BotBlocker Security – Firewall & Bot Protection vs WPBruiser {no- Captcha anti-Spam}

BotBlocker Security blocks 99% of automated attacks before WordPress even loads. No bloat, no slowdowns, no monthly fees for core protection. If your site is hit by login brute force, spam comments, fake Googlebots, content scrapers, or XML-RPC floods, you are not alone: bots generate over 47% of all web traffic. Most security plugins react after WordPress boots, wasting CPU and memory on every bad request. BotBlocker stops them at the door. Why site owners switch to BotBlocker Faster than the competition. Runs on early init through three interception layers, before themes and plugins load. Server load drops during attacks instead of spiking. Smarter CAPTCHA. 9 modes including Silent Auto-Verify – zero clicks for humans, hard wall for bots. Proprietary CAPTCHAs defeat AI-based solvers that crack reCAPTCHA for $2-3 per 1 000. Honest free version. Full firewall, all 9 CAPTCHA modes, full 2FA, full logging, full Multisite support. No nag screens, no crippled features. Privacy-first. No visitor data leaves your server. GDPR and CCPA compliant out of the box. Works with everything. Cloudflare, WP Rocket, LiteSpeed, WooCommerce, Elementor, multisite, IPv6, PHP 7.4 to 8.5. 🛡️ Core Firewall (Free) Three-Layer Architecture – intercepts traffic at wp-config.php (before WordPress), MU-plugin phase, and main shield. The first layer blocks known threats without loading WordPress at all, saving 30-100ms and 5-20MB RAM per blocked request. Web Application Firewall (WAF) with real-time rule updates via the BotBlocker Threat Defense Feed 2 899 User-Agent signatures – largest blacklist among WordPress plugins – covering Scrapy, Selenium, Puppeteer, PhantomJS, curl, wget, Python, Java, Perl, and SQL injection tools Brute force protection with progressive lockouts – 5 attempts per 15 minutes, escalating bans for repeat offenders Anti-spam for comments, registration, contact forms – spammers blocked before they connect XML-RPC and REST API locked down by default with allowlist for trusted services Fake crawler detection via FCrDNS (dual-direction DNS verification), ASN tokens, and published IP ranges – 95% effective, impossible to spoof without controlling the provider’s DNS zone LLM / AI crawler management – allow or block GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Bytespider via CIDR-verified IP ranges. Trusted crawlers verified, impersonators blocked. Country, ASN, IP range, User-Agent, Referer blocking rules with instant enforcement Cloudflare-aware real-IP resolution and origin bypass protection Full IPv6 support – separate tables and logic for IPv4 and IPv6, every feature works with both Live traffic monitor with attack map, country, ASN, device, browser, and exact block reason for every request Built-in caching via Redis and Memcached – free, auto-disable on connection failure 🔒 Login Security & 2FA (Free) Two-Factor Authentication compatible with Google Authenticator, Authy, 1Password, Bitwarden – TOTP standard with 10 backup codes 9 CAPTCHA modes: Silent Auto-Verify, Single Button, Color CAPTCHA, Images CAPTCHA, Shapes CAPTCHA (60fps Canvas), Digits CAPTCHA, Hold Button CAPTCHA, plus Google reCAPTCHA v2 and v3 Hybrid Mode – combine any internal CAPTCHA with reCAPTCHA v3 for two-layer invisible defense Hide login URL (PRO) Configurable lockout durations with escalation for repeat offenders – failed CAPTCHA triggers short ban, repeated failure triggers 24-hour ban 💳 Payment Gateway Bypass (Free) Auto-detects 25+ e-commerce platforms (WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, SureCart, MemberPress, Paid Memberships Pro, Give, Dokan, CartFlows, FunnelKit, and more) and 150+ payment providers (Stripe, PayPal, Mollie, Adyen, Braintree, Square, Razorpay, Klarna, Paddle, Authorize.Net, 2Checkout, YooKassa, LiqPay, and more). Webhooks, IPN callbacks, and payment notifications never get blocked. Four detection layers ensure zero false positives on payment traffic. 