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The 12 best free survey tools and form builders in 2024

By Miguel Rebelo · August 26, 2024
A hero image with the logos of the best free form and survey apps

Online forms and surveys are some of the best ways to get the information you need from your audience. And whether you're creating a simple registration form or a detailed market research survey, you need an app to help you collect the information—and then do something with it.

There are countless form and survey tools available, and a lot of them cost a pretty penny. Here, we're looking at the ones you can get for free.

I've been updating this article for a few years running, and this year, I spent about a week testing several dozen free survey tools and form builders that you can use to keep that proverbial finger on the pulse—here are the best ones I found. Take a look, and see which one will work best for your forms and surveys.

The 12 best free survey tools and form builders

  • Google Forms for the fastest form creation

  • Microsoft Forms for Microsoft 365 users

  • Zapier Interfaces for automation

  • Tally for versatile pop-up forms

  • Jotform for building forms from a template

  • SurveyPlanet for question templates

  • Cognito Forms for accepting payments on your forms and surveys

  • Youform for a free Typeform alternative

  • forms.app for generating a form with AI

  • Formshare for conversational AI forms

  • Formbricks for product teams

  • Fillout for Notion and Airtable users

What makes the best free survey maker or free form builder?

How we evaluate and test apps

Our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. Unless explicitly stated, we spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.

There's a small sea of form and survey software out there, and not all of it is built the same. Some are outdated platforms with confusing interfaces, as if the '90s never left the building. Others offer jaw-dropping feature sets, with an equally face-cramping price tag.

Most free survey apps and form builders will let you create a form or survey with basic input fields and show you the submissions, so you can sift through the data. More advanced solutions let you improve the look and feel of your forms, analyze your results, and add useful features such as skip logic, payment support, or access restrictions.

While I was testing each free online survey maker, here's what I was looking for:

  • Free plan features. The more the word "unlimited" appears for forms, submissions, and questions, the better. If there are some limitations, they should be compensated by other features on offer, so you can create a survey for your specific use case.

  • Ease of use. The best form builders have simple menus and user interfaces, clear instructions, and an overall intuitive experience.

  • Design and templates. When designing a survey, you need to stay on brand, so I was looking for pleasing one-click themes and powerful design controls.

  • Question types and logic. What kinds of information can you ask from your users? How do those fields work in practice? I kept my eye on the variety of question types as well as the logic available.

  • Reports and analytics. There's no use in gathering data if you can't understand it. I paid attention to how reports and analytics worked in each free online form builder I tested.

To get a good feel for each app, I signed up, started a form or survey from a template, and then added all kinds of questions. I answered my own questions in all kinds of fun ways (it got old pretty quick, I assure you), got a feel for what it was like to take a survey from one of these apps, and then looked at how that data was laid out in the reports. Based on that testing, these 12 free form and survey builders were the best—and each one is labeled for its strengths, specializations, or target audiences.

If you can't find what you're looking for below, you have a couple options:

  1. Check out Zapier's lists of the best form builder apps and the best survey apps. Most of those options have a price tag, but they're not going to break the bank.

  2. See if you use an existing app that already has forms attached to it. For example, Airtable, ClickUp, and Asana all have form-building features. If you're already paying for one of those apps, you might have what you need. 

One last note: If you have a WordPress website and are looking for form plugins for lead generation, you won't find those here. I do have a pick for pop-up forms, but WordPress is a whole different can of worms—here are the best WordPress form plugins.

The best free form builders and survey apps at a glance

Best for

Standout feature

Free plan

Google Forms

Fastest form creation

Versatile and intuitive interface

Unlimited everything

Microsoft Forms

Microsoft 365 users

Live sync of submissions into Excel

Unlimited everything

Zapier Interfaces

Automation

Trigger automations through forms

Free for 2 Interfaces (and unlimited forms within them)

Tally

Versatile pop-up forms

Configurable pop-ups for websites

Free for unlimited questions, submissions, and forms

Jotform

Starting from a template

Thousands of templates, advanced design tools

Free for 5 forms, 100 submissions /month, 1,000 views/month, and 10 payments via form

