Stop bots
before checkout.

No. The check runs invisibly in the background while a shopper moves toward checkout — there is nothing to click and nothing to wait for. Visitors who look automated are tagged in monitor mode or stopped at checkout in block mode, and you control how strict that judgement is.

Shopify runs its own captcha on some storefront forms, and it stays on. Captcha Guard adds a layer you control and can see: you choose the sensitivity, you choose whether to block or just flag, and you get a log of what happened on every checkout.

No. Everything fails open except deliberate blocking. If the check cannot run, if your theme setting is off, or if the app is unreachable, checkout carries on as normal. Blocking only ever happens when you have explicitly turned it on.

Yes, and it is free. Creating the keys takes about five minutes, and the app walks you through it step by step, including the part where Google hides the secret key. Very high volume stores may eventually be billed by Google directly.

Yes — that is the main reason it is built this way. The result is enforced on Shopify's own servers rather than in your theme, so a bot cannot skip the check by using a one-tap checkout.

Partly. The storefront check runs through a theme app embed, so it does not run on Hydrogen or a custom storefront. Order tagging still works, so headless stores should stay in monitor mode.

Very little, deliberately. We never store a full IP address — only a truncated version that cannot identify anyone — and we never collect names, emails, addresses, or payment details. Verification tokens go to Google to determine whether a visitor is human. The full detail is in our privacy policy.

Yes, with any of them. Captcha Guard works with your Shopify checkout, not your payment provider, and a checkout that is stopped never creates an order or a charge.

In your Shopify admin, open Orders and filter by "Tagged with" recaptcha-unverified. The app dashboard links straight to that list, and each row in its activity log links to its order.

It is a flag, not a verdict. A tagged order did not pass verification before checkout, which is what a bot looks like, but occasionally also what a shopper with an aggressive ad blocker looks like. That is why monitor mode comes first: watch the tags for a while, and turn on block mode once you trust them.

No. Draft orders you create in the admin and the invoice links you send from them go through normally, even in block mode.

Shopify shows that notice while a draft is still unsaved. It clears as soon as you save the draft, and your customer never sees it.

Blocking pauses automatically within minutes and resumes on its own once the service is back. Nothing is refused in the meantime.

No. A customer who is signed in and has ordered from you before is never blocked.

Only orders placed through your online store are checked. Subscription renewals and point-of-sale orders are never touched.