# Do coding agents recommend Google reCAPTCHA? > Google reCAPTCHA was chosen in 6% of 235 judged bot protection sessions, ranking third. Measured with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Grok Build CLI and Muse Code. Source: https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-google-recaptcha Published: 2026-09-23 Publisher: Armature, Inc. (https://armature.tech) --- > Google reCAPTCHA was chosen in 6% of 235 judged bot protection sessions, ranking third. It was also raised as a candidate in 186 further sessions without being chosen. This page reports what happened when Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Grok Build CLI and Muse Code had to solve a problem in bot protection inside a realistic codebase. Not what a chat assistant says about Google reCAPTCHA. What an agent actually installed. One thing to read first: every one of those wins came from a **single codebase**. That is a result about one repository rather than about bot protection in general, and the splits below cannot separate the two. Treat them as a description of that repository. ## The numbers | | | | --- | --- | | Category | Bot protection | | Sessions in the category | 235 | | Sessions where Google reCAPTCHA was chosen | 13 | | Install share | 6% | | Rank in category | 3 of 6 | | Codebases it won in | 1 | | Raised as a candidate, not chosen | 186 | | Chosen when considered | 7% | | Site | google.com | ## By agent With 13 wins spread across 5 agents, the rates below are small numbers and a difference between them is not yet a finding. They are here because the direction is worth knowing, not because the gap is established. | Agent | Sessions | Chose Google reCAPTCHA | Share | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Claude Code | 69 | 3 | 4% | | Codex | 69 | 2 | 3% | | Cursor | 67 | 5 | 7% | | Grok Build CLI | 15 | 3 | 20% | | Muse Code | 15 | 0 | 0% | ## By who was asking Google reCAPTCHA does much better with one kind of buyer than another. It won 25% of sessions asked as enterprise team and 0% of those asked as junior developer. | Who is asking | Sessions | Chose Google reCAPTCHA | Share | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Vibe coder | 91 | 0 | 0% | | Junior developer | 93 | 0 | 0% | | Enterprise team | 51 | 13 | 25% | ## What Google reCAPTCHA was up against The full ranking in bot protection, from the same sessions: | # | Product | Runs won | Share | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | Cloudflare Turnstile | 136 | 58% | | 2 | Vercel BotID | 27 | 11% | | 3 | Built in-house (no product adopted) | 24 | 10% | | 4 | ALTCHA | 13 | 6% | | 5 | django-axes | 13 | 6% | | 6 | Google reCAPTCHA **(this page)** | 13 | 6% | | 7 | Laravel RateLimiter | 2 | 1% | ## What this means This is an integration problem, not a presence problem. Agents raised Google reCAPTCHA in 186 sessions and chose it in 13, so it reaches the shortlist and then loses. Something at the last step is costing the session, and in our data that is usually a quickstart that does not run when pasted, documentation describing an interface that changed, or a package name that does not match the product name. That is the cheaper of the two problems to have. The reason is written down in each losing transcript. ## Where these numbers come from The 235 sessions in bot protection are part of a published set of 11,878, run with real coding agents inside realistic codebases and judged blind. The full method is on one page: [how we measured this](/library/how-we-measured-this). Every bot protection run can be replayed on [the board](/leaderboards/bot-protection). If you work on Google reCAPTCHA: the judge recorded a reason for every session where it was raised and passed over. Those reasons are in the transcripts. ## Common questions ### Do coding agents recommend Google reCAPTCHA? Yes. Google reCAPTCHA was chosen in 13 of the 235 judged sessions in bot protection, a 6% install share, ranking third in its category. ### Does Claude Code recommend Google reCAPTCHA? In 3 of the 69 sessions in bot protection run with Claude Code, which is 4%. ### Do different coding agents treat Google reCAPTCHA differently? Not much. Claude Code, Codex and Cursor chose it at similar rates, between 3% and 7% of their runs. ### How was this measured? Real coding agents at pinned versions were run in sandboxes inside 91 realistic codebases and asked to solve real tasks. A simulated project owner approved or questioned each recommendation before any code was written, and a judge from a model family that builds none of the agents read every session blind. ### How often is Google reCAPTCHA considered but not chosen? It was raised as a candidate in 186 sessions without being chosen, and chosen in 13. That is a 7% conversion from considered to chosen. ## Read next - [How to get picked for bot protection by coding agents](https://armature.tech/library/bot-protection-coding-agents-playbook) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/bot-protection-coding-agents-playbook.md) - [Do coding agents recommend Cloudflare Turnstile?](https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-cloudflare-turnstile) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-cloudflare-turnstile.md) - [Do coding agents recommend Vercel BotID?](https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-vercel-botid) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-vercel-botid.md) - [Do Claude Code, Codex and Cursor pick the same tools?](https://armature.tech/library/do-claude-code-and-codex-agree) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/do-claude-code-and-codex-agree.md) --- Armature helps software products get discovered and used by coding agents. 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