SurveySparrow vs LimeSurvey
SurveySparrow and LimeSurvey answer different questions. SurveySparrow is a hosted, chat-style survey product built around AI follow-up questions and website micro-surveys, sold in yearly response bundles with each extra user billed on top. LimeSurvey publishes its code under the GPL, offers a Community Edition you install yourself, and also sells cloud plans in euros with the prices on the page. One is a United States company, the other a Hamburg company. Choose by whether you want to run the software or only use it.
Sebastiaan SmitsFounderVendors can pay for more visibility on this website, for example a higher place in a ranking or more room on a page. Commercial relationships can also affect which products we feature and how prominently. Every vendor link is marked the same, whatever the arrangement behind it. How that works.
Choose SurveySparrow ifyou run customer-facing feedback with a small team and want follow-up questions and website micro-surveys without any server work. You accept yearly billing and an extra charge for every added user.
Choose LimeSurvey ifyou need the survey database on infrastructure you control, or you want published euro prices with a Hamburg supplier behind them. You can spare someone to patch and back up a self-hosted install, or you will pay for the cloud plans.
SurveySparrow and LimeSurvey side by side
| SurveySparrow | LimeSurvey | |
|---|---|---|
| Our survey software rank | #5 of 16 | #3 of 16 |
| Established in | United States | Germany |
| List price, 8 November 2026 | Yearly response bundles (2,500, 15,000 or 36,000), extra users $49 per month each, tier prices absent from the fetched text; free plan limits stated as 75 responses per quarter | From EUR 34 a month (Basic) or EUR 29 a month on a EUR 348 annual Expert plan, Business EUR 900 a year, all including 21% VAT; self-hosted Community Edition at no licence cost |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Self-hostable | — | Yes |
| Built for | Small customer-facing teams who want a chat-style survey with follow-ups | Researchers and public bodies that need the survey database on their own server |
| Not for | Large academic studies with thousands of respondents and many analysts | Teams wanting in-product pop-ups or a managed respondent panel |
Both are reviewed in full in our survey software ranking: SurveySparrow and LimeSurvey.
Where they differ
SurveySparrow 1 · LimeSurvey 3 · open 2- 01
Who owns the survey database
LimeSurvey's code sits in a public GitHub repository under GPL version 2 or later, maintained by LimeSurvey GmbH, and the Community Edition is installed on your own servers. It needs PHP 8.1.29 or higher and a MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB or MSSQL database. SurveySparrow's pages state no self-hosted or on-premise option and name no open-source licence, so the data lives in its cloud product. For a buyer who must keep the database in-house, only LimeSurvey qualifies.
Edge: LimeSurvey
- 02
The 75-response free plan against LimeSurvey's cloud entry
SurveySparrow's Forever Free plan lists 75 responses per quarter, one user, three active Classic surveys and ten questions per survey. Its own FAQ gives the free limit as 50 per month, and the page does not resolve the two figures, so check before relying on either. LimeSurvey offers a free sign-up too, but the free plan's limits are absent from its pricing text. Its cheapest published plan is Basic at EUR 34 per month, with 1,000 responses a month.
Depends on the buyer
- 03
Yearly bundles and the cost of a second analyst
SurveySparrow bills paid plans yearly in response tiers: Basic 2,500 responses with one user, Starter 15,000 with one user, Business 36,000 with three users. Additional users are $49 per user per month. The tier prices load client-side in the pricing page text we fetched, so we leave them out. LimeSurvey states Expert at 3 admin users and Business at 5 to 10 admin users inside the plan price. A growing team pays more twice at SurveySparrow.
Edge: LimeSurvey
- 04
Echo AI, SpotChecks and the pop-up gap
SurveySparrow's home page names echoAI, which asks follow-up questions, SpotChecks, micro-surveys shown on a website or app, CogniVue for themes and sentiment, and Enrich AI for tagging free text. It also claims up to 40 percent higher response rates for SmartReach AI, with no baseline given. LimeSurvey lists over 30 question types, logic and branching, more than 80 languages and more than 800 free templates. It names nothing like in-product pop-ups, and team collaboration is marked soon.
Edge: SurveySparrow
- 05
Euro plans, VAT and a Hamburg address
LimeSurvey lists its prices in EUR including 21 percent VAT: Basic 34 per month, Expert 29 per month or 348 per year, Business 75 per month or 900 per year, Corporate on request. Discounts are 30 percent for teachers, 50 percent for students and 30 percent for charities, subject to verification. Its legal notice names LimeSurvey GmbH in Hamburg, Germany. SurveySparrow's terms name SurveySparrow Inc. in San Francisco, and its parent, if any, is not named.
Edge: LimeSurvey
- 06
Compliance badges against export formats
SurveySparrow's home page footer shows SOC 2, ISO, HIPAA, GDPR and CSA STAR Level One badges and lists integrations such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack, Zapier and Zendesk. LimeSurvey's manual lists exports to CSV, Excel, R, STATA, SPSS, Word and PDF, and cloud hosting regions in Germany, Finland, the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada and Australia. SPSS truncates text answers over 32,767 characters. Teams that live in connected business tools lean to SurveySparrow, researchers to LimeSurvey.
Depends on the buyer
When neither fits
If you want a survey tool with in-product widgets that you can also self-host, neither is the obvious fit. Formbricks is built for in-product surveys, and Zoho Survey is a more conventional hosted option.
SurveySparrow or LimeSurvey: questions
3 answersCan SurveySparrow be installed on our own server?
No self-hosted or on-premise option appears in SurveySparrow's pages, and no data region is stated. The product appears as a cloud service run by SurveySparrow Inc. If an installable survey tool is a hard requirement, LimeSurvey's Community Edition is the one in this pair.
What does a second user cost on SurveySparrow?
Additional users are listed at $49 per user per month. Basic and Starter include one user and Business includes three. The tier prices themselves were missing from the fetched page text.
Is LimeSurvey free to use?
The software is open source under the GPL and the Community Edition is installed on your own servers. A free cloud sign-up exists, but its limits are absent from the pricing text. Paid cloud plans start at EUR 34 per month for Basic.
Sources
Checked 8 November 2026- SurveySparrow pricing page: response tiers, user counts, $49 add-on user fee, free plan limits and the 50 versus 75 response wording.
- SurveySparrow home page: echoAI, SpotChecks, CogniVue and Enrich AI names, integration list, compliance badges.
- SurveySparrow terms of service: the operating company and its San Francisco notice address.
- LimeSurvey pricing page: EUR plan prices including VAT, admin user counts, discounts and cloud hosting regions.
- LimeSurvey GitHub repository: GPL v2 or later licence and the PHP and database requirements.
- LimeSurvey home page: question types, languages, templates and the collaboration feature marked soon.
- LimeSurvey export manual: export formats and the SPSS text truncation limit.
- LimeSurvey legal notice: LimeSurvey GmbH, Hamburg as the operating company.