Survey tools look alike until the response counter runs down.
This guide ranks twelve of them on how many responses a normal year really consumes, what happens when a second analyst or a research method such as conjoint is added, whether the collected answers can leave in a usable format, and whether the product needs a sales call.
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vendor. How that works.
In short
What survey software does
Survey software lets an organisation write questions, send them to respondents by link, email or inside a website or app, and collect, filter and export the answers for analysis.
In this order: setup effort, what it really costs, how your data comes back out, whether
you can leave, and who each survey tool is built for. Why those five, and why there is no
score out of ten, is on the how we work page.
Quoted per organisation, by experience data record volume
—
Enterprises already measuring customer experience on the Medallia platform and its panels
Teams buying a standalone survey tool at a small, predictable cost
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.
LimeSurvey GmbH publishes the code on GitHub under the GPL, version 2 or later, and runs a Community Edition for installation on your own server alongside paid cloud plans in seven hosting regions.
Results export to CSV, Excel, R, STATA and SPSS, which is the strongest exit story in this list. The weak spot is operations: someone must patch the stack, and long text answers are truncated when exported to SPSS.
What stands out
Open source
Self-hosted option
Published price
Where it costs you
Self-hosting means your staff handle PHP updates, backups and uptime
Basic cloud plan stops at 1,000 responses a month
Right for
Researchers and public bodies that need the survey database on their own server
Wrong for
Teams wanting in-product pop-ups or a managed respondent panel
GermanyFree plan; cloud plans per month or year, published; Community Edition to self-host
Formbricks GmbH of Kiel releases the core under AGPLv3 and lets you run it with Docker,. The Hobby plan has a full API and all question types, which keeps data portable.
The cost of the open model is the split licence: governance functions such as teams and access roles sit in a proprietary edition, and the Scale plan, the first with those, caps at 5,000 responses a month.
What stands out
Open source
In-app surveys
Self-hosted option
Where it costs you
Enterprise-directory features need a proprietary licence key
Cloud tiers cap workspaces and monthly responses
Right for
Product teams embedding feedback surveys in their own app or website
Wrong for
Market researchers needing panels, conjoint or long questionnaires
GermanyFree plan; cloud plans per month, published; self-host with Docker
Website, app and email feedback surveys from a Warsaw company
Ranked #3 of 12 in Best Survey Software in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
Survicate S.A. is a Warsaw-registered company selling a feedback platform rather than a research suite. Surveys run on websites, mobile apps, email and chat, and its site lists more than 50 integrations including Salesforce, HubSpot and Zendesk.
The price list is public, which suits a buyer who dislikes quotes, but the Growth plan keeps six months of data, and Pro and Enterprise use custom yearly response pools you must size in advance.
What stands out
Product feedback
Event triggers
50+ integrations
Where it costs you
Growth plan allows only 250 responses a month and two active surveys
Trial is limited to 25 responses
Right for
SaaS and web teams triggering short surveys on customer actions
Wrong for
Long research questionnaires or one-off studies on a small budget
PolandPer plan per month, published; 10-day trial only
Conversational surveys with AI follow-ups, sold in yearly response bundles
Ranked #4 of 12 in Best Survey Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
SurveySparrow Inc. positions the product around Echo AI follow-up questions and SpotChecks, micro-surveys triggered by behaviour. Plans are named Basic, Starter, Business and Enterprise, billed yearly, with response ceilings of 2,500, 15,000 and 36,000 on the first three.
User limits are the pinch: Basic and Starter are single-user, Business has three, and extra seats are charged separately, so a shared analysis team costs more than the headline tier suggests.
What stands out
Conversational format
Free plan
Per-user add-ons
Where it costs you
Each additional user is a paid add-on
Free plan allows 75 responses per quarter
Right for
Small customer-facing teams who want a chat-style survey with follow-ups
Wrong for
Large academic studies with thousands of respondents and many analysts
United StatesFree plan; paid plans billed yearly by responses and users
Survey maker with published tiers and quoted enterprise suites
Ranked #5 of 12 in Best Survey Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
Sogolytics LLC of Herndon, Virginia, sells two things under one name: a self-service survey maker with published tiers and a set of enterprise suites for customer experience, employee experience and market research.
Student, academic and non-profit licences are free. The low-cost tiers state that features are identical and only response and email limits change. Moving to the enterprise suites means a quote based on responses and admin users.
