What Is A Captcha Typing Job, And Are They Legit?

Many people are interested in doing captcha work online, and the trend is growing.

It’s no wonder, it looks like an easy way to earn extra money from home, you don’t need any experience, you can do it from anywhere in the world, whenever you want.

What’s not to like? Everything.

It turns out these “jobs” are not what they seem and they are not a legitimate source of income by any stretch. By the end of this article, you will know exactly why I say they aren’t worth it.

What Are Captchas?

The primary role of the captcha is to stop spam bots on websites. Most people (including me) don’t like them because they are annoying, but they play a massive role in keeping the web safe and running smoothly. It’s a bit of a love hate relationship I guess.

At the most basic level, a captcha is simply an image of text, rather than text itself. The idea behind this is that in order to read the text, you need to be an actual human. Since computer programs can’t read images (yet) this keeps spam bots at bay.

Many sites use captchas to detect that the person using the site is a real human, but one common example is their use on email account signup forms such as Gmail or Yahoo.

The reason being, some hackers create sophisticated ‘bots’ that are able to automatically create millions of fake email accounts in a small period of time. These fake email accounts can then be used to create other fake accounts on other platforms and can also be sold to other spammers for all number of unethical/ illegal purposes.

So, if there was no captcha to detect that an actual human was creating an email account, these guys and their bots would be left to do as they please- make the internet suck for everyone.

With the use of a captcha, the automated spamming and account creation process is grossly limited, or stopped completely.

What Is a Captcha Typing Job?

The websites offering these jobs and the affiliates who promote them, claim this is a legitimate operation. Surprise surprise.

Their Story:

Apparently, real companies spend millions of dollars each year on captchas to keep their sites safe, and they need people to manually ‘solve’ captchas for them. These same companies obtain a bunch of images with text and send them to captcha job websites, who then hire people to ‘solve’ them.

In other words, captcha sites claim that legitimate companies use them as a ‘middle man’ to develop their captcha systems…

The Reality:

For one thing, any website on the internet can use Google’s Re-Captcha system for free. Not only that, but Google’s system is far more advanced than an image of text, to the point that they are now using an advanced risk analysis engine that works without the user needing to type anything into any captcha box! Pretty cool stuff. Gotta love Google.

My question is, why would companies fork out millions for captcha services when they can use them for free? It makes no sense.

The real reason these sites exist, is because spammers need a way to get around the captcha system. They use their bots to create mass email accounts automatically, and outsource the manual captcha solving element to these websites, who then grossly underpay hard working people in developing countries!

That my friends, is the cold hard reality of this scam. Period.

There is nothing legitimate about it, you are actively helping spammers do their dirty work and you get paid almost nothing as I am about to explain.

Does This Job Pay? Nope.

If helping spammers do their dirty work doesn’t phase you, it’s worth noting that the rate of pay is horrendous. I mean, absolutely unbelievably low.

I ran the numbers based on some of the most popular sites, and it turns out the going rate is about $0.16 – $0.50 per hour!

I’m being serious. Imagine working an 8 hour day to make $1.28 – $4! That is absolutely insane.

How I got these numbers:

• The average website pays people between .50 – $1.50 per 1000 solved captchas
• On average, they take about 10 seconds each (factoring in downtime from ones that cannot be solved)
• At full pace, this is 6 per minute, which means you could complete 100 in 166.66 minutes
• This works out to 2 hours and 46 minutes to do 1000/ let’s say 3 hours to be reasonable

3 hours ==> 0.50 cents ==> $0.16 cents per hour

3 hours ==> $1.50 ==> $0.50 cents per hour

Now, I know that some of you might be thinking that in a third-world country with no other opportunities, this is better than nothing. I disagree.

The reason being, to actually do this job in the first place, you absolutely need to be good at reading and writing english. I can say without any shadow of a doubt, that if you can read and write english you can earn a LOT more money than this online!

There are many, many opportunities to earn money writing for people on freelance websites and actual jobs.

But it gets worse…

According to many reports online I found through my research, people who sign up to these so called job sites have their accounts banned for unknown reasons before they reach the payment threshold, or they require a one time fee to release your money.

One such website is called Captcha Club which apparently requires $40 just to withdraw your earnings.

So, you would need to work for 10-31 FULL days just to qualify to withdraw your money! That is nothing short of criminal in my view.

Final Thoughts

No matter which way you look at it, you are almost certainly helping spammers and your reward is so low it’s insulting. Couple this with the individual sites you have to contend with that ban accounts and ask you for ridiculously high fees it’s simply not worth doing.

If you want to make money online, there is no shortage of legitimate opportunities. There are many scams, but thankfully not everything is a scam. If you know how to write fluently in english, there are countless opportunities available on many reputable sites.

I recommend avoiding captcha work altogether, it is not a real job or business.