SurveyPlanet

Using question templates

Detailed analytics with geographic information

Free for unlimited forms, questions, and submissions

Cognito Forms

Collecting payments on forms

Low commission on payments, advanced skip logic

Free for 500 submissions/month with 1% commission for each sale

Youform

A free Typeform alternative

Includes a meeting scheduling block

Free for unlimited forms and submissions

forms.app

AI form building

AI-generated form questions

Free for 5 forms, 100 submissions /month, and 1,000 form views/month

Formshare

Conversational AI forms

Adaptive to the survey-taker

Unlimited everything

Formbricks

Product teams

Versatile app surveys

Free when self-hosted, 500 submission limit when hosted on the Formbricks cloud

Fillout

Notion and Airtable users

Lots of question types

Free for up to 1,000 form submissions/month


Best free form builder for the fastest form creation

Google Forms (Web)

Google Forms, our pick for the best free form builder for the fastest form creation

Google Forms pros:

  • Completely free

  • Versatile

Google Forms cons:

  • Cookie-cutter design

Google Forms: simple, straightforward, and fast. Anyone, no matter their skill level or experience with form software, can put together a new form quickly. The features are robust, and the pricing contains two of my favorite words: free and unlimited.

Unlimited forms, unlimited questions, unlimited submissions, and unlimited collaboration. If you have a Google account, you can access it for free. Each form you create counts toward your account's 15GB quota, but each one is really small, so you'd have to survey the whole world (and then some) to max out the storage limit.

The interface is simple and powerful, with the Google user experience you're used to. A small floating element on the right lets you start common actions like adding a new question or a new section. Because it's Google, when you type a new question, it tries to guess what kind it is. When I started typing "How do you rate…", Forms automatically updated the question type to linear scale. This is helpful for beginners and saves advanced users some time, so it's a win-win.

The design controls are decent, letting you pick a color scheme and fonts and add a header image. This is enough to stand out and to reach a pleasing end result fast. There are form templates and quiz support, and all the core reporting features are in place. And if you need skip logic, it's hidden but there: add some sections to your form, click the three vertical dots on a question, and choose what happens depending on the input.

Once you have your data, you can connect Google Forms to Zapier to be sure it gets to the right place. Zapier will automatically create tasks based on responses, send submissions to a Slack channel, or create new email subscribers based on submissions—no matter which apps you use. Learn more about how to automate your Google Forms—including how to integrate Google Forms with Slack—or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Send email via Gmail for new Google Forms submissions

Send email via Gmail for new Google Forms submissions
  • Google Forms logo
  • Gmail logo
Google Forms + Gmail

Share Google Forms responses in a Slack channel

Share Google Forms responses in a Slack channel
  • Google Forms logo
  • Slack logo
Google Forms + Slack

Create Trello cards from new Google Forms responses

Create Trello cards from new Google Forms responses
  • Google Forms logo
  • Trello logo
Google Forms + Trello

Google Forms price: Free for unlimited everything

Best free form builder for Microsoft 365 users

Microsoft Forms (Web)

Microsoft Forms, our pick for the best free form builder for Microsoft 365 integrations

Microsoft Forms pros:

  • Completely free

  • AI features for form design and optimization on the free plan

Microsoft Forms cons:

  • Limited design control, despite the theme variety

If you're a native of the Microsoft software suite, you'll be pleased to know that Microsoft Forms is a thing. And what a great thing it is. It's also part of the unlimited everything club. You don't have to have an active Microsoft subscription to use it, but make sure you're logged in to your free Microsoft account when you visit the page (the website might take you to a subscription trial if you're not).

The app is getting a lot of upgrades. A couple years ago, it got live submission sync to Excel so you don't have to wait to analyze the data in the spreadsheet. Last year, it added more powerful sharing tools in the form of QR codes and Teams and Outlook sharing—in addition to a niche tool that converts Word and PDF documents into forms.