What stands out
Tiered by volume
Enterprise suites
Academic licences
Where it costs you
Pro tier tops out at 15,000 responses a year
Enterprise suites have no published price
Right for
Small organisations wanting predictable survey tiers with a growth path
Wrong for
Buyers needing every product, enterprise suites included, publicly priced
United StatesFree plan; published tiers by response volume; enterprise quoted
Survey platform with workflows and a choice of four data centres
Ranked #6 of 12 in Best Survey Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
Alchemer LLC, based in Louisville, Colorado, publishes small-team pricing both monthly and annually, with an annual discount on every plan. Surveys are unlimited on all three plans; the limit is responses, from 75,000 to 125,000 a year.
A 7-day trial runs without a card, and accounts can be placed in US, Canadian, EU or Australian data centres. Past three users the route is the quoted Business Platform, where the published comparison ends.
What stands out
Workflows
Regional data centres
7-day trial
Where it costs you
Professional and Full Access plans are limited to three users
Business Platform pricing is not published
Right for
Teams needing survey workflows plus a chosen data-centre region for stored responses
Wrong for
Large teams wanting published pricing beyond three users
United StatesFree plan; per-user plans published; Business tier quoted
Survey suite that scales from one user to research teams
Ranked #7 of 12 in Best Survey Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
QuestionPro, Inc. publishes three tiers before the quoted Research Suite: Essentials, Advanced and Team Edition. Question types rise from 30 to 38 to 46 across them, and per-user prices are published for Advanced and Team Edition.
The tiering is user-driven, not feature-driven only: Team Edition starts at five users and 100,000 responses a year, so a team of three is stuck between Advanced seats and a plan it cannot buy.
What stands out
Conjoint analysis
Per-user pricing
Offline surveys
Where it costs you
Research Suite requires ten or more users
Essentials caps at 200 responses per survey
Right for
Research teams wanting conjoint analysis without signing an enterprise contract first
Wrong for
Solo users needing more than one seat on low-cost plans
United StatesFree plan; per-user plans published; Research Suite quoted
Survey tool inside the Zoho family with a capped free plan
Ranked #8 of 12 in Best Survey Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingAsia-Pacific
Zoho Survey is one product in a group whose own legal page lists Zoho Corporation Pvt. Ltd. in India among its entities. The free plan includes three active surveys; paid plans add response volume (12,000 a year on Basic), SMS distribution on Plus, and Tableau, Zoho CRM and Google Sheets integrations on Pro.
Students receive Plus at no cost and teachers a 50% discount. The Enterprise plan, with three users and SSO, lists user management and SSO.
What stands out
Free plan
Zoho integrations
Offline surveys
Where it costs you
Free plan allows 100 responses per survey
Multilingual support starts at Pro and SSO at Enterprise
Right for
Existing Zoho customers wanting surveys that connect to Zoho CRM
Wrong for
Multilingual research teams on the lowest paid plan
Survey platform with 400+ templates, a respondent panel and team plans
Ranked #9 of 12 in Best Survey Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
SurveyMonkey Inc. is headquartered in San Mateo and sells through regional entities, among them SurveyMonkey Europe UC. Published team plans carry 50,000 or 100,000 responses a year, with overage per response, and Enterprise is quoted for five or more users.
Basic users see limited responses, and downgraded accounts lose responses older than 365 days. Exports of large surveys fall back to CSV, and files stay downloadable for 14 days.
What stands out
Respondent panel
Team plans
Template library
Where it costs you
Exports are limited to paid plans
Team plans need at least three users
Right for
Marketing and HR teams wanting familiar surveys and a respondent panel
Wrong for
Individuals needing a single paid seat or very large exports
United StatesFree Basic plan; team plans per user per month, published; Enterprise quoted
Experience suite whose survey tool is priced by planned usage
Ranked #10 of 12 in Best Survey Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestNorth America
Qualtrics LLC lists its address as Provo, Utah and describes itself as co-headquartered there and in Seattle. Its pricing page says customers pay for planned usage, measured as interactions for customer experience, employee count for employee experience and interactions including survey responses for market research.
The export menu is broad, with CSV, TSV, Excel, XML, SPSS, Google Drive and Tableau, but the company warns that not all formats ship with all licences.
