The token budget: why solving time is a cost
reCAPTCHA tokens live two minutes and Turnstile tokens five. Put each vendor's published solving time against that window and the comfortable numbers stop looking comfortable.
Published 2026-09-16. Sources re-read 2026-09-16. 5 sources.
Two windows
Google's verification documentation gives a reCAPTCHA response token two minutes of life and one verification. Cloudflare's Turnstile documentation gives its token 300 seconds and one validation, and names the rejection for anything later or repeated: timeout-or-duplicate. Both clocks start when the token is generated on the solver's side.
So the time you actually have is the window minus the solve, minus the poll interval that noticed the solve was done, minus the network time to your own request. Call that the token budget. It's the number a solving time should be read against, and almost nobody publishes it that way.
What the vendors publish
Of the seven solvers reviewed here, three put a time on the record. Anti-Captcha prints 5 s beside every row of its price table. CaptchaAI publishes a ceiling per type: under 60 seconds for reCAPTCHA v2, under 30 for invisible v2, under 4 for v3, under 10 for Turnstile, under 15 for the Cloudflare challenge, under 12 for GeeTest v3. DeathByCaptcha prints a live average on its pricing page, 27 seconds for reCAPTCHA v2 and v3 and 7 seconds for other types when we read it.
2Captcha shows a live counter that a script fills in, which read 0 sec. to a script-free reader. CapMonster Cloud, CapSolver and NopeCHA publish no time at all; CapMonster prints a success percentage instead, NopeCHA labels its plans fast and faster, CapSolver's homepage title says fastest.
The arithmetic
Against a 120 second reCAPTCHA window, Anti-Captcha's 5 s is about 4 percent of the budget. DeathByCaptcha's 27 s live average is about 22 percent. CaptchaAI's 60 second ceiling is 50 percent, which means that in the worst published case half the window is gone before your code sees the token. Against Turnstile's 300 seconds, CaptchaAI's 10 second ceiling is about 3 percent and Anti-Captcha's 5 s under 2 percent.
Those are the published figures, not measurements. A ceiling isn't a mean, a live average isn't a guarantee, and a 5 s figure printed on a price table is a commitment that a busy day can break. What the arithmetic does show is how much room a slow solve leaves for your own pipeline: with 60 seconds gone, a poll loop that checks every 10 seconds and a request that takes 5 has spent about 75 of 120 before the site sees the token.
What to do with it
Set your own timeout from the window, not from the vendor's number. For reCAPTCHA, a task that hasn't returned inside about 90 seconds isn't worth waiting for, because the token it eventually returns will have little life left; cancel and create a new task. For Turnstile the same logic gives you more room. Poll at short intervals once the vendor's typical time has passed, since every second of polling delay comes out of the budget after the solve is already done.
And treat no published time as information. A vendor that prints a success percentage and no time is telling you what it's confident about. The rubric on this site scores the absence, which is why CapMonster Cloud, CapSolver and NopeCHA rate 2 of 5 on stated speed despite being fine on other criteria.
- [1]Google reCAPTCHA developer guide, Verifying the user's response Google, read 2026-09-16.
“Each reCAPTCHA user response token is valid for two minutes, and can only be verified once to prevent replay attacks.”
- [2]Cloudflare Turnstile, Server-side validation Cloudflare, read 2026-09-16.
“Each token is valid for 300 seconds (5 minutes) after generation. Each token can only be validated once. A replayed token will be rejected with the timeout-or-duplicate error code.”
- [3]Anti-Captcha, homepage price table Anti-Captcha, read 2026-09-16.
“Solving Speed 5 s on every row: Images, reCAPTCHA v2, reCAPTCHA v3, reCAPTCHA Enterprise, GeeTest, Arkose Labs, Turnstile, Amazon WAF, Friendly Captcha, Altcha, Prosopo.”
- [4]CaptchaAI, advertised solving speeds CaptchaAI, read 2026-09-08.
“Image Captcha speed < 0.5 sec; reCAPTCHA v2 < 60 sec; reCAPTCHA v3 < 4 sec; Invisible reCAPTCHA v2 < 30 sec; Cloudflare Turnstile < 10 sec; Cloudflare Challenge < 15 sec; Geetest v3 < 12 sec.”
- [5]DeathByCaptcha, pricing page status line DeathByCaptcha, read 2026-09-16.
“Average solving time: 27 seconds - reCAPTCHA V2, V3 (1 min. ago); 7 seconds - others (1 min. ago).”
Reviews this guide draws on
Anti-Captchaper solveThe most complete public price table in the market: a price, a speed and a worker count on every row. Cheap on the common types, dear on reCAPTCHA Enterprise.
CaptchaAIper threadThe only vendor here that sells capacity instead of solves, with a speed ceiling per type. Cheap if you keep the threads busy, expensive if you don't.
DeathByCaptchaper solveThe simplest price list here and the most expensive per token. The live status line is honest; the flat $2.89 is the premium you pay for that simplicity.
Run a captcha service?Get it on the record.
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