📊 Visibility & Control (Free) Visual dashboard with attack map, top offenders, blocked-vs-allowed ratio, world traffic map Detailed event log with IP, country, ASN, User-Agent, and exact block reason – 54 unique event codes Health Score gauge – 42 parameters across 3 categories, 5 security levels from Critical to Secure 3 security presets – Light, Strong, Full – one-click configuration Setup Wizard – 8 steps from welcome to test attack, setup in under 5 minutes 8 interface languages – English, Deutsch, Español, Français, Polski, Русский, Українська + POT template Configurable retention with timezone and DST awareness Clean uninstall – drops all 16 tables, removes 40+ options, clears cron hooks. Zero leftover data. 🚀 PRO Adds (Premium / Pro / Ultimate) Real-time cloud threat intelligence cross-checked against global databases – 5M+ attack IPs, hundreds of thousands of bot signatures, updated daily Zero-day behavioral and heuristic detection – catches unknown attack patterns before signatures exist VPN, Tor, proxy, ASN, and hosting reputation checks Early Init Mode – filtering before WordPress Core loads, maximum resource savings during attacks Hide Login URL addon – custom admin URL, hardened wp-login.php protection Security Headers addon – HSTS, CSP, X-Frame-Options, Permissions-Policy, Referrer-Policy, X-Content-Type-Options Speed Up WordPress addon – 14 frontend and server optimizations Malware Scanner addon – 25 patterns scanning files + 7 database tables, detects webshells, eval injections, base64-obfuscated code hidden in wp_options and post_content Priority support – 24-hour response time Four plans to match your traffic: Premium ($12/month, 25k cloud checks), Pro ($50/month, 100k cloud checks), Ultimate ($100/month, 250k cloud checks + emergency 24h support). Annual billing includes 1 month free. 30-day refund policy. Licensed per domain, billed securely via Freemius. Compare plans → ⚡ Performance & Compatibility Zero database queries for returning visitors – 9 runtime PHP files with SHA-256 integrity signatures, loaded via include Measured overhead: +3-15ms TTFB for cached visitors, +50-200ms for first-time PTR lookups, +2-4MB memory Redis and Memcached support – free, auto-disables gracefully on connection failure Cache plugin compatibility – automatic DONOTCACHEPAGE and Cache-Control: no-store on verification pages. Works with WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, Hummingbird, WP Fastest Cache, Cache Enabler CDN and WAF compatibility – Cloudflare, Sucuri, Incapsula, AWS CloudFront, Fastly, KeyCDN, StackPath. Multi-header real-IP resolution (CF-Connecting-IP, X-Forwarded-For, X-Real-IP) DDoS Protection Compatibility – automatic detection of JS-challenges from DDoS-Guard, Stormwall, Qrator. HMAC-signed AJAX responses, Circuit Breaker with automatic retry and backoff. BotBlocker is the only WordPress plugin that works correctly behind aggressive DDoS protection without manual configuration. Multisite Support – network activation, per-site data, per-site cleanup. Free on all plans. PHP 7.4 – 8.5 – tested across 7 PHP versions. WordPress 5.0 – 7.0+. Linux and Windows. GDPR and CCPA compliant – no PII collected, technical parameters only, Legitimate Interest basis (Art. 6(1)(f)) 🤝 Trusted by 3 000+ active installations Translated into 8 languages Tested up to WordPress 7.0 and PHP 8.5 Developed and maintained by GLOBUS.studio “Replaced two security plugins and a CAPTCHA plugin with one. Site is faster and the spam stopped overnight.” – WordPress.org user Privacy BotBlocker Security does not collect or process personal data of your visitors. All cloud analysis is performed on technical parameters only (IP, headers, User-Agent). No personally identifiable information is collected, stored, or transmitted to any external service. Support and Documentation Product site: https://botblocker.top/products/ Pricing and PRO plans: https://botblocker.top/pricing/ Documentation: https://botblocker.top/docs/ Contact/support: https://botblocker.top/contacts/ Community: https://botblocker.top/community/ License This plugin is licensed under the GPLv2 or later. See LICENSE.txt for details. Credits & Authors BotBlocker Security is developed and maintained by GLOBUS.studio. Concept, architecture & code – Yevhen Leonidov: https://leonidov.dev/ Code, code review – Andrii Lukashevych Code, translations – Aleksandr Kinakh BotBlocker Security – The first line of defense for your WordPress site.

