The Captcha is seen as the most universally annoying aspect of creating an account, making a purchase, or commenting online. Sitting there, proving your humanity by entering warped words or the numbers on a fading sign is an outright waste of your time. There are millions of people in the world who stop there — captchas are annoying, but they have to deal with them. For the proxy savvy internet user that’s not a very viable option.
Captchas present a serious roadblock when it comes to heavy proxy users. The most common scenario goes like this: You’ve purchased a batch of proxies, an SEO software tool to use those proxies, and are in the process of scraping data, sending emails, and commenting on the internet, Also when you use automation tools like Youtube bots, Twitter bots or sneaker bots, You hit a bunch of captchas with your proxies, which stops them in their tracks. A proxy can’t solve a complex captcha — it can just connect to a website. Your software tool can’t solve the captcha alone, so it also becomes stuck.
What you need is a captcha breaker. The good news is that there are a ton of options that work on various levels. The bad news is they cost money; either a one-time fee or an ongoing monthly expense.
I’ll list the most popular methods of captcha breaking procedures below, and tie them into specific products you can use and research. First, though, I’ll issue the warning that seems to accompany any legitimate article about proxy use.
The Proxy Captcha Warning
If you’re in the proxy world you know something about the typical warnings that exist. Namely, those proxies are commonly used for illegal activities like DDoS attacks and the like. While this is true, proxies are used for a ton of other reasons, too, many of which fall under white hat (legal) tactics.
The area becomes a little more gray when we’re talking about proxies and captchas, because captchas were specifically designed to thwart proxies. It’s that whole human vs. robot idea that John Connor was so scared of —captchas were invented to make sure bots weren’t activating aspects of the internet, like buying concert tickets or commenting on blogs. Those are human activities, whereas pulling emails from public webpages can (and really should) be done by a bot.
In the common scenario above, you probably noticed a couple actions, like sending emails and commenting on the internet, that potentially fall in the black hat realm. At the extreme, these are spam email marketing platforms and rapid-fire comments across the internet. This is frowned upon and will get you in trouble pretty quickly. However, you can do small-scale emailing to a select group of people once, say 300-500 people, use a captcha breaker, and not get in trouble. You could also automatically comment with your backlinks, but you’d need to do it very infrequently and very precisely, which is more apt for a human than a bot.
The point here is that the combination of proxies and captchas tends to lead one down a dark path. I can’t advise following that path, because it could end in proxy bans, negative search engine rankings, or cease and desist notices from sites like Ticketmaster . However, the tools used for evil are just as potent when used for good (or neutral, I’m not Gandalf. It’s therefore important to know how to use them.
Captcha Breaking Services
The world of captcha breaking is ripe with services. They fall into two main categories:
- These are like every other algorithm in that they are automatic, code-based, and designed to work without issues. The services that use algorithms for captcha breaking are very powerful these days, but do have some limits because they can’t break certain captchas.
- That’s right, the old-fashioned captcha breakers are sourced all over the world and paid by the hour to sit in a chair and break captchas for you. If this sounds like farming bodies in The Matrix to you, you’re watching too much cinema. It’s a job!
Some services utilize a combination of these methods to get the job done quickly, and typically captchas are solved in between 1-15 seconds.
The basic premise to captcha breaking services involves three steps, which I’ll layout below.
1. Get a SEO Scraper/Ticket Bot software. Captcha breaking on this level doesn’t work by just visiting a website normally. You’ll need software, like SENuke or GSA Search Engine Ranker , that you can load your proxies into and send out specific HTTP requests. You’ll want to get software specific to your needs.
2. Get a captcha breaking service or software. I will list these below, and they are the core of this article.
3. Load the captcha service API into the bot software. When you use the bot software to ping websites or perform actions they will encounter a captcha; if you’ve loaded the captcha breaking API properly into the software (this is fairly easy), it will send an automatic request to that captcha breaking service. You wait 1-15 seconds, then the captcha comes back solved.
