I largely agree. Cloudflare requires hcaptcha if you mistype your password a single time when accessing their dashboard. The UX of hcaptcha is not good, especially in a flow where I'm already fixed on goal (doing something in my dashboard). If I need to stop thinking about dns settings or caching to pick out photos with bicycles, that's a really expensive context switch for my brain. And in my experience, you need to do two "pages" to complete the captcha.
By comparison, I've been asked to complete recaptcha exactly zero times day to day (perhaps I'm lucky?). The last time must have been many months ago.
It's hard to speak to the specific UX qualities of the captcha itself, but I find recaptcha generally less difficult. But a captcha that I don't need to complete always wins out over one that I do.
You're probably leaking lots of data to Google. Browse the Web with strong privacy protection (temporary container addon in firefox, ublock, privacy badger, decentralize...) and you'll see that recaptcha UX is just worse (slowly loading new pieces to identify after you solve them, one after the other). I can't count the number of stairs, hills, fire hydrants, cars, trucks, bicycles, traffic lights, pedestrian crossings... I had to point out just this month.
I've completed both of them, and I am firmly of the opinion that hcaptcha is harder to complete than recaptcha. That is when I'm being prompted to complete it.
I'm comfortable with the amount of data I'm exposing online. And where I'm at, hcaptcha is not better. And even if recaptcha prompted at the same rate, I'd still prefer recaptcha over hcaptcha.
By comparison, I've been asked to complete recaptcha exactly zero times day to day (perhaps I'm lucky?). The last time must have been many months ago.
It's hard to speak to the specific UX qualities of the captcha itself, but I find recaptcha generally less difficult. But a captcha that I don't need to complete always wins out over one that I do.