An hCaptcha alternative without the interstitial
hCaptcha solves reCAPTCHA's data-flow problem and keeps its conversion problem. What changes if the challenge disappears entirely.
What hCaptcha got right
Give it credit first, because the usual reason teams pick hCaptcha is a good one.
It is a genuine answer to the data-flow objection against reCAPTCHA. Visitor signals go to Intuition Machines rather than to Google, there is no correlation with an advertising identity graph, and the company offers the contractual terms a European operator needs. For a lot of teams that was the whole reason for the switch, and it was the right call.
It is also a drop-in replacement. The integration shape is close enough to reCAPTCHA that migrating is an afternoon, which is why it is the default second choice.
None of that is in dispute below. The argument is about what both products have in common.
The problem that did not change
hCaptcha is still a challenge. It still appears in your funnel, it still asks a human to prove something, and every appearance still costs you a proportion of real customers.
The accessibility objection did not change either. Image selection is image selection, whoever runs the server.
And on the operational side, the score model has the same shape: a number you cannot see inside, a threshold you have to guess, and a low score whose only built-in remedy is to show the challenge you were trying to avoid.
So if you moved from reCAPTCHA to hCaptcha for privacy reasons, you fixed the processor question and kept the conversion question. That is a real improvement and it is half the problem.
What removing the challenge changes
Karma is in a different category: it never displays anything. The session is scored from behavioural signals and transport fingerprints — JA3/JA3N and HTTP/2 settings, which describe the client stack rather than the user — and the verdict goes to your gateway, which passes or stops the request itself.
Concretely, that removes three things from your funnel: the interstitial, the third-party iframe in your page, and the fallback path where a real customer fails a puzzle and leaves.
It adds one thing you did not have: a per-tenant reputation base. An address that behaved like a bot on your checkout is known the next time it appears on your login, and — if you opt in — an address that behaved like one on someone else's site is known before it reaches yours.
Side by side
Where each one stands, including where hCaptcha is ahead:
| hCaptcha | Karma | |
|---|---|---|
| Visible challenge | Yes | Never |
| Data leaves to | Intuition Machines | Karma collector only |
| Accessibility barrier | Image / audio selection | None — nothing displayed |
| Decision explained | Score only | Signals shown per verdict |
| Enforcement | Yours to build from the score | At your gateway, from the verdict |
| Cross-site reputation | Vendor-internal | Your own base + opt-in shared blocklist |
| Free tier | Generous | 25,000 verdicts a month, permanent |
| Maturity | Large deployed base | Smaller, newer |
Trying it without committing
Add the Karma snippet next to hCaptcha and leave enforcement off — the free Detect plan, 25,000 verdicts a month, no card. Both systems see the same traffic.
For a week or two, compare on sessions you can identify: completed orders, known customers, the scraper you already know about. You are checking whether Karma's verdicts agree with what you know to be true, not whether they agree with hCaptcha.
When they do, switch enforcement on at your gateway and drop the challenge. Your allow and deny lists outrank the platform, so anything you depend on can be pinned first.