Never mind, the answer is Yes, BuddyPress support in is the paid version only.
Rant alert!
So this happens when your provider takes your site offline because of lots of spam topics on your forum, so you google how to install recaptcha, you find a tutorial & you follow that and yes some stuff does have recaptchas but not all. And you’re not that familiar with WordPress because you inherited that site from someone who went on to pastures new without proper briefing so you spend evenings down rabbit holes to find out how things fit together and then finally you step back, and decide to RTFM & the TOS.
Thank you for reading this rant.
