Every form builder makes a contact form in ten minutes, so this guide ranks fifteen of them on what happens afterwards: which counter the vendor meters (responses, forms, results per form, colleagues), what it costs to take the vendor's logo off and put the form on your own domain, and who owns the company you are handing your submissions to.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry
says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a
vendor. How that works.
In short
What form builders do
Online form builders let someone without code assemble a web form, publish it by link or embed, apply logic and payments, and collect each submission in a table.
In this order: setup effort, what it really costs, how your data comes back out, whether
you can leave, and who each form builder is built for. Why those five, and why there is no
score out of ten, is on the how we work page.
Included in Google Workspace, per user per month, published; 14-day trial
—
Organisations already on Google Workspace that need internal surveys and quizzes
Teams wanting a standalone form vendor and contract
Country is where the vendor is headquartered or contracts from, which is a
different question from where your data is hosted. Where the two tell different stories, the
entry says so.
Doc-style form editor whose free plan does not count submissions
Ranked #1 of 15 in Best Online Form Builders in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingEurope
Unusually, payments, signatures, conditional logic and webhooks sit in the free plan, and Pro buys appearance and collaboration, namely branding removal, custom domains, custom CSS, partial submissions and unlimited team members for a flat fee.
Business adds data-retention controls and email verification. Data is hosted in Europe. The risk is scale in both senses. The vendor is small by its own description, and an account above 50,000 submissions a month is asked to move to a custom plan.
What stands out
Free plan
Flat price
Bootstrapped
Where it costs you
Tally branding stays on forms until the Pro plan
Unlimited use is governed by a fair-use policy, not a contractual quota
File uploads are limited to 10 MB each below Pro
Right for
Small teams that want unmetered forms and a predictable flat bill later
Wrong for
Buyers who need a negotiated contract with volume commitments
BelgiumFree plan within fair-use limits; flat monthly plans, published
Flat-priced forms with unlimited seats and a thousand responses at no cost
Ranked #2 of 15 in Best Online Form Builders in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
Fillout, run by Restly, Inc. in Chicago, prices on a single axis. Seats and forms are unlimited everywhere, annual billing takes a fifth off, and the published tiers step through response allowances until Business lifts the cap.
The product now covers scheduling, PDF, payments, workflows and signatures, with more than fifty native integrations. What goes wrong is the order of the upgrades: a team that wants its own domain pays for the top tier even at low volume.
What stands out
Free plan
Unlimited seats
Response tiers
Where it costs you
Monthly response caps on every plan except Business
Custom domain and form analytics are reserved for the highest tier
Branding removal starts on the third tier, Pro
Right for
Teams with many editors and moderate volume who dislike per-seat pricing
Wrong for
High-volume senders who want their own domain cheaply
United StatesFree plan to 1,000 responses a month; flat monthly tiers, published
Calculation-heavy forms that grow into approvals and a client portal
Ranked #3 of 15 in Best Online Form Builders in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
Cognito, LLC of Columbia, South Carolina publishes four tiers with a no-card trial of the paid ones. The progression is by capability as much as by volume: electronic signatures and save-and-resume on Pro, workflow approvals, data lookups and the client portal on Team, folder permissions on Enterprise alongside unlimited entries.
The weak point is headcount. Twenty users is the published ceiling, and storage runs from 100 MB to 100 GB, which file-heavy forms reach quickly on the lower tiers.
What stands out
Free plan
Calculations
Workflow
Where it costs you
Users are capped per tier: one, two, five, then twenty
HIPAA compliance and single sign-on only on Enterprise
The no-cost tier stops at 100 entries a month and shows Cognito branding
Right for
Operations teams building order forms, quotes and approval processes with calculations
Wrong for
Large departments where dozens of people must edit forms
United StatesFree plan for one user; monthly tiers by users and entries, published
OpnForm is operated by JhumanJ SAS of Neuilly-sur-Seine and dual-licensed: AGPLv3 for the core, a proprietary licence for enterprise features. Hosted plans run on EU infrastructure and climb from Pro to Business, which adds roles and partial submissions, and Enterprise, which adds SAML single sign-on and audit logs.
Self-hosters who outgrow two users buy an annual licence per instance. The repository names no company and the pricing page gives no address, so due diligence starts in the terms and conditions.
