The Friendly Captcha alternative for spam that people type
Friendly Captcha is a privacy-conscious, invisible way to slow bots, with strong EU positioning. But a person pasting a pitch solves any puzzle. Doorman reads the message itself and keeps the pitches out.
Free for 1,000 checks a month. Paid plans from $12. No card required.
Example: Doorman screening messages that pass a bot check, each judged in under half a second and delivered or kept out with the reason.
Sound familiar?
Puzzles don't stop people
Proof-of-work costs a bot time. A human typing an agency pitch doesn't notice it.
Small request allowances
Commercial plans start at 1,000 requests a month for €9.
The free plan is non-commercial
A business site needs a paid plan from the first request.
Doorman and Friendly Captcha, side by side
| Question | Doorman | Friendly Captcha |
|---|---|---|
| What it checks | What the visitor sent, against what you sell | A background proof-of-work puzzle plus device and IP risk signals |
| Human-written pitches | Kept out, with the line that gave it away | Pass |
| What visitors see | Nothing | Nothing, or a small widget solving in the background |
| Why something was blocked | The exact sentence | Risk intelligence from the Advanced plan up |
| Setup | A form URL or one server call | A script and widget on the page, plus server-side verification |
| Price | Free for 1,000 checks a month, commercial use included; Pro $12 for 25,000 | Free for non-commercial sites; Starter €9 a month for 1,000 requests, Growth €39 for 5,000 |
Their plans and behaviour as published on their own sites, checked 29 September 2026. Sources: friendlycaptcha.com, friendlycaptcha.com/signup.
Which one is right for you?
Choose Doorman if
- Your junk is human-written: pitches, SEO offers, partnership outreach
- You run a commercial site and want a real free tier
- You want the reason for every decision
- You want more checks for the money: 25,000 for $12
Choose Friendly Captcha if
- You need EU hosting and a strongly GDPR-positioned vendor
- Your spam is mostly automated
- You need a self-hosted endpoint (on their Enterprise plan)
Switch in two minutes
- Hosted form: change the form's action to your Doorman URL and remove the Friendly Captcha script and widget.
- From your server: replace the Friendly Captcha verify call with one doorman.check call; act on deliver, hold or drop.
- Or ask your agent: copy one prompt into Claude Code, Codex or Cursor and it does the swap.
- Start safely: watch mode delivers everything for a week and tags what it would have dropped.
<!-- before: a Friendly Captcha script and widget --> <form action="/contact" method="POST"> … <div class="friendly-captcha-widget"></div> <!-- after: no script, no widget --> <form action="https://withdoorman.com/f/f_yourForm" method="POST"> …
Checked, not guessed
Every decision comes from Doorman's models reading the submission, in milliseconds, with the reason attached.
Labelled test set: 104 invented but labelled contact-form and checkout submissions, judged live; latency is the median of those checks. Questions were not tuned to the set.
Questions
Where is Doorman's data stored?
In the United States, on Fly.io. Submissions are never used for training, and you can export or delete everything from Settings.
Does Doorman run anything in the visitor's browser?
No. Hosted forms post straight to Doorman; with the API, your server calls it.
Can I use it on a commercial site for free?
Yes. The free plan is 1,000 checks a month, commercial use included.
How much does it cost?
Free for 1,000 checks a month. Pro is $12 a month for 25,000 and Business is $49 a month for 250,000. Every plan gets the same models. See pricing.
Try it on your own forms
Free for your first 1,000 checks every month. Start in watch mode and see every call before you trust it.