WPBruiser (formerly GoodBye Captcha) is an anti-spam and security plugin based on algorithms that identify spam bots without any annoying and hard to read captcha images. WPBruiser completely eliminates spam-bot signups, spam comments, even brute force attacks, the second you install it on your WordPress website. It is completely invisible to the end-user – no need to ever fill out a Captcha or other “human-detection” field ever again – and it just works! Unlike other anti-spam plugins, which detect spam comments and signups after the fact and move them to your spam folder, which you then have to delete – using up not only your website’s resources, but your time as well, WPBruiser prevents the bots from leaving spam in the first place. The result is that your site is not only spam free, it’s faster and more secure. In addition, WPBruiser is completely self-contained and does not need to connect to any outside service. Your logins remain yours, 100%. WPBruiser fights Brute Force attacks and eliminates spam-bots on comments, signup pages as well as login and password reset pages. At the click of a button, you can decide which forms to protect. Summary of WPBruiser features Standard WordPress Login form integration Standard WordPress Register form integration Standard WordPress Forgot Password form integration Standard WordPress Comments form integration Ability to set the maximum number of characters for each comment field Logging with the ability to enable/disable it Automatically Block IP Addresses Automatically purge logs older than a certain number of days Manually white-list trusted IP Address (IPV4 and IPV6) Manually block/unblock IP Addresses (IPV4 and IPV6) Properly detects client IP Address when using CloudFlare, Incapsula, Cloudfront, RackSpace, Sucuri CloudProxy, AWS ELB Provides statistics, reports, maps and charts with all blocked spam attempts No requests to external APIs Can be switched to “Test Mode” – for testing Compatible with WordPress Multisite – network admin interface ready Compatible with cache plugins (WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, ZenCache, WP Fastest Cache and others) Invisible for end users (works in the background) Does not affect page loading times Brute Force Protection Automatically detects Brute Force attacks Ability to automatically block IP Addresses Prevents User Enumeration Ability to block most dangerous IP addresses involved in brute force attacks Ability to block most dangerous Anonymous Proxy IP addresses including TOR Networks, TOR Nodes and TOR Exit Points Ability to Completely Disable XML-RPC service – it seamlessly works with Jetpack plugin activated Ability to Disable XML-RPC Pingbacks Email notifications when a Brute Force Attack is detected WPBruiser Available Extensions WPBruiser is integrated with the most popular plugins Contact Forms Extensions WPBruiser – Contact Form 7 WPBruiser – Gravity Forms WPBruiser – Ninja Forms WPBruiser – Formidable Forms WPBruiser – Fast Secure Contact Form WPBruiser – Jetpack Contact Form (FREE – merged into the core) Membership Extensions WPBruiser – BuddyPress WPBruiser – MemberPress WPBruiser – UserPro WPBruiser – User Profiles Made Easy WPBruiser – Ultimate Member (FREE – merged into the core) eCommerce Extensions WPBruiser – WooCommerce WPBruiser – Easy Digital Downloads WPBruiser – AffiliateWP Email Subscriptions Extensions WPBruiser – MailPoet WPBruiser – Easy Forms for MailChimp View all WPBruiser Extensions WPBruiser is also integrated with the following plugins: Postmatic (https://wordpress.org/plugins/postmatic) WPBruiser offers protection for the entire email commenting system Epoch (https://wordpress.org/plugins/epoch) WPBruiser offers protection for the entire chat and commenting system wpDiscuz (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpdiscuz/) WPBruiser offers protection for the entire commenting system MailChimp for WordPress (https://wordpress.org/plugins/mailchimp-for-wp) WPBruiser offers protection for all forms the user will create with MailChimp Ultimate Member (https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-member) WPBruiser offers protection for Login, Registration and Reset Password forms Jetpack by WordPress (https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack) WPBruiser offers protection for JetPack Contact Form ZM Ajax Login & Register (https://wordpress.org/plugins/zm-ajax-login-register) WPBruiser offers protection for Login and Registration forms Login With Ajax (https://wordpress.org/plugins/login-with-ajax) WPBruiser offers protection for Login, Registration and Lost Password forms WP User Control (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-user-control) WPBruiser offers protection for Login, Registration and Lost Password forms PlanSo Forms (https://wordpress.org/plugins/planso-forms/) WPBruiser offers protection for all forms Theme My Login (https://wordpress.org/plugins/theme-my-login) WPBruiser offers protection for Login, Registration and Lost Password forms Seamless Donations (https://wordpress.org/plugins/seamless-donations) WPBruiser offers protection for the donation form Technical support If you notice any problems by using this plugin, please notify us and we will investigate and fix the issues. Ideally your request should contain: URL of the website (if your site is public), Php version, WordPress version and all the steps in order to replicate the issue (if you are able to reproduce it somehow) Donate If you find this plugin useful, please consider making a small donation. Thank you