What stands out
Open source
Self-hosted
Free plan
Where it costs you
Self-hosted community edition is limited to two users
Captcha, custom domains and analytics need the hosted Pro tier
Paid plans have no automated trial; evaluation goes through sales
Right for
Technical teams that want form data on infrastructure they control
Wrong for
Non-technical teams larger than two wanting self-hosting without a licence
FranceFree plan; flat monthly tiers, published; self-hosted licence per instance
Small-business forms bundled with e-signature and workflow automation tools
Ranked #5 of 15 in Best Online Form Builders in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingAsia-Pacific
Dean and Diony McPherson founded Paperform and still hold the CTO and COO roles. Pricing is flat with unlimited users, forms and, from Pro, submissions, and paid plans start with a 7-day trial that needs no card.
Buying it means buying a bundle, since Papersign and Stepper are included whether or not you want them. Check the contract language as well: the company address is in Sydney, but the terms are governed by California law with arbitration in San Francisco.
What stands out
Free plan
Unlimited users
Bookings
Where it costs you
30 submissions a month on the no-cost tier
A custom domain is a paid add-on on Pro
Workspaces, user roles and single sign-on require Business
Right for
Service businesses taking bookings and payments through one designed page
Wrong for
Buyers who only need a plain contact form
AustraliaFree plan to 30 submissions a month; flat monthly tiers, published
Template-driven builder that meters forms and storage, not responses
Ranked #6 of 15 in Best Online Form Builders in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingEurope
Because responses are never counted, a viral signup form costs the same as a quiet one; the published tiers rise with form count and storage, from 10 GB on Basic to 1 TB on Premium.
Stripe and PayPal payments and conditional logic are part of the builder, and the vendor states the service is made and hosted in the EU. The model punishes breadth: an organisation with thirty small forms needs Pro regardless of how few answers arrive.
What stands out
Free plan
Unlimited responses
Mobile apps
Where it costs you
Five forms and 10 MB of file storage on the entry plan
Unlimited forms only from the Pro plan
A 90-day refund guarantee stands in for a trial of paid plans
Right for
Teams that run a few high-volume forms and want predictable costs
Wrong for
Organisations that publish dozens of small forms every year
EstoniaFree plan to 5 forms; monthly tiers by form count and storage, published
The widest catalogue in the category, metered on five counters
Ranked #7 of 15 in Best Online Form Builders in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
Jotform lists offices in Sydney, London, Vancouver and three Turkish cities beside its San Francisco headquarters, and sells Jotform Sign alongside the form builder. Bronze, Silver and Gold remove branding and raise every counter together; Enterprise is quoted and lifts them all.
The practical problem is forecasting. A form with file uploads can exhaust upload space long before it reaches its submission allowance, and a popular embedded form can hit the monthly view limit with few completions.
What stands out
Free plan
Bootstrapped
HIPAA option
Where it costs you
Five separate limits per tier, any of which can force an upgrade
Starter tier: 100 submissions a month and 500 stored in total
HIPAA features start on Gold, the highest self-service tier
Right for
Organisations wanting one established vendor for forms, signatures and integrations
Wrong for
Buyers who want a bill driven by a single counter
United StatesFree plan to 5 forms; monthly tiers by forms and submissions, published
Conversational forms with AGPL code you can deploy yourself
Ranked #8 of 15 in Best Online Form Builders in 2026.
Open sourceSelf-hostablePublished pricingNorth America
Two ways in. Deploy the AGPL-3.0 code with the Dockerfile and compose file in the repository, or pay EarlyBird, Inc. of Sheridan, Wyoming for hosting on three published tiers that scale responses, storage and team size up to ten members.
AI form generation, conditional logic and multiple endings are listed features. The Business tier is described as having no payment commission, which implies one on the cheaper tiers; read the payment terms before selling through a form.
What stands out
Open source
Self-hosted
Conversational
Where it costs you
Hosted service offers a 7-day trial, with paid tiers after it
Custom domain and branding removal start on Premium
Basic is a single-user tier
Right for
Developers who want conversational forms they can deploy on their servers
Wrong for
Teams wanting a permanent no-cost tier on the hosted service
United StatesMonthly tiers by responses and team size, published; 7-day trial
Design-first forms with conversational logic, priced by responses and seats
Ranked #9 of 15 in Best Online Form Builders in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingEurope
Annual billing takes 30 per cent off the monthly rate, and the published ladder now includes specialised plans: Growth Flow, with response enrichment and a Salesforce integration behind a 14-day card-required trial, and Talent for HR teams.
Customers outside the United States contract with the Spanish entity, those inside with a Delaware LLC. The cost problem is structural. Both responses and seats are rationed, so a growing campaign and a growing team each push the account up a tier independently.