What stands out
Usage-based quote
Research suite
Wide export formats
Where it costs you
No prices are listed; every purchase starts with a request
Export format availability depends on the licence
Right for
Universities and large organisations running structured, regulated research programmes at scale
Wrong for
Small teams that need to buy and start in one afternoon
United StatesQuoted per organisation, by usage metric
Research and experience platform assembled from several older vendors
Ranked #11 of 12 in Best Survey Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestElsewhere
Forsta states that Confirmit, FocusVision, Dapresy, Rio SEO, InMoment and ReviewTrackers merged into one platform, and reports more than 3,000 employees and over 2,500 clients.
Its research side lists diaries, focus groups and panel management alongside surveys. The site names offices from South Bend and Boston to Oslo, Hamburg and Trivandrum rather than one headquarters, which is why the country is left unstated here.
What stands out
Market research
Merged platform
Consulting-led
Where it costs you
No pricing is shown on the site
No single headquarters or legal country is named
Right for
Research agencies and enterprises consolidating several research tools into one platform
Wrong for
Small teams wanting self-service signup and a price list
Not stated by the vendorSold through a sales conversation
DIY research surveys inside an enterprise experience platform
Ranked #12 of 12 in Best Survey Software in 2026.
Pricing on requestNorth America
Medallia, Inc. gives its privacy office address as McLean, Virginia. Agile Research offers templates, 80+ languages, maxdiff and conjoint analysis, and respondent access through a third-party panel provider.
The pricing page covers the whole Experience Cloud under one model, Experience Data Records, and sends buyers to sales. The checkmarket.com address redirects here, so evaluate it as a continuation of that product.
What stands out
Enterprise suite
Third-party panels
Conjoint and maxdiff
Where it costs you
Pricing is quoted through Experience Data Records
Agile Research is a module of a wider platform
Right for
Enterprises already measuring customer experience on the Medallia platform and its panels
Wrong for
Teams buying a standalone survey tool at a small, predictable cost
United StatesQuoted per organisation, by experience data record volume
Survey software lets an organisation write questions, send them to respondents by link, email or inside a website or app, and collect, filter and export the answers for analysis. 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
9 of the 12 tools here publish what they cost; the other 3 quote per organisation. The ones you can compare without a sales call: LimeSurvey, Formbricks, Survicate, SurveySparrow, Sogolytics, Alchemer, QuestionPro, Zoho Survey, SurveyMonkey.
02
Decide how much the jurisdiction matters
These 12 vendors are established in 5 countries across 4 regions (North America 7, Europe 3, Asia-Pacific 1, Elsewhere 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: LimeSurvey, Formbricks. Hosting one yourself trades a subscription for maintenance.
A survey tool is priced by the response counter, not the seat
Every plan in this market sells an allowance that depletes. SurveyMonkey bills team plans at 50,000 or 100,000 responses a year and charges per response beyond that. Survicate gives Growth buyers 250 responses a month, LimeSurvey's Basic cloud plan 1,000 a month, and SurveySparrow's free plan only 75 a quarter. Alchemer allows 75,000 a year on its cheapest plan.
A customer panel of 200 people answering monthly pulses fits some of these and breaks others, while one large annual study fits only the yearly pools. Count the responses you collected last year, not the surveys you sent. Annual plans from Alchemer reward the committed buyer, while SurveyMonkey's three-user minimum means a single person still pays for a team.
Multiply invitations by realistic completion rates before choosing a tier.
Find out whether the allowance is monthly, quarterly or yearly.
Ask what overage costs per response, and whether surveys stop when the cap is hit.
Research methods and feedback widgets are different products
Some tools here exist to ask a customer one question inside a product. Survicate, Formbricks and SurveySparrow fire short surveys on events and sit in a website or app. Others are built for a questionnaire with a defined sample: QuestionPro lists conjoint analysis, Medallia's Agile Research adds maxdiff, conjoint and third-party panels, and SurveyMonkey sells respondents through SurveyMonkey Audience.
Qualtrics prices market research per interaction, including video minutes. Buying a widget tool for a pricing study, or a research suite for a one-question pulse, are both common mistakes, and each is costly in a different way. Medallia and QuestionPro both name conjoint analysis, which matters only if you intend to run one.
Write down the method first: pulse, benchmark, conjoint or panel study.
Check whether respondents come from your list or need purchasing.
Test one real survey end to end in a trial before committing.
Check the export before you trust the archive
Survey data is only useful if it can be analysed elsewhere. LimeSurvey exports to CSV, Excel, R, STATA and SPSS, though long text answers are truncated in SPSS. Qualtrics offers CSV, TSV, Excel, XML and SPSS but says formats vary by licence. SurveyMonkey limits exports to paid plans, drops to CSV above 100,000 responses and keeps files for 14 days.
