EU Sovereignty Score
EU sovereignCaptcha & Bot DetectionHeadquarters: DE

Friendly Captcha: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Friendly Captcha is a privacy-focused bot-protection service that replaces visible captchas. Visitors do not have to solve anything: a cryptographic proof-of-work puzzle is issued for each device and solved in the background while someone fills out a form. The service also uses risk signals to adjust puzzle difficulty. According to the vendor, it does not track users, uses no cookies and is GDPR compliant. You add a widget and a sitekey to your form and verify the response with an API call from your server. Open-source integrations exist for React, Vue, Angular, WordPress and Magento, among others.

Friendly Captcha GmbH is based in Woerthsee, Germany, and has no non-European parent company. The service itself is not open source. The vendor lists data centres in the EU, the US and Asia, among other places, and offers an EU-only option for processing; according to its website, this belongs to the Advanced plan. A self-hosted endpoint is available only on the Enterprise plan. European organisations that care about data residency should therefore select the EU-only option.

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Sovereignty score
59 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-2100
    Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
  • Data residency SOV-350
    Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, US, OTHER)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-360
    Key management with a European vendor
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
    Closed source: switching requires data migration
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-645
    Closed source, runtime with the vendor

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 9, 2026
HeadquartersDE (EU)Verified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingEU, US, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-sourceNoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalCOMBELL-AS - Combell NV, BE (BE)Technically measured
CategoryCaptcha & Bot Detection
TypeProduct
Websitefriendlycaptcha.com ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Friendly Captcha

The European alternatives to Friendly Captcha come from our knowledge base of over 6,200 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

15 European Captcha & Bot Detection vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with Friendly Captcha

Friendly Captcha is headquartered in DE and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.

Friendly Captcha hosts data in EU, US, OTHER. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

Friendly Captcha is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Friendly Captcha together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Friendly Captcha?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Friendly Captcha include ALTCHA, ALTCHA Sentinel and Atmosvere. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Friendly Captcha?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Friendly Captcha include ALTCHA, CaptchaService (Stad München) and Gregwar Captcha Bundle. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Friendly Captcha GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Friendly Captcha is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU, US, OTHER. That makes Friendly Captcha an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 9, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in Captcha & Bot Detection

Captcha & Bot Detection: Services that detect whether a real user or bot is visiting a website. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

Also in this category

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8 European alternatives to Friendly Captcha — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score