Google reCaptcha Enterprise keeps spinning endlessly

We hit the same symptom: the checkbox spins forever after clicking, no challenge opens, and no network requests follow. In our case the cause was a language mismatch.

The widget hangs when the hl passed to grecaptcha.render() differs from the language api.js was loaded in. If api.js is loaded without hl, it follows the browser language. Matching languages work.

Minimal repro with Google's test key, in an English browser:

<div id="w"></div>
<script>
  window.onApiLoaded = () => grecaptcha.render('w', {
    sitekey: '6LeIxAcTAAAAAJcZVRqyHh71UMIEGNQ_MXjiZKhI',
    hl: 'nl', // hangs; remove this line, or add &hl=nl to the api.js URL, and it solves
    callback: () => alert('solved')
  });
</script>
<script src="https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js?onload=onApiLoaded&render=explicit" async></script>

We saw it hang for nl, de, fr, zh and zh-TW, and work for en, es and ja. It started around 2026-11-01 for us, with no change on our side.

Workaround: don't pass hl to render() (or the hl option of whatever wrapper you use), so the widget inherits the api.js language. Alternatively, load api.js with the same hl.

We've reported it to Google through the private issue form. If you're seeing intermittent spinning, check whether you set hl on the widget, and whether the affected users' browser language differs from it.