Who will have to pay for Google's reCAPTCHA?

Google reCAPTCHA is changing, and you’ll learn what role payment and migration play in the new format of Google’s reCAPTCHA.

reCAPTCHA Migration to Google Cloud

Earlier, Google officially announced that by the end of 2025, all reCAPTCHA site and secret keys must be migrated to Google Cloud projects.

This means that the top-level management will now go through GCP, and the keys will be subject to new terms and pricing.

Is reCAPTCHA in Google Cloud paid or free?

Until the end of this year, reCAPTCHA will continue to work as before and remain completely free. However, it’s worth noting that Google has already moved it to its cloud platform, and the standalone reCAPTCHA site became unavailable earlier. In other words, reCAPTCHA was a separate project from Google Cloud with its own dedicated website and infrastructure.

The free tier will remain, but with limits! As Google notes, the first 10,000 assessments per month will be free. Beyond that, pricing will apply (for example, $8 ≈ 350 UAH for 100,000 additional assessments), and higher usage will fall under the Enterprise tier.

Will anything need to change on websites using reCAPTCHA?

The functionality will remain compatible. These changes do not require noticeable modifications to site code already using reCAPTCHA. Keys will continue to work after migration. However, Google recommends switching to the newer APIs (such as CreateAssessment) to access the latest features.

We also recommend checking the number of reCAPTCHA assessments on your web forms in recent months — this will help you understand whether you’ll need to pay or not.

What should you do?

If your website is small and has few visitors or form submissions, most likely everything will stay free and unchanged for you. But if your website has a large number of interactions (logins, comments, requests), or heavy traffic, you should estimate and plan a budget for payment — or consider alternatives (CAPTCHAs from other providers or self-hosted solutions).