head to head · open source
Unleash vs Private Captcha
Unleash has 13,811 GitHub stars, 896 forks, 39 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Private Captcha has 195 stars, 6 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Unleash leads on adoption by 6,983% (13,811 vs 195 stars). Unleash is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Private Captcha is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence. Unleash has attracted 6% 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
| Unleash | Private Captcha | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 14K | ★ 195 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 896 | ⑂ 6 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Unleash if
- You weight community size — 14K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- 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 Unleash
Unleash is an open source feature management platform written in TypeScript and released under the AGPL 3.0 license. It lives in the DevOps, continuous delivery, and application security ecosystem, and its topics describe feature flags, feature toggles, activation strategies, experiments, and collaboration.
read the full Unleash 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 Unleash or Private Captcha more popular?
Unleash has 13,811 GitHub stars and Private Captcha has 195. Unleash has the larger community by that measure.
Are Unleash and Private Captcha free?
Both are open source. Unleash is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and Private Captcha has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Unleash and Private Captcha?
Unleash is written in TypeScript 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, Unleash or Private Captcha?
Choose Unleash if you want the larger community (13,811 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Private Captcha if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.