To be clear, you’ll need more than one of these services to effectively break captchas. That said, here are the best captcha breaking services for hire today.
GSA Captcha Breaker
GSA has made a name for itself in the proxy community as a supplier of excellent software tools. GSA Captcha Breaker is another of those, and aims to shut down the competition in the captcha breaking marketplace.
Unlike many of the following services, GSA Captcha Breaker costs a one-time fee of $147 and works on Windows platforms. It is entirely based on algorithms and is loaded with 600 pre-configured captcha types that it can solve on the fly. That’s a ton of options for software that will run right on your computer.
The Captcha Breaker also allows you to enter your own algorithms, so if there’s a captcha it can’t solve but you know how to code the solution, you can plug it right. Coupled with that is a robust (and private) community that uses the Captcha Breaker, many of whom have already built extra algorithms for more captcha breaking solutions, so you’ll get access to these by searching the forums and asking for solutions.
The last major feature is that if Captcha Breaker can’t solve your captcha, it gives you the option to forward the breaking process to another service. This may seem like a foolhardy move — linking your own service to a competitor’s. The reality is that no algorithm will be able to solve every kind of captcha; some captchas are just too difficult. GSA knows this, and knows that other competitors use humans to solve captchas. For this to work you’ll need to have accounts with that other service, but it’s nice that GSA gives you the option.
GSA Captcha Breaker can be tried as a demo for free for five days.
How It Works
- First, you download the software.
- Open it up and set the parameters of the captcha methods you want it to emulate — Captcha Breaker uses algorithms based on competitor’s methods (many of which are listed below), which is a little unfair but certainly effective.
- After selecting the methods, enter the IP address the software should “Listen On.” This ties into your proxy bot, which should also be running and pinging websites for data.
- After entering the IP address of the channel you’re searching on, the Captcha Breaker will automatically find any captchas that need to be solved. It will solve them if it can; if it can’t, it will send the captcha to another service, presuming you have one of those set up as well.
While it’s a large up front cost, this will save you a lot of money if you plan to break captchas often. Most services cost money per broken captcha, which will add up. If you want an in-house solution to breaking most captchas, go with GSA Captcha Breaker.
Death By Captcha
Sometimes a great name is all you need. Other times, it’s helpful to have a killer product. Death by Captcha (DBC) has both. Regarded as one of the premier captcha breaking services, it utilizes humans and advanced Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to get you the captcha answers you need. Everything the OCR can’t crack, the humans can.
The service is excellent in its functionality and usefulness, not only because it breaks captchas within 15 seconds, but because the API is available for multiple softwares and programming languages. It supports:
- C
- PHP
- Python
- .NET
- C#
- VB
- Java
- Perl
- AutoIt3
- iMacros
Unlike GSA Code Breaker, DBC is a registration-based service. You have to create a login and password and pay for a package. The lowest package is $6.95 USD for 5,000 broken captchas; everything goes up from there.
How it Works
After creating your login and purchasing your package, you’ll find the DBC API that works with the bot software you’re using. If this is difficult, DBC provides a very comprehensive FAQ and has support staff. The company won’t help you to create a custom API or bot to use their services, but they’re all about getting the API to work with the software you have.
After you’ve entered the DBC API into the bot software, it’s as easy as clicking “Go.” You actually won’t even click “Go” with DBC, you’ll do it in your software, and you’ll essentially be sending your proxies on the same data-retrieving (or email-sending or comment-posting) mission you were already sending them on.
This time, whenever the proxies are hit by a captcha they won’t report an error. Instead, the software will send a request to DBC, and either the OCR algorithm or a human will solve your Captcha for you in roughly 15 seconds. Your proxies will move right through and do whatever it is they were meant to do. It’s all very seamless.
DBC boasts a near 90% completion rate, and you’ll only pay for the captchas it is able to solve. Remember, though, that every solved captchas diminishes the number in your DBC batch. If you’re doing bulk work, these will disappear fast.
