I can assure you it is not. It's about $0.001 per solved captcha with 97% accuracy rate and refunds on failed ones, from the service provider I know of.

I've even written one, it's not complicated and not expensive.

It is still the same rate. 2.2 ish for new recaptcha, too.

Yeah I was able to beat that "Robot check" checkbox by Google using some fuzzy bezier curves and random mouse movements/scrolling to simulate a real user's behavior.

Unfortunately Google has some other metrics to detect bots (such as no cookies showing they've seen you before, etc), so it wasn't 100% reliable.

you don't need 100% reliability, that's the good side :)

Can confirm, it was very cheap 5+ years ago when I was in the business of needing them solved en masse. I doubt it's gotten more expensive.

are you sure? What's your source?