Do you want to add Captcha to Contact Form 7?
Contact Form 7 is a marvellous contact form plugin for WordPress. It is free, lightweight and flexible to use.
But there is no inbuilt way to add captcha in Contact Form 7. However, Contact Form makes it easy to integrate Google Captcha with the Plugin.
In this article, I am going to tell you the process of adding captcha to Contact Form 7.
How to Install a WordPress Plugin?
Contact Form 7 Captcha
Process of integrating reCaptcha to contact form 7.
- Getting Google Captcha
- Adding Site key and Secret Key
- Activating Captcha
- Captcha Affect Loading Speed
- Alternative Methods
Getting Google reCaptcha
Go to Google reCaptcha and log in to your Google account. After login, you have to set up the Google reCaptcha for your site.

Label: Put a label to it, so you can remember the reCaptcha you are setting up.
reCaptcha Type
Currently, there are two active versions of Google reCaptcha. There used to be three versions, but the V1 has already been shut down.
ReCaptcha V2: This is the version you need to integrate with Contact Form 7. You will find three more functions under the V2.
“I’m not a robot” Checkbox: This function will open up a challenge that is difficult to pass by the bots and crawlers.

Invisible reCAPTCHA badge: If you click this, Google will not show the challenge to every user. Instead, it will run in the background
However, Google will show the challenge if the clicks are suspicious.

reCaptcha Android: FInal one is for the Android Apps.
Adding the Domain Name: Add the domain of your site. Your registration for reCaptcha will work only on the sites you will add. It will also work on the subdomains.
For the separate site, you have to create a different label. Or you can add multiple sites to one label.
After adding the sites, accept the terms of service and click on ‘Submit’.
On the next page, you will find the ‘Site Key’ and ‘Secret Key’.

Adding Site Key and Secret Key
Process of adding the Site Key and Secret key.
Login to your WordPress Admin and check the Contact Plugin on the sidebar menu.
Click on the Contact Plugin > Integration.

The page will display the option to add Site Key and Secret Key.

Copy-paste the Keys and Save the Changes. The reCaptcha integrator will verify the keys and enable the reCaptcha option on the site
You will get the notification.

Now the Integration of Contact Form 7 Captcha is done.
Add Captcha to Contact Form 7
Open the Form you want to add the captcha.
Now add the following shortcode to the contact form field.
[recaptcha]

Save the form, and you will see the changes in the front-end.
Google reCaptcha Affect Site-Speed
Do not use Google reCaptcha if there is no need to do it. It will ultimately affect the site speed and also disrupt the user experience.
The worst part is Google reCaptcha does not only affect the speed of a single page. It increases the loading time of the site globally.
The best would be to have a fast WordPress Hosting that no plugin could bring down.
Alternative to Contact Form 7 Captcha
The reason for adding captcha to Contact Form 7 is to block the spammy messages and fill-ins.
You can achieve the same purpose by adding a little custom challenge yourself. Instead of giving a captcha, add an easy math calculation that any human can quickly answer.
Though it will not protect you from the advance bots, it will do against the low-cost spammy web bots.
Use this shortcode to add the simple math calculation:
[quiz math-quiz "12+48=?|60"]
If you like, you can dd the various quizzes to Contact Form 7:
Example:
[quiz capital-quiz "The capital of Japan?|Tokyo"]
You can add multiple questions that will rotate randomly:
[quiz random-capital-quiz "The capital of Japan?|Tokyo" "The capital of France?|Paris" "The capital of Madagascar?|Antananarivo"]
Create the quiz with quiz-generator in the Contact Form 7 plugin:

These custom made quizzes can work like charm to block the spam.
Summary
That’s it. You add captcha to Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7 and Google reCaptcha makes the entire process of adding captcha to Contact Form very convenient.
Your contact form is secure from spammy messages.
But be sure you have Fast Hosting before adding Google reCaptcha so there will be no loss in terms of speed.
User experience is important in any online business.