This year, Microsoft Forms got its Microsoft Copilot AI features. You can start a new form from a simple prompt and edit the questions later. As you build, you get AI-powered recommendations on how to improve the content to make it easier for your respondents to fill it out. This is added on top of the cool AI design suggestions, making Forms feel like a more well-rounded AI form builder—just keep in mind that not all of these AI tools are available on the free plan.

It's still tightly integrated with the rest of the 365 suite, making it a pretty good companion to all your other Microsoft apps. Let's hope that the integration trend continues. And while I'm on the topic, Microsoft Forms itself doesn't integrate with Zapier, but Excel does, so you can use that as a base to trigger further automations. Here are some examples.

Add new Jotform submissions to Excel spreadsheet rows

Add new Jotform submissions to Excel spreadsheet rows
  • Jotform logo
  • Microsoft Excel logo
Jotform + Microsoft Excel

Add new Jotform submissions to Excel as rows in a table

Add new Jotform submissions to Excel as rows in a table
  • Jotform logo
  • Microsoft Excel logo
Jotform + Microsoft Excel

Add new Facebook Lead Ads leads to Excel

Add new Facebook Lead Ads leads to Excel
  • Facebook Lead Ads logo
  • Microsoft Excel logo
Facebook Lead Ads + Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Forms price: Free for unlimited everything. (Forms Pro is no longer available; it's now part of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Voice's software offering, starting at $200 per 2,000 survey responses per month.)

Looking for another business-oriented form builder? Zoho Survey offers plenty of enterprise-grade controls, especially on the security front. The free plan isn't as generous as in Microsoft Forms—your forms can only have up to 10 questions and get 100 responses—but the advanced features may be more useful for you.

Best free form app for automation

Zapier Interfaces (Web)

Zapier Interfaces, our pick for the best free form app for automation

Zapier Interfaces pros:

  • Trigger automations through forms

  • Store data in an automation-first database

Zapier Interfaces cons:

  • Form design isn't as customizable as other apps

Zapier Interfaces is a bit different from the other form apps on this list because it's not just for forms—you can create landing pages, client portals, onboarding hubs, and even a lightweight CRM. But forms are often at the center of all of those things, and Interfaces' form builder is easy to use.

You can create simple forms either from scratch or from a set of templates. And all the submission data will be stored inside Tables, another Zapier product that works like a no-code cloud database.

While you can only create two interfaces for free, you can add as many forms as you'd like to those interfaces. It doesn't limit submissions, but each table can only hold up to 2,500 records at a time for free, so be sure to back up a few responses from time to time. While there, you can see a list of submissions and set up a few views to look at the data.

The reason Zapier made this list is how it seamlessly adds automation to your forms. You can trigger workflows off submissions or using buttons in your database, making forms the starting point for automation and data transfer across thousands of apps. For example, you can have a client onboarding form, and as your client fills out the input fields, you can trigger automations that set everything up inside your CRM, accounting app, knowledge base, and client portal—that's a lot of admin time saved.

Inspired? Check out how you can use Interfaces for forms and surveys.

Screenshot of a contact us form built in Zapier Interfaces.
Contact Us Form Template
Easily receive new messages from customers and automatically get notified of new submissions.
Try it
New Client Intake Template Preview
New Client Intake Form Template
Easily onboard new customers and work them through a process.
Try it
Screenshot of Survey Template
Survey Template
Collect feedback quickly with automatic notifications.
Try it

A note for transparency: I'm writing this article for the Zapier blog, but the Zapier team had no influence on me selecting Interfaces for the list. (In fact, earlier in its development, I considered it and didn't include it.) I tested it alongside all the other apps I considered, and it made the cut on its own merits.

Interfaces price: Free for 2 Interfaces (with unlimited forms within each interface); paid plans from $20/month.

Best free form builder for versatile pop-up forms

Tally (Web)

Tally, our pick for the best free form builder for for versatile pop-up forms

Tally pros:

  • Very generous free plan with some advanced features

  • Elegant design

Tally cons:

  • No reports or analytics

Someone lands on your site, interested to learn more about you and what you do. Wouldn't that be a great time to ask a couple of questions? With Tally, you can do so by adding a configurable pop-up to your website.

