I built a CAPTCHA replacement using Proof-of-Work — $0/mo, public beta

Hey IH 👋

I'm Noah, solo founder from Germany. I just launched nForms into public beta.

The problem I kept running into:

Every client form needed three things — spam protection, accessibility compliance, and GDPR compliance. reCAPTCHA handles one of those (badly). WCAG needs manual ARIA work. GDPR means cookie consent banners just for bot protection.

What I built:

A form backend that replaces CAPTCHA with SHA-256 Proof-of-Work. The browser solves a math challenge in ~200ms — bots can't scale it, users don't see it. The same script tag also adds WCAG 2.2 AA form validation automatically.

Zero cookies. EU-only infrastructure. One script tag.

Stack: Cloudflare Workers (Frankfurt), D1, Hono, Next.js

Where I'm at:

- Revenue: $0/mo

- Users: handful of beta testers

- Built solo as a side project

- Free tier: 100 submissions/month

- Paid: €9/mo

What I'm looking for:

Honest feedback. Especially from devs who've dealt with form spam or EU compliance headaches.

→ nforms.eu (the contact form is a live demo — Shield is active on it)

Happy to answer any questions about the tech or the journey so far.