The hCaptcha alternative that reads what people send
hCaptcha is good at telling bots from browsers. But most form junk today is typed by people or written to sound like them. Doorman reads each submission against what you sell, with nothing added to your page.
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?
People pass challenges
An agency pitch typed by a person solves any captcha. It still lands in your inbox.
A widget on your best form
Every challenge, even an occasional one, is friction on the form you most want finished.
No reason below Enterprise
On the free and Pro plans, verification tells you pass or fail, not why.
Doorman and hCaptcha, side by side
| Question | Doorman | hCaptcha |
|---|---|---|
| What it checks | What the visitor sent, against what you sell | Visitor behaviour and bot signals |
| Human-written pitches | Kept out, with the line that gave it away | Pass |
| What visitors see | Nothing | A widget that may show a challenge; passive modes on paid plans |
| Why something was blocked | The exact sentence, on every plan | Error codes; a risk score and reason on Enterprise |
| Setup | A form URL or one server call | A script and widget on the page, plus a server-side verify call |
| Price | Free for 1,000 checks a month, Pro $12 for 25,000 | Basic free; Pro $139 a month ($99 billed yearly) for 100,000 evaluations |
Their plans and behaviour as published on their own sites, checked 29 September 2026. Sources: hcaptcha.com/pricing, docs.hcaptcha.com.
Which one is right for you?
Choose Doorman if
- Your junk is human: agency pitches, SEO offers, partnership outreach
- You want nothing added to your pages
- You want the reason for every decision without an enterprise plan
- You want unsure submissions held for you, not guessed
Choose hCaptcha if
- Your problem is automated traffic: credential stuffing, scripted sign-ups, scrapers
- You're happy with a widget on the page
- You need an enterprise bot-management contract
They work together: hCaptcha in front for bulk bots, Doorman on the forms to read what gets through.
Switch in two minutes
- Hosted form: change the form's action to your Doorman URL and remove the hCaptcha script and widget.
- From your server: replace the hCaptcha 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 hCaptcha script and widget --> <form action="/contact" method="POST"> … <div class="hcaptcha-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
Does Doorman stop bots too?
Yes. Scripted and generated submissions are judged like any other and dropped, and hosted endpoints are rate limited per IP. For very high-volume bot attacks you can keep a bot check in front.
Is it harder to set up than hCaptcha?
It's easier: no script or widget. Change the form's action URL, or replace the server-side verify call with one check call.
What about privacy?
Doorman sees only what the form sends plus the sender's IP, and runs no script on your page. Submissions are never used for training.
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.