rCAPTCHA/reCAPTCHA ← Google
hCAPTCHA ← used by Cloudflare
hCAPTCHA related/Cloudflare Cops is/are involved with Brave Search.
I use a VPN. The Cloudflare Cops previously got in the way, every time that I used Brave Search Engine Operators in search criteria - example: news site:ie ← trying to see news articles re Ireland. But lately (July 2025), I have not encountered that Cloudflare problem.
Observing the Brave Browser > Developer Tools > Network window, a “Cloudflare frenzy” of repeatedly [looping] trying to get satisfaction, might stir up some of what you find: CPU.
I have seen the Cloudflare Cops tenaciously hanging on for “I don’t know exactly what” sometimes, before / during / after checking one of their “Are you a bot?” -type checkboxes. And I wonder, if you leave that window / tab and try another, then several Cloudflare processes may keep gnawing away?
Maybe something like the following, is a cause:
Cloudflare’s Turnstile - an excerpt:
When a bot is detected, Turnstile uses “proof of work” to instruct the browser to waste computer resources, for example by executing useless code on the CPU or filling up memory in an attempt to reduce the number of requests emitted per second by each physical machine running a bot.