Form builders and survey tools collect structured information: contact and lead forms, registrations, order and payment forms, job applications, customer feedback and research surveys. They provide the editor, a hosted or embedded form, conditional logic that changes the questions based on earlier answers, and a place to store and export responses or send them on to other apps.
Most plans cap how many responses you can receive each month, and the caps vary widely, so estimate a busy month before comparing prices. After that, the deciding questions are whether you need payments, file uploads or e-signatures, which apps the responses have to reach, and whether the data is sensitive enough to need compliance features such as HIPAA support or a choice of where it is stored.
At a glance
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | Free trial |
|---|---|---|---|
 Jotform | Best for one person running payment, booking or HIPAA forms for a small organization | Free plan | No |
 Tally | Best for startups and small teams that want logic, payments and integrations on a free plan | Free plan | No |
 Typeform | Best for marketing and HR teams running a few branded, customer-facing forms at modest volume | Free plan | Yes |
 SurveyMonkey | Best for market and customer researchers who need quotas, significance tests and SPSS export | Free plan | No |
 Fillout | Best for teams that send form data to Airtable, Notion or a CRM and want no per-seat fees | Free plan | No |
5 of 5 tools
The ranking
In order, with what each tool is for and what it costs. Use the filters above to narrow the list.
Best for one person running payment, booking or HIPAA forms for a small organization
Jotform is an online form builder for single administrators who need payments, appointment booking and HIPAA-ready forms, with a free mobile app that collects offline. Every self-serve plan covers one user, and plans differ in how many forms and monthly submissions they allow.
Free plan
paid from $34/mo
Best for startups and small teams that want logic, payments and integrations on a free plan
Tally is a form builder with a document-style editor for individuals and small teams, and its free plan has no cap on forms or submissions within fair use. Paid plans add branding removal and custom domains at one price per organization, with unlimited team members.
Free plan
paid from $24/mo
Best for marketing and HR teams running a few branded, customer-facing forms at modest volume
Typeform is a form and survey builder that shows one question at a time, suited to lead capture, applications and feedback forms seen by customers. Paid plans are flat monthly prices capped by responses and users: 1 user on Basic, 3 on Plus and 5 on Business.
Free plan
paid from $28/mo
Best for market and customer researchers who need quotas, significance tests and SPSS export
SurveyMonkey is a survey platform for researchers and teams that need quotas, randomization, significance tests and a paid respondent panel. It's priced per user, every plan except Standard Monthly is billed yearly, and each response past a plan's allowance costs $0.15.
Free plan
paid from $39/mo
Best for teams that send form data to Airtable, Notion or a CRM and want no per-seat fees
Fillout is an online form builder for teams that send responses to Airtable, Notion, Google Sheets or a CRM, with logic, payments and scheduling on the free plan. Every plan is one flat price with unlimited seats, and paid tiers raise the monthly response allowance.
Free plan
paid from $15/mo
Head to head
Feature-by-feature matchups between leading Forms & Surveys tools, with a clear verdict.
Methodology
We compare the tools on this page using what can be checked from the outside: published pricing and plan limits, documented features, and each vendor's own security, compliance and support documentation. This is desk research, not hands-on testing. Where something can only be judged by using a product, we say so rather than imply we measured it.
What we weigh here:
How the order is set:
Buyer's guide
Response allowances decide most of the bill. Typeform's Basic plan allows 100 responses a month, while Tally's free plan has no cap within its fair use policy. At the limit, Jotform disables forms, Typeform makes them private, SurveyMonkey charges $0.15 per extra response and Fillout keeps collecting. Count people too. Fillout and Tally cover unlimited team members for one price, Typeform caps plans at 1, 3 or 5 users, Jotform's self-serve plans are single-user and SurveyMonkey bills per user.
A finished lead form is worth more than an abandoned one. All five tools can show one question at a time: Typeform by default, Jotform and SurveyMonkey as a layout, Tally and Fillout with one question per page. Jotform recommends that style for short forms and its classic layout for long ones, so try both, and use the drop-off reports on Typeform Business, Fillout Business or Tally Pro to see where people quit.
Health data covered by HIPAA calls for a signed business associate agreement with the form vendor. Jotform includes one, with HIPAA features, on Gold at $129 a month or $99 billed yearly; SurveyMonkey offers HIPAA only on Enterprise, and Typeform signs BAAs for Enterprise and Growth Custom customers. Tally and Fillout document no HIPAA option. For EU hosting, Tally stores data in Europe and Jotform can move an account to Frankfurt; the other three offer it only on top-tier plans.
A form is a way of getting data into another system, so check that the connection you need is native. Tally, Fillout and Typeform connect to Google Sheets and Airtable on their free plans. Zapier adds a second bill as volume grows. A Zap that adds each submission to a CRM and posts it in Slack uses two tasks, so 400 submissions a month exceed the 750 tasks in Zapier Professional, at $29.99 a month or $19.99 billed yearly. On Tally's or Fillout's free plan, that would be the team's only bill.
FAQ
Entry paid plans cost $15 to $39 a month on yearly billing: Fillout Starter $15, Tally Pro $24, Typeform Basic $28, Jotform Bronze $34 and SurveyMonkey Advantage Annual $39 per user. Month to month, the first four cost $19, $29, $39 and $39, and SurveyMonkey's only monthly plan costs $149 per user. Seats change the bill as much as responses do: Fillout and Tally cover unlimited users for one price, Typeform caps plans at 1, 3 or 5 users, Jotform's self-serve plans are single-user, and SurveyMonkey charges per user.
Tally's, for volume: its free plan has no cap on forms or submissions within a fair use policy, and it keeps logic, file uploads and Stripe payments. Fillout's allows 1,000 responses a month with unlimited seats. Jotform's free plan stops at 5 forms and 100 submissions a month, Typeform's at 10 responses a month and SurveyMonkey's at 10 questions per survey, so those three suit trying a product more than running forms.
It depends on the form. Jotform says its card forms, which show one question at a time, can help engagement and completion on short forms such as sign-ups and registrations, and it recommends its classic layout for long forms. All five tools here can show one question at a time, so try both layouts on your own form and check where people quit in the drop-off reports on Typeform Business, Fillout Business or Tally Pro.
Jotform, SurveyMonkey and Typeform sign business associate agreements, each on specific plans. Jotform includes HIPAA features and a BAA on Gold, at $129 a month or $99 a month billed yearly, and on Enterprise. SurveyMonkey offers HIPAA only on Enterprise, and Typeform signs a BAA for Enterprise and Growth Custom customers. Tally and Fillout don't document a HIPAA option, which rules them out for protected health information.
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