head to head · open source
Flagsmith vs Private Captcha
Flagsmith has 6,559 GitHub stars, 568 forks, 711 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Private Captcha has 195 stars, 6 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Flagsmith leads on adoption by 3,264% (6,559 vs 195 stars). Flagsmith is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; Private Captcha is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence. Flagsmith has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Private Captcha 3%. Private Captcha was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Flagsmith | Private Captcha | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.6K | ★ 195 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Custom / other |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 568 | ⑂ 6 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Flagsmith if
- You weight community size — 6.6K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Private Captcha if
- You want the Private Captcha feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Private Captcha fits your workflow better
About Flagsmith
Flagsmith is an open source feature flag and remote configuration platform, written in Python and released under the BSD 3 Clause licence, for engineering teams that need to toggle, segment and roll out features across web, mobile and server side applications without deploying new code.
read the full Flagsmith overview →
About Private Captcha
Private Captcha is an independent, privacy first, self hostable Proof of Work CAPTCHA service built in the European Union. The project provides bot protection for web applications by asking visitors to solve a computational challenge rather than identifying distorted images or clicking through behavioral tests. The backend is written in Go and serves both the API and the portal, while the client side ships as a JavaScript widget that uses WebAssembly workers where possible. Business data such as accounts and properties is stored in Postgres, and operational data such as difficulty scaling and statistics is stored…
read the full Private Captcha overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Flagsmith or Private Captcha more popular?
Flagsmith has 6,559 GitHub stars and Private Captcha has 195. Flagsmith has the larger community by that measure.
Are Flagsmith and Private Captcha free?
Both are open source. Flagsmith is licensed under BSD-3-Clause, and Private Captcha has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Flagsmith and Private Captcha?
Flagsmith is written in Python and Private Captcha in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Flagsmith or Private Captcha?
Choose Flagsmith if you want the larger community (6,559 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose Private Captcha if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.