The typical searcher started on SurveyMonkey's free Basic plan, then hit the response cap, the per-seat team pricing or the per-response overage charge. Others want survey data held in Europe or on their own server. They move to a self-hostable survey tool, a cheaper cloud tool with published limits, or a research platform if the work has outgrown simple questionnaires.
Sebastiaan SmitsFounderShort answer: The closest replacements for SurveyMonkey in our survey software ranking are LimeSurvey, Formbricks and Zoho Survey. Choose LimeSurvey if you need to host survey data yourself or keep it with a German vendor. All 11 alternatives below are ranked products from Best Survey Software in 2026, and each says where it differs from SurveyMonkey.
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SurveyMonkey's paid plans carry a yearly response allowance counted across all surveys and users (50,000 on Team Advantage and 100,000 on Team Premier, per the pricing page at the time of checking). Going over costs EUR 0.10 per additional response. A single large survey can therefore cost more than the licence.
Team plans require a minimum of three users and are billed per user. A two-person team cannot buy one, and a team with many occasional readers has to decide who needs a Full Access seat and who only needs the Analyst role. Seat count, not survey count, is what moves the invoice.
On Basic you can collect more responses than you can view. SurveyMonkey states that if you downgrade, responses over the Basic limit that are older than 365 days are deleted under its retention policy. Anyone treating the free plan as an archive should export before the plan changes.
| Alternative | Headquarters | Free option | Pricing | Key difference | Switch if | Our rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LimeSurvey | Germany | Yes | Free plan; cloud plans per month or year, published; Community Edition to self-host | Open source survey tool you can run on your own server | you need to host survey data yourself or keep it with a German vendor | #1 |
| Formbricks | Germany | Yes | Free plan; cloud plans per month, published; self-host with Docker | Open source feedback platform for in-app, website and link surveys | your surveys run inside a product and you want open source or self-hosting | #2 |
| Zoho Survey | India | Yes | Free plan; paid plans billed monthly or yearly; 7-day Enterprise trial | Survey tool inside the Zoho family with a capped free plan | your team already runs on Zoho and wants surveys inside it | #8 |
| SurveySparrow | United States | Yes | Free plan; paid plans billed yearly by responses and users | Conversational surveys with AI follow-ups, sold in yearly response bundles | you want a chat-style survey format and a clear published price per response tier | #4 |
| QuestionPro | United States | Yes | Free plan; per-user plans published; Research Suite quoted | Survey suite that scales from one user to research teams | you do market research and need methods such as conjoint or MaxDiff | #7 |
| Survicate | Poland | No free tier | Per plan per month, published; 10-day trial only | Website, app and email feedback surveys from a Warsaw company | you collect feedback from website and app visitors rather than panels or mailing lists | #3 |
| Alchemer | United States | Yes | Free plan; per-user plans published; Business tier quoted | Survey platform with workflows and a choice of four data centres | you want a US vendor positioned between a basic form tool and an enterprise platform | #6 |
| Sogolytics | United States | Yes | Free plan; published tiers by response volume; enterprise quoted | Survey maker with published tiers and quoted enterprise suites | you are an academic or non-profit user, or want survey and experience programmes from one vendor | #5 |
| Qualtrics | United States | No free tier | Quoted per organisation, by usage metric | Experience suite whose survey tool is priced by planned usage | survey work is a programme with analysts, governance and several departments | #10 |
| Forsta | Not stated by the vendor | No free tier | Sold through a sales conversation | Research and experience platform assembled from several older vendors | you run professional market research and want it joined to customer and employee feedback | #11 |
| Medallia | United States | No free tier | Quoted per organisation, by experience data record volume | DIY research surveys inside an enterprise experience platform | you are an enterprise running feedback programmes across customers, staff and contact centres | #12 |
Germany · Free plan; cloud plans per month or year, published; Community Edition to self-host
Has a free Community Edition you can self-host, alongside hosted plans (Basic EUR 34 per month, Expert EUR 29 per month on annual billing). The company is in Hamburg, Germany. Hosted plans meter responses too, and the interface is plainer and more technical than SurveyMonkey's.
Switch from SurveyMonkey if you need to host survey data yourself or keep it with a German vendor.
Germany · Free plan; cloud plans per month, published; self-host with Docker
Built for in-product and link surveys rather than general questionnaires. Core code is AGPLv3 and can be self-hosted with Docker, and the free cloud plan is hosted in Frankfurt with 250 responses a month. Paid cloud tiers meter responses per month, and it has no panel product.
Switch from SurveyMonkey if your surveys run inside a product and you want open source or self-hosting.
India · Free plan; paid plans billed monthly or yearly; 7-day Enterprise trial
Has a free plan with 3 active surveys and 100 responses per survey, and paid plans billed monthly or yearly. It fits teams already using Zoho applications and connects to Zoho Sheet. It is less recognisable to respondents and has a smaller template library than SurveyMonkey.
Switch from SurveyMonkey if your team already runs on Zoho and wants surveys inside it.
United States · Free plan; paid plans billed yearly by responses and users
Sells conversational surveys with plans billed yearly by responses and users (Basic from USD 29 per month, 2,500 responses). Extra users cost USD 49 per month each. The free plan is very small, at 75 responses a quarter, so it is a trial more than a working tier.
