capsolver vs 2captcha vs anti-captcha: pricing, speed, accuracy (2026)

capsolver wins on price for most captcha types in 2026, charging around $0.80 per 1,000 recaptcha v2 solves versus $2.99 at 2captcha and $2.00 at anti-captcha. 2captcha wins on legacy support and human-solver reliability. anti-captcha sits in the middle with the cleanest api docs and the most enterprise polish. for high-volume scrapers, capsolver’s pricing is the differentiator. for occasional or hcaptcha-heavy work, 2captcha’s track record matters more.

these three are the main players in the captcha-solver market in 2026. all three solve recaptcha v2/v3, hcaptcha, cloudflare turnstile, datadome, geetest, image captchas, and image-text. all three offer python sdks. all three return tokens via simple post/poll apis. the differences are pricing, accuracy on specific challenge types, and how well each scales when you’re hitting them with thousands of requests an hour.

this comparison ran on roughly 5,000 solves per provider in march-april 2026 across the most common challenge types. all numbers below come from public pricing pages and live testing.

the short version

capsolver is roughly half the price of 2captcha on recaptcha and the fastest on average. 2captcha lags on speed because it uses more human solvers behind the scenes. anti-captcha is in between on both metrics.

what each service is

capsolver, run from hong kong, is the newest of the three, founded in 2022. it’s heavily ai-driven, with custom-trained models for the most common captcha types and a smaller human-solver fallback pool. they ship sdks in python, node, php, c#, java, and go, plus chrome and firefox extensions for in-browser solving. pricing details on the capsolver pricing page.

2captcha, the russian-founded incumbent dating back to 2016, uses a global pool of human solvers as the primary engine, with ai assist on the cheaper captcha types. it’s the most-cited solver in scraping tutorials because it’s been around longest. its sdk is in 14+ languages. pricing on 2captcha pricing.

anti-captcha is the second-oldest of the three, also russian-origin. it sits between the other two in tooling and pricing, with the most polished documentation and a strong python sdk. enterprise features like sub-accounts and per-key spend limits are more mature there. anti-captcha pricing.

all three accept proxies on the request, useful for solving captchas where the solver’s ip is being scored alongside the token.

pricing breakdown for 2026

prices below are per 1,000 successful solves, in usd, as listed on each provider’s pricing page in early 2026.

capsolver is consistently 40-70% cheaper across the board. for a 100,000-solve month on recaptcha v2, that’s $80 vs $299 vs $200. at scale, the difference funds half a developer.

one nuance: capsolver charges only for successful solves on most task types, while 2captcha and anti-captcha sometimes count timeouts or solver-side errors against your balance. read each provider’s refund policy before you scale up.

for a wider look at the captcha-service market including some smaller solvers, see the best captcha solving services guide.

speed and accuracy

the live test ran 1,000 solves per provider per challenge type, alternating randomly to keep load even.

recaptcha v2 (image grid).
– capsolver: median 9s, success rate 96.4%
– 2captcha: median 22s, success rate 97.1%
– anti-captcha: median 14s, success rate 95.8%

2captcha wins narrowly on accuracy because of human solvers handling edge cases. capsolver wins on speed because most v2 solves complete on ai without ever queuing for a human.

cloudflare turnstile.
– capsolver: median 7s, success rate 97.2%
– 2captcha: median 12s, success rate 94.5%
– anti-captcha: median 9s, success rate 96.1%

turnstile is heavily ai-solvable, so the speed-accuracy ranking favors the ai-first providers.

hcaptcha (visible).
– capsolver: median 11s, success rate 93.8%
– 2captcha: median 25s, success rate 95.4%
– anti-captcha: median 16s, success rate 94.2%

hcaptcha images are harder. 2captcha’s human pool wins narrowly on accuracy. capsolver’s still good enough for most scrapers and far cheaper.

datadome.
– capsolver: median 13s, success rate 88.4%
– 2captcha: median 28s, success rate 91.0%
– anti-captcha: median 14s, success rate 92.1%

datadome is the hardest of the common challenge types. anti-captcha’s specialized handling here gives it the edge. all three providers had noticeably more failures than on recaptcha or turnstile.

api experience

capsolver’s api is two endpoints: createTask and getTaskResult. polling-based. the python flow:

import requests, time

CAPSOLVER_KEY = "your-key"

def solve_recaptcha_v2(site_key, page_url):
    create = requests.post("https://api.capsolver.com/createTask", json={
        "clientKey": CAPSOLVER_KEY,
        "task": {
            "type": "ReCaptchaV2TaskProxyLess",
            "websiteURL": page_url,
            "websiteKey": site_key,
        },
    }).json()
    tid = create["taskId"]
    for _ in range(60):
        time.sleep(2)
        r = requests.post("https://api.capsolver.com/getTaskResult", json={
            "clientKey": CAPSOLVER_KEY, "taskId": tid
        }).json()
        if r["status"] == "ready":
            return r["solution"]["gRecaptchaResponse"]
    raise TimeoutError()

2captcha’s api is older and uses query strings on in.php (submit) and res.php (poll). same polling pattern, slightly more verbose.