When you click to share, you can choose whether to embed the form, show it as a full page, or display it as a pop-up. Out of these options, the pop-up one lets you customize the most. It lets you control when and where it appears, whether you want a dark overlay, and the width of the box. You can even add an emoji for extra flair. This makes Tally great for adding pop-up forms to your website, no matter what you need the form for.

The app itself feels a lot like Notion, from the way the user interface works, to how each question is treated like a block, to the way you can add new blocks with a slash command. This design carries out to your forms, the elegance and minimalism being the main draws here. But if you want more advanced design control, you'll have to jump straight into CSS, as there's no way to control the look of the forms.

Tally also offers unlimited everything on its very generous free plan. The only big limitations are that there are no custom domains or white-labeling, and there's a 10MB file size cap for uploads and a hefty 5% processing fee for form payments (on top of the Stripe commission). You can throw these limits out of the window for $29 a month.

Paid plan or not, there aren't advanced reports or analytics, so you'll have to move your data to another app that can do it for you. Integrate Tally with Zapier and send over that data quickly and seamlessly.

Update Mailchimp subscribers from new Tally responses

Update Mailchimp subscribers from new Tally responses
  • Tally logo
  • Mailchimp logo
Tally + Mailchimp

Create a contact in Hubspot for every new Tally form response

Create a contact in Hubspot for every new Tally form response
  • Tally logo
  • HubSpot logo
Tally + HubSpot

Send email notifications via for new Tally respondents

Send email notifications via for new Tally respondents
  • Tally logo
  • Gmail logo
Tally + Gmail

Tally price: Free for unlimited questions, submissions, and forms; advanced features available on paid plans, starting at $29/month.

Only looking to add newsletter subscribers? HubSpot's free pop-up forms were born for this kind of use case. They're simple to implement and use, so give them a try if growing your newsletter is your sole priority.

Best free form builder for starting from a template

Jotform (Web, iOS, Android)

Jotform, our pick for the best free form builder for starting from a template

Jotform pros:

  • Lots of widgets and extensions

  • Advanced design customization tools available

Jotform cons:

  • Getting started with reports is a bit confusing

With a friendly and colorful user interface, Jotform helps you build exactly what you want by offering thousands of templates. Yep, thousands—from familiar categories like marketing all the way to niches like nail artistry.

The template overdose compensates for the free plan restrictions. On Jotform, you can receive 100 submissions/month (with a maximum storage of 500 in total), have 1,000 views on each form/month, and receive 10 payments through your forms. There's also a 5-form limit and a 100-question limit. To take advantage of this free plan, you'll need to export your results regularly and then delete them from the platform. I was a little hesitant to include Jotform on the list for that reason, but the templates pushed me over the edge.

Jotform is also really easy to use. Your form sits in the middle of the screen, showing you a preview of what the respondents will actually see. When you expand the right menu, you can add more elements to the form; by opening the left menu, you edit the form's style. If you don't want to mess with advanced controls, you don't have to. But when you start gaining confidence, take some time to explore the menus, as there are a lot of design tools and settings you can change.

Jotform brings 29 form fields to the table, including unique ones like fill-in-the-blank and product list. You can also use widgets to perform more advanced actions: add checkboxes, embed PDFs, accept date reservations, or collect signatures with a Docusign integration. You can even accept payments by integrating with any of 32 different providers.

When you look to the top-left Jotform logo, you'll notice a dropdown where you can switch between each of the Jotform apps. One converts responses to PDF. Another lets you see the form's analytics or even build reports formatted as a PowerPoint presentation. These reports and analytics features are above average for this app category, so you'll be able to take a deeper look into the data.

You can also connect Jotform to Zapier, so you can automatically create tasks, spreadsheet rows, contacts, calendar events, and more based on form submissions. Learn more about how to automate Jotform, or try one of these pre-made templates.