ReCaptchas and NoCaptchas are supported, but “Animated” Captchas are not, at the time of writing.
DeCaptcher
This service functions similarly to Death by Captcha, but it has a higher percentage of completion (95%) and is geared toward much more difficult captcha solutions. As such, the service costs more — the basic service is $2 for 1000 images, though there are different price plans based on the software application you’re using.
DeCaptcher is one of the better-known underground services, and many people rely on it for image-based captcha solving. It uses both OCR and humans, just like DPC, and actually helped to pioneer the OCR technique. It has a huge list of languages that are compatible with its API:
- C (all platforms)
- PHP (all platforms)
- Java (all platforms)
- C# (Windows, vanilla)
- C# (Windows, 32 bits)
- C# (Windows, 64 bits)
- Perl (Linux, native)
- Perl (Windows, 32 bits)
- Visual Basic 6 (Windows, 32 bits)
- NET (Windows, 32 bits)
- NET (Windows, 64 bits)
- NET 2010 (Windows, 32 bits)
- Delphi (Windows, 32 bits)
- DLL sources (Windows, 32 bits)
- DLL sources (Windows, 64 bits)
- DLL .NET-friendly sources (Windows, 32 bits)
- DLL .NET-friendly sources (Windows, 64 bits)
- DLL .NET 2010-friendly sources (Windows, 32 bits)
- SO sources (Unix, 32 bits)
- PHP cURL-based (all platforms)
- Command line API (Windows)
- DeCapcher xRumer plugin
- HTTP POST APIs for the iMacros scripts and many specific types on demand.
It functions much the same as DPC in that you have to create an account to log in and place your order.
CaptchaTronix
This service is entirely based on algorithms, so no humans are involved. This means a quicker solve rate, but it also means some of the more difficult captchas can’t be solved by CaptchaTronix. The company has only been around for two years, and the website looks like one giant ad, which can be a turn off.
While part of that rings true, CaptchaTronix does seem to have a unique place in the captcha breaking marketplace. Unlike other services, no humans are involved, which means it’s not a pay-per-capture platform. Unlike GSA Captcha Breaker it’s not a software application and doesn’t have a single download price. You still have to log in, create an account with CaptchaTronix, and input the API into a bot software to get it to work.
The fee structure is based on monthly costs; the lowest plan is currently $15.97 per month. That’s for an unlimited amount of captchas. You might wonder why you should use this service instead of GSA Captcha Breaker, as they’re both entirely algorithm-based. CaptchaTronix has over 2495 different captcha types in its database that it can crack (including ReCaptcha), and each one is broken in approximately .75 seconds. This makes the possibility of cracking captchas spike into tens-of-thousands in a single day, which is seriously high volume.
The success rates aren’t quite as high as the other services — 80% and up for most captchas, 60-70% for ReCaptchas. The plus here is speed, because the captchas you can’t solve, while unfortunate, will be gone in the blink of an eye.
How it Works
Like the previous two services, CaptchaTronix works by entering the API into a bot software. CaptchaTronix has a huge list of compatible softwares, and works with some of the biggest names in the industry, like ScrapeBox and GSA SER. The API itself functions for many languages (see below) and can be viewed entirely before you purchase . Compatible languages are:
- Decaptcher API
- Web Form
- cURL
- PHP
- Python
- VB.net
- Java
- Perl
- C# / C++
- iMacros
Which is the Best?
There are plenty of other captcha tools out there — it’s a crowded market. The four above are the best in their category, and each function slightly differently, so it all depends on your needs. If you’re a high-volume user and don’t need to hit the hardest captchas, go for CaptchaTronix. If you want a human’s touch, pick either DeCaptcher or Death by Captcha —both are regarded as industry leaders. Lastly, if you just want the convenience and cost of a one-time fee, GSA Captcha Breaker is your best bet.
Don’t let those pesky captchas keep you from trolling the web!