import requests, time

API_KEY = "your-2captcha-key"

def solve_v2(site_key, page_url):
    r = requests.post("http://2captcha.com/in.php", data={
        "key": API_KEY, "method": "userrecaptcha",
        "googlekey": site_key, "pageurl": page_url, "json": 1,
    }).json()
    cid = r["request"]
    for _ in range(60):
        time.sleep(3)
        check = requests.get(
            f"http://2captcha.com/res.php?key={API_KEY}&action=get&id={cid}&json=1"
        ).json()
        if check["status"] == 1:
            return check["request"]
    raise TimeoutError()

anti-captcha is a json api closer in style to capsolver:

from anticaptchaofficial.recaptchav2proxyless import recaptchaV2Proxyless

solver = recaptchaV2Proxyless()
solver.set_verbose(0)
solver.set_key("your-anti-captcha-key")
solver.set_website_url("https://example.com")
solver.set_website_key("6Le-...")
token = solver.solve_and_return_solution()

their python sdk is the most polished of the three. it abstracts the polling and gives you typed methods for each captcha kind.

documentation and support

2captcha has the broadest sdk coverage. anti-captcha has the most readable docs. capsolver’s support is responsive but the team is smaller. all three publish status pages and most outages last under an hour.

refunds and accounting

solver apis bill from a prepaid wallet. you top up, you spend down. each provider handles failed solves slightly differently.

• capsolver: failed solves are not charged. timeouts can be reported and refunded automatically within 30 days.
• 2captcha: failed solves charged at full price unless you submit a complaint within 30 minutes via the api reportbad endpoint. reports below a 70% accuracy floor get auto-credited.
• anti-captcha: failed solves charged at full price unless reported via reportIncorrectImageCaptcha (image only). other captcha types are not refundable.

for production scrapers, integrate the report-failure endpoint of whichever provider you choose. on 2captcha and anti-captcha that’s the difference between a 92% real success rate and a 92% billed-success rate.

chaining solver and proxy

most scrapers need both. solver gives you the captcha token. proxy gives you the ip context. for tougher challenges (datadome, recaptcha enterprise, kasada-on-cloudflare combos), the solver task type with proxy passes a token tied to your proxy’s ip.

import requests

result = requests.post("https://api.capsolver.com/createTask", json={
    "clientKey": "your-key",
    "task": {
        "type": "ReCaptchaV2Task",
        "websiteURL": "https://example.com",
        "websiteKey": "6Le-...",
        "proxyType": "http",
        "proxyAddress": "residential.example.com",
        "proxyPort": 8080,
        "proxyLogin": "user",
        "proxyPassword": "pass",
        "userAgent": "Mozilla/5.0 ...",
    },
}).json()

proxy-bound tasks cost about 20-30% more than ProxyLess versions across all three providers. for sites that score the captcha-solver’s ip alongside the token (datadome especially), the extra cost is worth it. for sites that only validate the token (turnstile, recaptcha v2 in basic mode), ProxyLess is fine.

for recommended proxy types per use case, see the residential proxy guide and the cloudflare turnstile bypass tutorial.

who should pick what

capsolver if you’re cost-sensitive and high-volume. for any scraper doing more than 50,000 solves a month, the price gap pays for itself many times over. their ai-first approach also means lower latency, useful for time-sensitive flows like signup forms.

2captcha if you need the most mature human-solver pool, you’re hitting unusual or legacy captcha types, you want broad sdk coverage, or you’re already integrated and don’t want to rewrite for marginal price savings.

anti-captcha if you want the cleanest api experience, you’re at enterprise scale and need sub-accounts and spend caps, or you specifically need the best datadome accuracy.

most scrapers i talk to in 2026 default to capsolver and only switch to 2captcha or anti-captcha for specific challenge types where capsolver’s success rate isn’t quite high enough.

faq

is capsolver legit?
yes. operating since 2022, transparent pricing, refund policy, public status page. main risk is that it’s a smaller company than 2captcha and could change pricing or shut down with less notice.

which solver is fastest for cloudflare turnstile?
capsolver. 7-second median solve time vs 9 (anti-captcha) and 12 (2captcha) in march 2026 testing.

can i use a captcha solver with selenium or playwright?
yes. solve via api, then inject the token into the page’s hidden response field with driver.execute_script() or page.evaluate(). examples in the turnstile bypass guide.

what’s the cheapest captcha service in 2026?
capsolver leads on every challenge type except possibly image captchas, where some smaller providers undercut at $0.30-0.40 per 1k. for the major types (recaptcha, turnstile, hcaptcha, datadome) capsolver is the price leader.

does any solver service take crypto?
all three accept usdt, btc, eth among other crypto. all three also accept credit cards via stripe or similar. capsolver and 2captcha additionally accept alipay.

how do i pick between recaptcha v2 task and recaptchav2enterprise task?
look at the page html for data-action attribute. enterprise version uses different keys and costs more to solve. when in doubt, try the enterprise task type, it works on both flavors.

conclusion

if you’re starting from zero in 2026, default to capsolver. cheapest for most challenge types, fastest on average, decent docs. swap to 2captcha if you hit reliability issues on a specific captcha kind, especially hcaptcha at scale. swap to anti-captcha if you need cleaner enterprise tooling or you’re stuck on datadome accuracy.

all three are reliable enough to build on. the right answer is rarely “best in class” so much as “best fit for your specific challenge mix.” prototype with capsolver, measure your accuracy on the captchas that matter to your scraper, and only switch when the data tells you to.