I use a popular VPN when out and about with the laptop. Even with a UK connection I get Cloudflare captchas probably 75% of the time on VPN.
Not only does it trigger a captcha but a site that does so, if you're browsing a while, usually triggers another in 20-30 minutes. They don;t cookie the browser in any way, so if I happen to be browsing HN and go to 4 or 5 different Cloudflare links I get 4 or 5 captchas. Each with 20-30 minute refresh timeouts ticking.
Mostly these days, unless it's a rare site that's worth the hassle, I close the tab rather than faff ticking boxes identifying road signs.
So from this data point of one, Cloudflare costs sites traffic.
India, using a low grade ISP. May be it is that my ISP has very limited number of IP addresses, and he shares the same of IP with many users.
I have noticed the issue with IP addresses in Indian train ticket booking site also. Tatkal train tickets [1] open at a specific time of a day, and there is a huge rush to book tickets at that time. and the site allows only 2 tickets for an IP. Sometimes when I try to book Tatkal tickets, I would be denied because of some else already having booked from my ip. so I wondered whether my ISP has been lending some of it IPs for some automated train ticket booking brokers.
Not only does it trigger a captcha but a site that does so, if you're browsing a while, usually triggers another in 20-30 minutes. They don;t cookie the browser in any way, so if I happen to be browsing HN and go to 4 or 5 different Cloudflare links I get 4 or 5 captchas. Each with 20-30 minute refresh timeouts ticking.
Mostly these days, unless it's a rare site that's worth the hassle, I close the tab rather than faff ticking boxes identifying road signs.
So from this data point of one, Cloudflare costs sites traffic.