Do I need a Google account?
No. The Math and Question challenges run entirely on your own site with no signup and no external service. If you would rather use a managed provider, Cloudflare Turnstile is free and needs no Google account either.
Will it work with my page caching plugin?
Yes, by design. CaptchaFlow never puts visitor-specific data into your page HTML, so cached pages stay correct for every visitor. The challenge is fetched by the browser with caching disabled, and the diagnostics screen confirms it is working through your cache.
What happens if the CAPTCHA provider goes down?
Your forms keep working. CaptchaFlow fails open by default: if the provider cannot be reached, submissions are still checked by the honeypot, timing and content checks rather than everyone being locked out. You can switch that off if you would rather fail closed.
What data do you collect about my visitors?
None reaches us. There is no telemetry, no phoning home and no account. Verification events are logged in your own database for the retention period you choose. IP addresses are shortened to their network before storage, and email addresses are kept only as one-way hashes.
Does it slow my site down?
The public script is 2.5 KB gzipped and loads only on pages that actually contain a protected form. Log writes are deferred until after the response has been sent, so verification adds no database round trips to the submit path.