Add new Jotform submissions to Excel spreadsheet rows

Add new Jotform submissions to Excel spreadsheet rows
  • Jotform logo
  • Microsoft Excel logo
Jotform + Microsoft Excel

Add new Jotform submissions to Excel as rows in a table

Add new Jotform submissions to Excel as rows in a table
  • Jotform logo
  • Microsoft Excel logo
Jotform + Microsoft Excel

Add Google Contacts from new Jotform form submissions

Add Google Contacts from new Jotform form submissions
  • Jotform logo
  • Google Contacts logo
Jotform + Google Contacts

Jotform price: Free plan includes 5 forms, 100 submissions/month (500 submission storage total), 1,000 views/month, and 10 payments via form/month; paid plans start at $39/month.

Learn more: Google Forms vs. Jotform

Best free survey maker for using question templates

SurveyPlanet (Web)

SurveyPlanet, our pick for the best free survey maker for using question templates

SurveyPlanet pros:

  • Solid analytics with detailed geographic information

  • Unique features, such as randomizing answers in multiple-choice questions

SurveyPlanet cons:

  • Form editor has no live preview as you build your form

SurveyPlanet brings together a great free plan, a polished user experience, and a useful question bank to help you articulate what you need to ask. And as a member of the unlimited everything club, SurveyPlanet doesn't hold back on submissions, questions, or forms. You can create and receive as many as you need without limitations.

Everything is intuitive to use, but the real magic lives in the question bank. Pick question categories, and then tick all the subcategories that make sense. I picked Customer Feedback and then clicked to see Airline Passenger Feedback questions. "Was your flight for business or for pleasure?" Check off all the questions you'd like to add, and in they go.

SurveyPlanet offers nine question types, including the uncommon image choice. Each question type has some basic settings, such as minimum and maximum character counts for essay-type answers or randomizing options in multiple choice.

You can choose one of 16 free themes to style your form, and that's about the only major customization option you have. The good news is that the base layout and interface look really good. And when you need to see the results, SurveyPlanet offers lists and graphs to show you what respondents said. You can also see the OS, browser, and location (down to the town's name) for each form submission.

With such an extensive question library and a generous free plan, SurveyPlanet is a great place to start if you're not quite sure what you should be asking.

SurveyPlanet price: Free for unlimited forms, questions, and submissions; paid plans start at $20/month.

Best free form builder for collecting payments on forms

Cognito Forms (Web, Windows)

Cognito Forms, our pick for the best free form builder for collecting payments on forms

Cognito Forms pros:

  • Good collection of templates

  • Advanced skip logic

Cognito Forms cons:

  • Not very flexible

When compared with other form apps that offer payments, Cognito Forms is the most generous: it only adds 1% on top of the payment platform's commission. The free plan allows you to receive 500 submissions per month, but everything else is unlimited. This should be ok if you only sell via forms from time to time—but if it's your main sales channel, consider upgrading to the paid plan sooner so you don't get capped out.

You'll notice that Cognito Forms' interface isn't as sharp as the competition. But the form-building features are robust, and the final result looks great for your users. You can edit fonts and input styles, add header and background images, and customize colors on your forms. It's easy to put together something simple and appealing without much effort. 

You'll get over 150 form templates to start from, and each template comes with preset questions and design. On top of that, there are 17 question types, including fields to add pricing and currency information. You can also configure advanced skip logic to show/hide questions or form pages, and even let respondents submit payments right away or later on.

The reports section is a bit lacking, as you only have access to a list of submissions. There are no data visualization features, so you'll have to export the data and process it somewhere else. This reinforces the main use case of selling via forms, but it's solvable by connecting Cognito Forms to Zapier, so you can automatically send your form data wherever you need it. Learn more about automating Cognito Forms, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Add new Cognito Forms entries to a Google Sheets spreadsheet

Add new Cognito Forms entries to a Google Sheets spreadsheet
  • Cognito Forms logo
  • Google Sheets logo
Cognito Forms + Google Sheets

Add subscribers to Mailchimp from a Cognito Forms entry

Add subscribers to Mailchimp from a Cognito Forms entry
  • Cognito Forms logo
  • Mailchimp logo
Cognito Forms + Mailchimp

Create Trello card from Cognito Forms entries

Create Trello card from Cognito Forms entries
  • Cognito Forms logo
  • Trello logo
Cognito Forms + Trello

Cognito Forms price: Free plan includes 500 submissions/month with 1% commission for each sale through the platform; paid plans start at $15/month.