What stands out
Free plan
Conversational logic
Response tiers
Where it costs you
100 responses a month on the entry plan, for one user
Users capped at three on Plus and five on Business
Single sign-on and HIPAA are Enterprise features with custom pricing
Right for
Marketing teams for whom completion rate justifies a premium price
Wrong for
High-volume internal data collection on a small budget
SpainFree plan to 100 responses a month; monthly tiers by responses and users, published
Long-running Chicago form service with limits set per form
Ranked #10 of 15 in Best Online Form Builders in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
Formsite is a trademark of Vroman Systems, Inc. and publishes a free 14-day trial of its Professional tier without a card. Tiers rise from five forms to a thousand, with file space from 500 MB to 10 GB and PDF results and unlimited workflows from Business.
The acquisition announcement promised continuity, and the separate site and price list are still there. What a buyer cannot know is how long a parent company keeps two overlapping form products on sale.
What stands out
Free plan
Per-form limits
Formstack-owned
Where it costs you
Ten results per form on the no-cost account
Owned by Formstack since December 2023
Sub-users start on Business, with one included
Right for
Organisations running a fixed set of forms with steady, modest volumes
Wrong for
Buyers who rank vendor independence above everything else
United StatesFree plan to 5 forms; monthly tiers by forms and results per form, published
Timisoara-built form tool, owned by Kiteworks since 2024
Ranked #11 of 15 in Best Online Form Builders in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingEurope
The published ladder runs Gold, Platinum, Diamond, then an Enterprise tier with a stated starting price billed yearly, and yearly billing is advertised at half the monthly rate with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Storage grows from 1 GB to 100 GB.
Two things need checking before signing. An older FAQ on the vendor's site describes different free-plan limits from the current plan table, so confirm which apply to your account, and ask what the Kiteworks integration means for standalone customers.
What stands out
Free plan
Kiteworks-owned
Field limits
Where it costs you
Fields per form are capped on every self-service tier
Extra users are purchased as additional licences
The no-cost tier has no upload storage and 100 monthly submissions
Right for
Regulated teams that are already evaluating Kiteworks for secure content exchange
Wrong for
Anyone building long application forms on a low tier
RomaniaFree plan to 5 forms; monthly tiers by forms and submissions, published
SurveyMonkey's form product, sold on annual entry allowances
Ranked #12 of 15 in Best Online Form Builders in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
The no-cost account gives five forms, 100 entries and one user. Above it, Professional removes the form limit and adds payments, field encryption and password protection for five users; Advanced and Ultimate raise entries, storage and API request allowances.
Payment processors named include PayPal, Stripe and Authorize.Net. Its owner's attention is the open question: services are provided by SurveyMonkey Inc. of San Mateo, California, whose main business is surveys, and Wufoo is one brand among three in those terms.
What stands out
Free plan
SurveyMonkey-owned
Entry tiers
Where it costs you
Payment collection requires the Professional tier
Starter is limited to ten forms and one user
Paid tiers are quoted as annual bills
Right for
Existing SurveyMonkey customers who want forms under the same vendor terms
Wrong for
Buyers looking for a vendor whose main product is forms
United StatesFree plan to 5 forms; annual tiers by entries and users, published
Forms sold beside document generation and e-signature in a suite
Ranked #13 of 15 in Best Online Form Builders in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
Founded in 2006 and listing offices in Denver and Indianapolis, the company describes Formstack as a workplace productivity suite and positions a newer automation platform, Intellistack Streamline, above it.
The Suite plan raises limits to three builders, 100 forms and 5,000 submissions per form and adds document deliveries. Investors PSG and Silversmith were named when it bought Formsite. A buyer should weigh the rebrand: the vendor's attention is on the new platform, and the form product is the older line.
What stands out
Suite
Per builder user
14-day trial
Where it costs you
One builder user and 25 forms on the Forms plan
Documents and Sign require the Suite, at roughly three times the price
Salesforce-native forms are a separate package without a published price
Right for
Mid-sized organisations that need forms feeding generated documents and signatures
Wrong for
Small teams that only want to publish a few forms
United StatesMonthly per product, published; 14-day trial
Compliance-minded data collection aimed at organisations running on Salesforce
Ranked #14 of 15 in Best Online Form Builders in 2026.
Pricing on requestNorth America
FormAssembly Inc. of Bloomington, Indiana was founded in 2006 and sells four Atlas plans. Explorer has one standard user, three active workflows and basic document generation with single-signer e-signature; Team has three standard and five limited users with approval processes and custom code; Enterprise adds onboarding and a success plan.
