Are you human, as far as a CAPTCHA can tell?
Yes, but on real CAPTCHAs the bots now do the job better. In a 2023 UC Irvine study that timed 1,000 people on ten kinds of real CAPTCHA, the typical person needed about 3 seconds for reCAPTCHA’s click task and around half a minute for the hardest picture puzzles. On every type the researchers could compare, the best published bots were faster and more accurate than the people.
This CAPTCHA test turns that study into six checks you can try in about two minutes: press a button, tap every tile that matches a sample, slide a puzzle piece into its gap, turn a cat upright, pick the one giraffe that is the right way up, and drag a dot home “like a human”. Each check is timed from the moment it appears until you answer, and you get one go, with no retries. After every check you see your time next to the typical person’s time on the real version (from Searles et al.’s public data) and the time of the fastest published bot. At the end you find out how many checks you passed, your total time, and what the machine was really watching.
It is a game about CAPTCHAs, not a security check: nothing here decides whether you are a person. Our checks are drawn by us and done in one round, so they are easier than the real ones, which can take several rounds and load from a server. That is why there is no percentile: your times sit beside the study’s, but they are not ranked against them.
What the CAPTCHA test measures
One thing: how long you take to pass each kind of check that websites use to tell people from bots, and whether you pass it.
The six checks
- A click check, like reCAPTCHA’s checkbox: press the button
- Image tiles, like reCAPTCHA and hCAPTCHA: tap every tile that matches the sample (three or four of nine), all of them right to pass
- A slider, like Geetest: drag the piece along its rail into the gap in a picture
- Rotation, like Arkose Labs: turn a cat upright, within 15 degrees
- Upright selection, like Arkose Labs: of six giraffes, tap the one the right way up
- A last check with no real counterpart: drag a dot home, any way you like
- Every picture is a simple drawing with no words, so anyone can play in any language
Your result
- How many of the six checks you passed, and your total time in seconds
- Your time on each check beside the typical person’s time on the real version and the best published bot’s
- A chart of where 1,000 real people land on ten real CAPTCHA types (middle half, median, 10th–90th percentile), with you marked on the matching row
- What the machine was watching while you played
- A short history of how bots caught up, from the 2003 paper that named the CAPTCHA to the 2023 study
- A shareable card and a link that challenges a friend: more checks passed wins, then the faster time
Before you start
- About two minutes; free, with no sign-up
- Works on a phone or a computer; dragging is a little quicker with a mouse
- Sound effects are optional; nothing needs to be heard
- Each check counts once, so read the one-line instruction before you move
CAPTCHA test FAQ
Is this test free? Do I need to sign up to see my result?
Yes, it’s free, and there’s nothing to sign up for: no account, no email, no payment. Your result appears on this page the moment you finish, and you can share it or play again straight away.
How long does it take a person to solve a CAPTCHA?
Usually between about 3 and 30 seconds, depending on the type. In Searles et al.’s 2023 study of 1,000 people, the median was about 3 seconds for reCAPTCHA’s click task, about 9 to 13 seconds for distorted text, about 21 seconds for the Geetest slider and about 33 seconds for Arkose Labs’ picture selection. Doing the same CAPTCHAs inside a sign-up form made people 27% slower on average.
Are bots better at CAPTCHAs than humans?
Yes, on every type where a published attack exists. The table of fastest attacks in Searles et al. (2023) lists bots solving reCAPTCHA’s click task in 1.4 seconds with 100% accuracy, hCAPTCHA in 14.9 seconds with 98% and the Geetest slider in 5.3 seconds with 96%. People in the same study got about 81% of reCAPTCHA picture tasks right.
How does this CAPTCHA test score you?
The CAPTCHA test counts how many of its six checks you pass and adds up your time. Each check is timed from the moment it appears until you answer, and each is done once. A friend’s challenge is decided first by checks passed and then by total seconds. There is no percentile, because the six checks are simpler, one-round versions of the real ones in the study.
What does CAPTCHA stand for?
CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas Hopper and John Langford named it in a 2003 paper: a test that a computer sets and marks, but cannot pass itself.
Why do I sometimes fail a CAPTCHA?
Because real CAPTCHAs are hard for people too. In the 2023 UC Irvine study, people answered about 81% of reCAPTCHA picture tasks correctly and about 71% of hCAPTCHA’s difficult ones, and on masked distorted text only half agreed on the answer. In a second experiment in the same study, 30% of the people who started gave up before the end.
Is this a real CAPTCHA or a bot check?
No. This CAPTCHA test is a game about CAPTCHAs and decides nothing about you. Its six checks are our own drawings, not any company’s CAPTCHA, and your answers are not uploaded. A challenge link carries only which checks you passed and your total seconds, in the part of the address after the #.
Where the numbers come from
People’s times are recomputed from the public data of Searles et al. (2023) with the authors’ own cleaning (the slowest 5% of each type dropped). Their participants were 1,000 Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, mostly in the US and on computers, solving real, unmodified CAPTCHAs. The paper’s text gives 3.7 seconds as the click-task median; the public data gives 3.3. Bot times come from the same paper’s table of published attacks and were not re-checked against each attack paper. The site does not publish its own players’ data.