Best form builder for a free Typeform alternative

Youform (Web)

Youform, our pick for the best free Typeform alternative

Youform pros:

  • Includes a meeting scheduling block

  • Very easy to use

Youform cons:

  • Only offers submissions list, no reports

Typeform is amazing. The builder and form-filling user experience are so polished. But all it has for free is a limited trial, not a solution you can use in the short- to medium-term. If you rely on a superb form experience to kickstart your side hustle—but don't have the bucks right now—Youform is a good choice to get you off the runway.

With Youform, you get free forms and submissions all the way—you'll only pay if you want the Stripe integration, custom domains, or to replace the Youform branding with your own. This lite version of Typeform means that some parts of the experience aren't as polished. You'll notice there aren't as many features as in its older sibling, but all the fundamentals are there: 15 question types with skip logic available, simple design controls to choose colors and fonts, and share via link or embed.

When replying to a form, everything looks consistent with the Typeform experience. Clicking an option triggers the familiar wave visual effect. The questions slide up smoothly when you answer. The only downsides are that it isn't as fast to process some questions and there are no keyboard shortcuts to complete the survey without using your mouse. Only minor obstacles, considering how everything else is so well put together.

To make things easier on the admin side, Youform has a few key integrations. You can send the submissions to Google Sheets and analyze them there. Do you want to get a notification as soon as you get a new response? Connect Slack and see them stream in. But the last one is the most useful, even if it requires a little configuration: the webhook. Whenever a submission comes in, it gets forwarded to another app. Youform doesn't integrate with Zapier yet, but Zapier can catch webhooks, so you can still automate what happens after each form submission.

Add info to a Google Sheet from new Webhook POST requests

Add info to a Google Sheet from new Webhook POST requests
  • Webhooks by Zapier logo
  • Google Sheets logo
Webhooks by Zapier + Google Sheets

POST new Facebook Lead Ads to a webhook

POST new Facebook Lead Ads to a webhook
  • Facebook Lead Ads logo
  • Webhooks by Zapier logo
Facebook Lead Ads + Webhooks by Zapier

Send emails with new caught webhooks

Send emails with new caught webhooks
  • Webhooks by Zapier logo
  • Email by Zapier logo
Webhooks by Zapier + Email by Zapier

Youform price: Unlimited forms and submissions; paid plans from $29/month.

Best free AI form builder

forms.app (Web)

forms.app, our pick for the best free AI form builder

forms.app pros:

  • Good design controls

  • Robust analytics

forms.app cons:

  • Limited advanced features on the free plan

Lots of form apps are adding AI in one way or another, but forms.app takes the cake. Using it is as simple as using ChatGPT: you input a prompt explaining what kind of form you want and how many questions it should have. forms.app's AI engine will draw up each question with the appropriate labels, question types, and order.

I wanted a customer feedback form with 10 questions, and I got it right away. Other than some minor issues with lowercase letters, the questions all made sense and were well-written. Just always be sure to review everything before publishing.

You don't have to drop money to use these features, but unfortunately, forms.app's free plan isn't as generous as the competition: five forms with 100 submissions per month and 1,000 form views per month. For a couple of forms for an isolated project, it should do well. If you need more, the lowest paid plan goes for $25 per month, raising those limits to 25 forms and 1,000 submissions.

There are many reasons to upgrade to the paid plan. The app's user interface feels great to use, plus there are a lot of question types, skip logic, and advanced design controls. AI is one bonus on top of an already strong platform, not just a shiny gimmick. And if you like saving time creating your form with AI, you can save some extra by integrating forms.app with Zapier. Here are some examples to get you started.

Create Trello cards for new forms.app form responses

Create Trello cards for new forms.app form responses
  • forms.app logo
  • Trello logo
forms.app + Trello

Create Google Sheet rows for new forms.app form submissions

Create Google Sheet rows for new forms.app form submissions
  • forms.app logo
forms.app

Create Asana tasks for new forms.app form submission

Create Asana tasks for new forms.app form submission