With no figures published, the first ninety days include a procurement cycle, and the user counts are small enough that the quote will depend on add-ons.
What stands out
Salesforce
HIPAA option
Quoted
Where it costs you
Plans page publishes no figures
Salesforce connection is listed as an add-on
HIPAA compliance only on the Enterprise plan
Right for
Regulated organisations collecting data that must land validated in Salesforce
Wrong for
Anyone who wants to compare costs before talking to sales
United StatesQuoted per organisation; trial on request
The form tool already inside every Google Workspace subscription
Ranked #15 of 15 in Best Online Form Builders in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
Google Forms can be started from Sheets or Drive, edited with collaborators, and summarised in charts as responses arrive. Workspace plans are published per user per month with a 14-day trial, and Forms is in all of them.
That makes the marginal cost nil for a Workspace customer and the exit short, since responses can be stored in a linked spreadsheet. It ranks last as a feature of a Mountain View suite, not a product with its own price.
What stands out
Bundled
Sheets export
Quizzes
Where it costs you
Sold inside a suite priced per user, not as a form product
Analysis beyond the summary charts happens in Google Sheets
Right for
Organisations already on Google Workspace that need internal surveys and quizzes
Wrong for
Teams wanting a standalone form vendor and contract
United StatesIncluded in Google Workspace, per user per month, published; 14-day trial
Online form builders let someone without code assemble a web form, publish it by link or embed, apply logic and payments, and collect each submission in a table. The differences that matter are rarely in the feature list, so this is
the order we would work through them.
01
Decide whether you need a published price
14 of the 15 tools here publish what they cost; the other 1 quote per organisation. The ones you can compare without a sales call: Tally, Fillout, Cognito Forms, OpnForm, Paperform, forms.app, Jotform, HeyForm, Typeform, Formsite, 123FormBuilder, Wufoo, Formstack, Google Forms.
02
Decide how much the jurisdiction matters
These 15 vendors are established in 7 countries across 3 regions (North America 9, Europe 5, Asia-Pacific 1). That decides whose disclosure law applies to what the vendor holds, wherever the servers are.
03
Consider whether you want the source
2 of these are open source: OpnForm, HeyForm. Hosting one yourself trades a subscription for maintenance.
Form builders meter different things, so read the counter first
The published plans in this category count four different things. Fillout, Typeform and Paperform count responses per month: 1,000, 100 and 30 on their free plans. Formsite and Formstack count results per form, so a Formstack Forms plan holds 1,000 submissions on each of 25 forms and never pools them. forms.app ignores responses and counts forms, five before you pay.
Jotform counts forms, submissions, views, upload space and stored submissions at once. Tally and the hosted OpnForm plan count nothing, though Tally reserves the right to talk to accounts above 50,000 submissions a month. A seasonal registration form, a permanent contact form and a thirty-form intranet each come out cheapest on a different vendor, which is why a generic price comparison is useless here.
Write down your busiest month of submissions and your number of live forms before comparing.
Ask whether the limit is per month, per form or in total storage, and what happens to submissions above it.
For upload-heavy forms, price the storage allowance, not the response allowance.
Removing the badge and using your domain is where form builders charge
A form that says who built it is fine for an internal poll and awkward on a checkout page, and vendors price that embarrassment differently. Tally removes its branding and adds custom domains on its first paid plan. Fillout removes branding on its third tier and keeps the custom domain for its fourth.
Paperform removes branding on Pro but bills a custom domain as a monthly add-on there, including one only on Business. Typeform drops its badge on Plus. OpnForm requires its branding on the hosted free plan and sells removal with custom domains on Pro. HeyForm puts both on Premium. None of this shows in a feature grid that simply says custom domain: yes, so the question is which tier, and whether it is an add-on.
Find the lowest tier that removes branding and the lowest that allows your domain; they often differ.
Check whether a custom domain is included or billed as an add-on.
Send yourself a test submission and read the notification email for vendor branding too.
Seats in form builders: unlimited, rationed or bought one by one
Forms are rarely one person's job for long, and seat rules split the market. Fillout and Paperform include unlimited users on every plan, and forms.app does the same for team members. Tally adds unlimited teammates once you pay for Pro. Cognito Forms rations users at one, two, five and twenty across its tiers. Typeform includes one user, then three on Plus and five on Business.
Wufoo ties one user to Starter and five to Professional. Formsite adds a single sub-user on Business, 123FormBuilder sells additional users as extra licences, and the Formstack Forms plan covers one builder. The practical effect is shared logins, which removes any record of who changed a form that takes payments or collects personal data.
