A form builder does not really sell you an editor. It sells you responses, and the editor is the free sample. Almost every plan you will compare is a monthly cap on how many people can answer you, dressed up in nicer drag-and-drop. Typeform is the clearest case: as of early October 2026 its paid entry, Basic, runs about $39 a month for 100 responses, Plus about $79 for 1,000, and Business about $129 for 10,000, while the free plan stops around 10 responses a month (typeform.com/pricing; check the official site, these numbers move). Past that first ten, you are not paying for logic or design. You are paying for the envelope.
Typeform has spent this year repositioning as an AI platform — an MCP server so assistant tools can drive it, an AI-moderated Research Flow, and a Growth Flow for go-to-market teams all now sit on the same pricing page — which tells you where the money went. The good news is that the alternatives below compete on the opposite axis: how much you can collect before the meter starts. They are sorted by what their free envelope actually holds — responses, logic jumps and exports — not by whose templates photograph best.
Drafting form questions and logic in an assistant first is often faster than starting from a builder’s template gallery (screenshot: OpenAI, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain).
Tally
Tally is the free tier every other builder is now measured against. Unlimited forms, unlimited submissions, and most of what competitors paywall — conditional logic, calculations, Stripe payments, signatures and file uploads up to 10 MB — are on the free plan. You pay mainly to remove branding or host on your own subdomain: about $24 a month for Pro and $74 for Business (tally.so/pricing; check the official site). It is a Belgian company holding data in the EU, and it says it powers 500,000-plus teams. The caveat is a fair-use policy rather than a feature gate, so a runaway form gets throttled, not invoiced. For most small teams this is the only builder they need.
Fillout
Fillout makes the same generous bet with a different ceiling: unlimited forms, unlimited seats and 1,000 responses a month on the free plan, with payments, scheduling, PDF generation and conditional logic included; Starter is about $15 a month (fillout.com/pricing). Its edge is forms that behave like small apps — scoring, calculations, multi-page logic — and unlike a demo tier, the free envelope covers a real launch rather than a trial. It is the natural next stop if you like Tally’s philosophy but need app-like fields or more room.
Google Forms
Google Forms is the free option people forget to count because it never meters responses at all. It lives in your Google account, collects as many submissions as you can attract, and pours them into Sheets or CSV on demand. What you trade is polish and logic: branching runs only between sections, there are no payment fields, and file uploads count against your Drive storage. Gemini can now summarise responses after the fact. Use it when the form is internal, low-stakes, or speed matters more than design.
Microsoft Forms
Microsoft Forms is free with any Microsoft account and already sits inside Teams and Office. Its limits are per form, not per month: a free personal account caps a single form at 200 responses, a paid personal one at 1,000, and work or school accounts at 50,000, with 200 questions per form (Microsoft Learn). Branching logic is included, so for an organisation already on Microsoft 365 it wins on distribution alone — no new vendor, no new login to teach the team.
Jotform
Jotform is the opposite trade: the deepest feature set on the tightest meter. The free plan gives you 5 forms, 100 monthly submissions, 10,000 monthly form views, 100 MB of space and 500 stored submissions, plus 10 payment submissions; Bronze at about $34 a month lifts that to 25 forms and 1,000 submissions (jotform.com/pricing). Reach for it when you need a specific field type — signatures, HIPAA-ready workflows, payment widgets — and read the storage rule first, because when storage fills Jotform deletes the oldest responses to make room for new ones.
Formspree
Formspree is not a builder at all, which is exactly the point: you keep your own HTML form and post it to Formspree, which forwards each submission to your inbox. Free covers 50 submissions a month with a 30-day archive and no file uploads; Personal is about $10 a month for 200 (formspree.io/pricing). It is the cleanest answer for a static site — no embed script, no vendor form UI — and it is honest about being a pipe rather than a product.
Self-hosting: Formbricks and HeyForm
If the meter itself is the problem, own the server. Formbricks and HeyForm are open-source form and survey builders you can run on your own infrastructure; Formbricks’ hosted Hobby plan is free at 250 responses a month, but the self-hosted edition has no per-response cap — you supply the machine. The licence is not the cost; the VPS is, roughly $5 to $20 a month for a small instance, plus Docker, backups, TLS and the upgrade you will eventually run at the wrong hour. Budget a weekend to stand it up and accept that uptime is now your job. Choose it when responses are the core of the workflow, or when the data is not allowed to leave your network.
The three limits that decide your bill
Monthly responses versus total responses. A 100-a-month plan and a 5,000-total plan are different products. Traffic is seasonal, and one campaign can burn a monthly cap in an afternoon, leaving you upgrading mid-launch. Check whether the meter resets monthly or counts lifetime before you commit.
Logic jumps versus sections. “Conditional logic included” means different things. Tally and Fillout let a free form branch on any answer; Google Forms branches only between sections. If a screening question should skip half the form, test that branch on the free plan before you build the rest of it.
Export and ownership. Ask where the raw data goes and how long it stays. Some free tiers keep submissions only briefly, some refuse a bulk export, and some delete the oldest response when storage fills. A form you cannot get your data out of is a form you do not control.
| Builder | Free allowance | Where the free tier stops |
|---|---|---|
| Typeform | About 10 responses/mo | Logic, branding and users sit on paid plans from about $39/mo |
| Tally | Unlimited forms and responses | Branding removal and custom domain |
| Fillout | 1,000 responses/mo, unlimited seats | Volume beyond 1,000 a month |
| Google Forms | Unlimited responses | Section-only logic, no payments |
| Microsoft Forms | 200 per form (free personal) | Form-level cap; 50,000 on work accounts |
| Jotform | 5 forms, 100 submissions/mo | Tight storage; oldest responses deleted |
| Formspree | 50 submissions/mo | No file uploads; 30-day archive |
| Formbricks / HeyForm | No cap when self-hosted | You run the server |
A stack that costs nothing to start
For a small business collecting leads, start in Tally: the free plan already gives you the logic, the payments and the file uploads, and it will hold until your volume is real. Keep Google Forms for internal surveys and anything that should land in a spreadsheet. Use Formspree for the single form embedded in a static site, where a vendor’s form UI would be in the way. Only when response volume or a data rule forces the issue should you self-host Formbricks or HeyForm and start paying in maintenance instead of subscriptions. Draft the questions and the branching with an assistant like ChatGPT first — it turns a rough goal into a structure faster than any template gallery — then paste the result in. If your forms are one step in a larger funnel, our AI tools for business guide covers the rest of the stack, and the Google Analytics alternative piece covers what to do with the traffic once it lands.
Free-tier limits and pricing were checked against typeform.com/pricing, tally.so/pricing, fillout.com/pricing, jotform.com/pricing, formspree.io/pricing, formbricks.com/pricing, heyform.net/pricing and Microsoft Learn on 2 October 2026. Free tiers change often — confirm on each official page before you commit.