Formbricks and LimeSurvey can also be run on your own infrastructure, which removes the dependence entirely. Alchemer lets you choose a US, Canadian, EU or Australian data centre at setup. Ask the vendor to show the export of your own pilot data, not the sample in a help article. A survey archive that cannot be reopened in your analyst's software is a liability.
Export a test survey in the format your analyst uses and open it.
Ask how long responses are kept after a downgrade or cancellation.
Confirm whether the export format is part of your plan.
Where a quote hides the real cost of Qualtrics, Medallia and Forsta
At the enterprise end the price list disappears. Qualtrics asks you to forecast usage, Medallia prices by Experience Data Record across its whole cloud, and Forsta directs buyers to an expert. Sogolytics shows the other pattern: a published survey maker next to quoted suites for customer and employee experience.
Forsta also says it merged Confirmit, FocusVision, Dapresy, Rio SEO, InMoment and ReviewTrackers, so the module you evaluate may sit on a different history than the demo suggests. Medallia's address for CheckMarket now redirects to its own page, a reminder that product names in this market change owners and websites. Sogolytics, SurveyMonkey and QuestionPro all pair a published entry tier with a quoted top tier, so check where yours sits.
Ask for the price at your forecast volume in writing before the pilot.
Request the list of modules included in the quote, not just the survey tool.
Ask how a product acquired from another vendor is migrated and supported.
What goes wrong most often when buying survey software
Choosing on the free plan alone, when SurveySparrow allows 75 responses a quarter and Zoho Survey 100 per survey.
Forecasting seats instead of responses, which misprices Survicate, Formbricks and SurveyMonkey whose plans meter responses.
Assuming self-hosted means free, when LimeSurvey and Formbricks move updates, backups and uptime onto your own staff.
Skipping an export test, then finding that SurveyMonkey caps large exports at CSV or that a Qualtrics format is outside the licence.
07
Frequently asked questions
8 answers
What is the best survey software in 2026?
LimeSurvey leads our ranking of 12. The only entry here whose code is public under the GPL (version 2 or later) and can be run on your own server, so exit is simple: the database is yours.
Cloud plans are published with response caps, starting at 1,000 responses a month on Basic. Self-hosting moves updates, backups and uptime onto your own staff, and the tight Basic cap pushes active teams up a tier.
Which survey tools publish their pricing?
9 of the 12, with the pricing model each one publishes:
LimeSurvey: Free plan; cloud plans per month or year, published; Community Edition to self-host.
Formbricks: Free plan; cloud plans per month, published; self-host with Docker.
Survicate: Per plan per month, published; 10-day trial only.
SurveySparrow: Free plan; paid plans billed yearly by responses and users.
Sogolytics: Free plan; published tiers by response volume; enterprise quoted.
Alchemer: Free plan; per-user plans published; Business tier quoted.
QuestionPro: Free plan; per-user plans published; Research Suite quoted.
SurveyMonkey: Free Basic plan; team plans per user per month, published; Enterprise quoted.
The other 3 quote per organisation.
Is there a free survey tool?
LimeSurvey, Formbricks, SurveySparrow, Sogolytics, Alchemer, QuestionPro, Zoho Survey, SurveyMonkey offer a free tier or a free self-hosted edition.
Where are these survey software vendors established?
In 5 countries across 4 regions: North America 7, Europe 3, Asia-Pacific 1, Elsewhere 1.
LimeSurvey: Germany.
Formbricks: Germany.
Survicate: Poland.
SurveySparrow: United States.
Sogolytics: United States.
Alchemer: United States.
QuestionPro: United States.
Zoho Survey: India.
SurveyMonkey: United States.
Qualtrics: United States.
Forsta: Not stated by the vendor.
Medallia: United States.
Which survey tools are open source?
LimeSurvey, Formbricks.
Which survey tools can you host yourself?
LimeSurvey, Formbricks. The other 10 are hosted by the vendor only.
What should you use instead of LimeSurvey?
Formbricks and Survicate are the next two on this page. Formbricks is for Product teams embedding feedback surveys in their own app or website; Survicate is for SaaS and web teams triggering short surveys on customer actions.
Who should not buy LimeSurvey?
Teams wanting in-product pop-ups or a managed respondent panel. Self-hosting means your staff handle PHP updates, backups and uptime.
If your survey software product belongs among these 12, 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.