Count everyone who edits forms or reads submissions, not only the person buying.
Ask whether people who only view results consume a seat.
Check which tier adds roles and permissions; seats without roles still mean everyone is an admin.
Self-hosting OpnForm or HeyForm: what the licence actually gives you
Two products in this ranking publish their code under an AGPL licence, and both also sell hosting. OpnForm's self-hosted community edition covers unlimited forms and submissions but stops at two users, and branding removal, custom SMTP, roles and single sign-on need an enterprise licence bought per instance per year.
HeyForm's repository ships a Dockerfile and compose file, and its hosted service is a separate paid product with a 7-day trial. Running either yourself moves the work to you: upgrades, backups, mail delivery and spam protection become your tasks. The gain is that submissions never leave your server and the exit is already done. For most small teams the hosted plan is the sensible start, with self-hosting as the option you hold in reserve.
Read which features sit in the enterprise directory of the repository before planning around them.
Decide who patches and backs up the instance, and test a restore.
Confirm the hosted plan can export everything you would need to move to your own instance.
What goes wrong most often when buying form builders
Choosing on the free plan and discovering that the form you actually need, with your domain and without the vendor badge, sits two or three tiers higher.
Treating per-form result limits and monthly response limits as the same number. One busy form can fill a per-form quota while the account looks almost empty.
Sharing one login across a team to stay on a single-user tier, then being unable to say who edited a payment form.
Assuming a familiar form brand is an independent company. Wufoo belongs to SurveyMonkey, Formsite to the Formstack owner, and 123FormBuilder to Kiteworks.
07
Frequently asked questions
8 answers
What are the best form builders in 2026?
Tally leads our ranking of 15. Forms are typed like a text document, and the free plan covers unlimited forms and submissions with payments, signatures, logic and webhooks, subject to a fair-use policy that only bites around 50,000 submissions a month.
Two flat paid plans add branding removal, custom domains and unlimited teammates. Tally BV in Ghent calls itself a small, bootstrapped team, so expect a focused product and a short plan list.
Which form builders publish their pricing?
14 of the 15, with the pricing model each one publishes:
Tally: Free plan within fair-use limits; flat monthly plans, published.
Fillout: Free plan to 1,000 responses a month; flat monthly tiers, published.
Cognito Forms: Free plan for one user; monthly tiers by users and entries, published.
Paperform: Free plan to 30 submissions a month; flat monthly tiers, published.
forms.app: Free plan to 5 forms; monthly tiers by form count and storage, published.
Jotform: Free plan to 5 forms; monthly tiers by forms and submissions, published.
HeyForm: Monthly tiers by responses and team size, published; 7-day trial.
Typeform: Free plan to 100 responses a month; monthly tiers by responses and users, published.
Formsite: Free plan to 5 forms; monthly tiers by forms and results per form, published.
123FormBuilder: Free plan to 5 forms; monthly tiers by forms and submissions, published.
Wufoo: Free plan to 5 forms; annual tiers by entries and users, published.
Formstack: Monthly per product, published; 14-day trial.
Google Forms: Included in Google Workspace, per user per month, published; 14-day trial.
The other 1 quote per organisation.
Is there a free form builder?
Tally, Fillout, Cognito Forms, OpnForm, Paperform, forms.app, Jotform, Typeform, Formsite, 123FormBuilder, Wufoo offer a free tier or a free self-hosted edition.
Where are these form builder vendors established?
In 7 countries across 3 regions: North America 9, Europe 5, Asia-Pacific 1.
Tally: Belgium.
Fillout: United States.
Cognito Forms: United States.
OpnForm: France.
Paperform: Australia.
forms.app: Estonia.
Jotform: United States.
HeyForm: United States.
Typeform: Spain.
Formsite: United States.
123FormBuilder: Romania.
Wufoo: United States.
Formstack: United States.
FormAssembly: United States.
Google Forms: United States.
Which form builders are open source?
OpnForm, HeyForm.
Which form builders can you host yourself?
OpnForm, HeyForm. The other 13 are hosted by the vendor only.
What should you use instead of Tally?
Fillout and Cognito Forms are the next two on this page. Fillout is for teams with many editors and moderate volume who dislike per-seat pricing; Cognito Forms is for Operations teams building order forms, quotes and approval processes with calculations.
Who should not buy Tally?
Buyers who need a negotiated contract with volume commitments. Tally branding stays on forms until the Pro plan.
If your form builders product belongs among these 15, tell us what it does and who it is for. Inclusion is an editorial call; what a listing is and is not is set out under software advice.
