometimes inaccurate, and always annoying. For accessibility, alternatives need to be implemented and provided in addition to the CAPTCHAs, but those are rarely any better or more usable.

Cloudflare mentions that:

  • Humans give up on CAPTCHA challenges ~15% of the time
  • CAPTCHAs are significantly easier for bots to solve than for humans
  • Audio CAPTCHAs see ~70% disagreement between users on what is being said
  • Bots can accurately solve audio CAPTCHAS in 85% of attempts

Cloudflare claims that Turnstile:

  • Without user interaction is equally effective as CAPTCHAs
  • On potentially suspicious signals, the checkbox has to be checked manually leading to additional assessable signals

Turnstile works through automated assessment of testable web browser information. The solution is accessible (there are barely any interactive elements) and respects user privacy (no tracking necessary).

Turnstile is generally available and free to use by others.

Let’s hope many CAPTCHA users will replace or discard their CAPTCHA challenge systems