Switch from SurveyMonkey if you want a chat-style survey format and a clear published price per response tier.
United States · Free plan; per-user plans published; Research Suite quoted
Has a free Essentials plan limited to one user and 200 responses per survey, then per-user plans (Advanced USD 99, Team Edition USD 83 for five or more users). Its Research Suite is quoted and adds conjoint analysis and MaxDiff, which SurveyMonkey does not sell as standard.
Switch from SurveyMonkey if you do market research and need methods such as conjoint or MaxDiff.
Poland · Per plan per month, published; 10-day trial only
Focuses on feedback collected on websites, in products and by email rather than standalone questionnaires. Plans are published per month and start higher than SurveyMonkey's team plans (Growth USD 114 per month billed annually). Trial is 10 days, and response volumes are small on lower plans.
Switch from SurveyMonkey if you collect feedback from website and app visitors rather than panels or mailing lists.
United States · Free plan; per-user plans published; Business tier quoted
Sold as survey software for business users with per-user plans and a quoted top tier according to the category listing. We could not load its pricing page when we checked, so confirm plan limits and prices with the vendor before comparing it with SurveyMonkey.
Switch from SurveyMonkey if you want a US vendor positioned between a basic form tool and an enterprise platform.
United States · Free plan; published tiers by response volume; enterprise quoted
Prices its survey software by responses and number of admin users, with separate customer and employee experience products and quotes through a demo. It offers free licences for students, academic institutions and non-profits. Pricing is less visible than SurveyMonkey's published team plans.
Switch from SurveyMonkey if you are an academic or non-profit user, or want survey and experience programmes from one vendor.
United States · Quoted per organisation, by usage metric
An experience management suite priced on usage metrics such as interactions (survey responses and video feedback minutes), by request only. It covers customer, employee and market research products. It is a much heavier purchase than SurveyMonkey and no price is published.
Switch from SurveyMonkey if survey work is a programme with analysts, governance and several departments.
Not stated by the vendor · Sold through a sales conversation
Sells a platform spanning market research, customer experience, brand and employee experience, and directs prospects to speak to an expert for pricing. Its website does not state its headquarters or owner. It is a research-organisation product, not a self-serve survey tool.
Switch from SurveyMonkey if you run professional market research and want it joined to customer and employee feedback.
United States · Quoted per organisation, by experience data record volume
Enterprise experience management across customer, employee and contact-centre feedback, with market research tools. Pricing is not disclosed and goes through a demo or sales contact. It is built for large organisations and is a replacement for SurveyMonkey Enterprise, not for a team of three.
Switch from SurveyMonkey if you are an enterprise running feedback programmes across customers, staff and contact centres.
SurveyMonkey remains the right choice for a team that sends occasional surveys to people who already recognise the brand, wants templates and AI-assisted survey creation out of the box, and has predictable response volumes. Its own site lists over 400 templates and claims 260K+ organisations, and a respondent seeing a familiar survey layout is an advantage for response rates. If your volume stays inside the plan allowance and you do not need self-hosting, switching mostly costs migration effort.
SurveyMonkey states that responses above the Basic limit and older than 365 days are deleted when a plan lapses. Export raw response data and any reports you need as evidence before changing plan, because a replacement tool will not import your history by itself.
Question types, skip logic and block randomisation exist in most tools but are named and configured differently. Plan to rebuild your three or four most used surveys first and compare completion rates, not just features, before moving the rest.
SurveyMonkey offers US, Canadian or EU data centres to enterprise customers. A replacement should state its hosting region on its own pages: Formbricks names Frankfurt for its cloud, and LimeSurvey describes itself as a Hamburg-based European company. Self-hosting removes the question but adds operations work.
Yes. LimeSurvey's Community Edition and Formbricks (AGPLv3 core) can be self-hosted at no licence cost, and Zoho Survey, QuestionPro and Formbricks all publish a free cloud plan.
The free cloud plans cap responses (Formbricks 250 a month, QuestionPro 200 per survey, Zoho Survey 100 per survey).
Its pricing page states EUR 0.10 for each additional response on paid plans, with limits counted across all surveys and users. Team Advantage includes 50,000 responses a year and Team Premier 100,000, per the page at the time of checking.
LimeSurvey offers a Community Edition for self-hosting, and Formbricks supports self-hosting with Docker under an AGPLv3 core. Formbricks keeps some features in a separately licensed enterprise edition, so check which features you need are in the free core.
Team plans require at least three users, per SurveyMonkey's pricing page, and Enterprise requires five or more. Individual plans exist for a single user, so a two-person team ends up buying two individual plans or a three-seat team plan.
QuestionPro's Research Suite lists conjoint analysis, MaxDiff and access to a respondent panel, and Qualtrics and Forsta sell market research products on quoted pricing. These cost more and take longer to set up than SurveyMonkey, so they suit research teams, not occasional surveys.
You can, but Qualtrics prices by usage metrics such as interactions and publishes no rates, so the first step is a quote.
It is a sensible move for an organisation running a research or experience programme, not for a team whose complaint is the cost of a survey tool.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Writes, edits and checks every page on this site.
Written, edited and fact-checked by Sebastiaan Smits. Last reviewed 8 October 2026. How we review.
