The best free form builders

What "free" really means

Almost every form builder has a free plan, and they mean very different things by it. Some are free forever with no limit on responses. Others are free until your form works, then cap the responses you can collect or read. Some limit how many forms you can have, some limit the number of questions, and some are only free for one person.

This list sorts them by what you can actually do for nothing. We make one of these products, so read our own entry with that in mind. Every limit in the table above comes from each product's own pricing or help pages, with the date we checked, and each product links to a full comparison.

How we compared

For each free plan we asked:

1. How many responses? A month, per form, or in total, and whether the limit is on collecting responses or on reading them.
2. How many forms and people? Can a small team use it, or only one person?
3. What's included? Logic, file uploads and the question types that matter.
4. What does the next step cost? Most people eventually want the badge gone.

1. hootform: free with unlimited responses, for up to 3 people

hootform's free plan has unlimited forms and unlimited responses. It includes all 24 question types, logic on any question, answer recall, several endings, file uploads up to 10 MB, signatures, hidden fields, Google Sheets, webhooks and email notifications. Identifying answers and files are encrypted at rest, and Insights shows views, starts, completion rate and time to finish. Forms ask one question at a time and save each answer as it's given.

The free plan shows a small "Powered by hootform" badge. Premium, at $19 a month for the whole organization, removes it and adds AI features, detailed Insights and partial responses. There's no response limit on either plan.

Held back: AI features, per-answer Insights, reading unfinished responses and your own branding are Premium. hootform doesn't take payments yet.

2. Google Forms: free with a Google account

Google Forms is free with no published response limit, and answers go straight to Google Sheets. It suits internal forms, quizzes and quick polls. When we checked, branching only worked from multiple choice and dropdown questions, and file uploads needed respondents to sign in to a Google account.

Held back: your own design, and forms that feel like anything other than Google's.

3. Tally: free with unlimited submissions

When we checked, Tally's free plan included unlimited forms and submissions, logic, calculations, payments, file uploads up to 10 MB each, and native integrations such as Notion, Airtable and Google Sheets. Forms are written like documents and usually show several questions on a page.

Held back: removing the badge and working as a team take Pro.

4. Youform: free with unlimited responses, one question at a time

Youform's free plan, when we checked, had unlimited forms and responses, logic and file uploads up to 10 MB each, in a Typeform-style one-question-at-a-time format.

Held back: the free plan is for one person, and removing the branding takes Pro.

5. Fillout: free for a whole team, up to a monthly limit

Fillout's free plan had unlimited seats and a lot of extras when we checked: logic, payments, scheduling, PDF generation, scoring and file uploads. It included a set number of responses a month, and paid plans raised it.

Held back: busy forms, and removing the branding.

6. Microsoft Forms: free with a personal Microsoft account

Microsoft Forms is free with a personal Microsoft account. When we checked, each form on a free personal account could collect up to 200 responses, with up to 400 forms and 200 questions each. Branching jumps forward to a later question or the end. Microsoft 365 subscriptions raise the response limit.

Held back: larger forms, and a look of your own.

7. Zoho Forms: free for three forms

Zoho Forms' free plan, when we checked, allowed one user, three forms and 500 submissions a month, with basic field rules for logic and 200 MB of file storage. Paid plans are inexpensive and raise every limit.

Held back: more than three forms, and removing the branding.

8. Jotform: free for five forms

Jotform's free Starter plan, when we checked, allowed five active forms, a hundred submissions a month and 100 MB of uploads, with conditional logic included.

Held back: submissions and forms run out quickly, and the branding stays.

9. Typeform: free to try

Typeform's free plan, when we checked, allowed a small number of responses a month for one person, with logic but without file uploads. It's a way to try Typeform rather than to run a form.

Held back: almost everything past a first test.

How to choose

• For unlimited responses in one-question-at-a-time forms, hootform or Youform.
• For unlimited submissions in document-style forms, with payments, Tally.
• For a whole team on the free plan, Fillout, as long as its monthly limit covers you.
• For forms inside your company, Google Forms or Microsoft Forms.

The limits that catch people out

Free plans rarely stop you on day one. They stop you on the day a form works. These are the limits worth checking before you commit a real form to any free plan:

• Responses you can read versus responses you can collect. Some tools keep collecting past the limit but hide the extra answers until you upgrade.
• Per month versus per form versus in total. A limit of 1,000 a month and a limit of 1,000 per form are very different for a form that runs all year.
• Active forms. A limit of three or five forms sounds fine until you have a contact form, a survey and an event sign-up running at once.
• Question limits. A cap on questions per survey forces long forms apart.
• File storage. Uploads often have a total storage limit as well as a per-file limit.
• Seats. A free plan for one person means sharing a login, which loses you any record of who changed what.
• The badge. Nearly every free plan shows one. Decide now whether that matters for forms that go to customers.

The table at the top gives each product's response limit, with what it's counted over. Each product's comparison page has the rest, with the source.

Every price and limit above was read from each product's own pages. The newest check for each product is on its comparison page, and we re-check them at least every four months.

• Google Workspace plans
• Google Forms Help: sections and branching
• Google Forms Help: file upload questions
• Tally pricing
• Tally Help: plans and pricing
• Youform pricing
• Fillout pricing
• Microsoft Support: form, question, response and character limits
• Microsoft Support: use branching logic in Microsoft Forms
• Zoho Forms pricing
• Zoho Forms price list (the data the pricing page loads)
• Jotform pricing
• Jotform: conditional logic on every plan
• Typeform pricing
• Typeform Help Center: Free plan