SurveyMonkey vs. Google Forms: Which should you use? [2026]

Google Forms and SurveyMonkey are leaders in their category for different reasons: one is a simple form tool that nearly everyone already has free access to, and the other has been the poster child for survey creation for over two decades.

SurveyMonkey, despite its cuddly name, has evolved into a distinctly corporate tool focused on things like market research, Net Promoter Score surveys, and brand health tracking. Google Forms, meanwhile, is hugely popular for sending out free forms and surveys, and it's also often the best tool—and certainly the most economical one—for internal forms that collect data from employees.

Both platforms have made changes recently, including the addition of AI features. So for this article, I created a range of forms and surveys to see how things have developed. After spending time in each app, setting up mock surveys, and tinkering with features, here's what I found.

Table of contents:

• Google Forms vs. SurveyMonkey at a glance

• Google Forms is easier to get started with

• SurveyMonkey makes complex surveys easier to build

• Google Forms gives you more for free

• SurveyMonkey has more advanced features

• Both apps integrate with Zapier

• Which should you choose?

Google Forms vs. SurveyMonkey at a glance

Here's a quick overview of the differences between each app, but keep reading for the full breakdown.

Google Forms is easier to get started with

All you need to use Google Forms is a Google account. So if you already use Gmail, there's no extra step required to sign up, no new password, and no digging around for confirmation emails. If you're evaluating form software for your business, this is an even bigger deal, since everyone on your team who has a Google Workspace license already has access to Google Forms.

Once you're in the Google Forms dashboard, you can start a new form from scratch or choose from 17 basic templates. The template options aren't robust, by any means, but depending on what you're collecting data for, you might find something that saves you a bit of time.

If you decide to create a form from scratch, you can choose from 12 different question types, including dropdowns, file uploads, ratings, linear scales, and date and time fields. To the right of your form, a small, vertical toolbar gives you quick access to add questions, images, videos, and sections as you build.

Google Forms can also help you generate answer types automatically. For example, I started typing a question about rating the customer experience, and Google Forms automatically provided a linear scale answer type. I did the same with the question, "When would you like to schedule your appointment?" and it generated a date field for the answer.

You can customize your form by uploading a header image, and if you do, the form's color scheme will automatically adapt to match. From there, you can choose your fonts, text color, and background color. Most Google Forms look more or less the same, so there's a limit to how much you can sync them with your brand. But for most use cases, like internal employee surveys and informal sign-up sheets, the available options should give you enough to work with.

Depending on your plan, you can use AI to build forms even more quickly. Gemini in Google Forms, as the feature is called, is a solid entry into the AI form builder category, though it's not as impressive as others I've tested, like Jotform—or SurveyMonkey, for that matter (more on that in the next section). And in most cases, you can't access it unless you're on at least a mid-tier paid plan.

Still, you can quickly spin up forms by describing what you need. In my testing, the results were accurate, though there are limitations—I couldn't get Gemini to generate forms with built-in skip logic, for example. Another handy feature is the ability to generate a range of possible questions, select the ones you want, and add them to your form instantly.

Once people start responding, it's easy to access the results. Just click the Responses tab, and you'll be able to see data presented in a summary view, a question-based view, and an individual responder view. You can even see new results come in as responders submit without needing to refresh.

When you click a button labeled "Link to Sheets," your responses will be sent directly to Google Sheets, where you can conduct more rigorous data analysis. Or, you can connect Google Forms to Zapier and send your data wherever you want.

SurveyMonkey makes complex surveys easier to build

Google Forms is unbeatable for building simple forms fast. If you need a sign-up sheet or a quick feedback form, it's probably the right move. But the more complicated your form or survey gets, the likelier you are to end up spinning your wheels before eventually realizing it can't handle everything you need. And if you're prone to writer's block, it'll take you even longer, since most of the form-building work in Google Forms happens manually. Some paid plans include Gemini AI, which helps, but even then, you can't keep chatting with AI to dynamically modify your form after it's created.

With SurveyMonkey, you get multiple starting options. You can build a survey from scratch, choose from 500+ templates, or create your survey with AI. With the Build with AI feature, you can pick a sample prompt, write your own, or just copy and paste your entire project brief and see what comes out the other side. You can get as detailed as you want, and within seconds of submitting, you'll have a complete survey ready for editing and sending. You can then keep refining it in a chat window, asking it to change the tone or reword questions.

Even if you're creating a survey from scratch, you can still take advantage of SurveyMonkey's Question Bank. Tell SurveyMonkey what kind of survey you want to create from a dropdown menu of choices, and it will recommend questions and answer choices to go with them. From there, just choose the options you like and add them into your survey.

SurveyMonkey also lets you recycle questions you've used before. Instead of having to duplicate an old survey, and edit it from there (hello, Google Forms), SurveyMonkey stores questions you've used in prior surveys and lets you quickly add them to new projects.

There are a few scenarios where you'll still need to do manual work to get the outcome you want. If you need advanced branching logic, question and answer piping, or payment and signature integrations, you'll need to set those up yourself—though you can still use AI and SurveyMonkey's Question Bank to speed up the rest of the process.

Google Forms gives you more for free

As long as you have a Google account, you can access Google Forms for free. You can add unlimited questions and receive and store up to 500,000 responses per form, with 15 GB of storage to hold it all (or more if you're on Google Workspace). You can also invite collaborators, export your results anywhere, and add your logo and change colors and fonts.

AI is the only thing that requires an upgrade. You need to be on Google Workspace Business Standard (for work) or Google AI Pro (for personal accounts). You may also be able to access Gemini in Google Forms for free by signing up for Google Workspace Experiments.

SurveyMonkey does have a free Basic plan, but it's pretty limited. You're capped at 10 questions per survey, and you can't collaborate with anyone unless you upgrade to a team plan. Worst of all, you can only view 10 responses per survey. That means that realistically, SurveyMonkey's free plan only works for testing, unless your goal is just to survey a half dozen friends about where to go for brunch.

That said, SurveyMonkey includes more free features than it used to. You get 175+ templates, 13+ question types, skip logic, scored quizzes, and—unlike Google Forms' free plan—the ability to build with AI.

So how much does SurveyMonkey cost? The cheapest plan is Starter Annual at $25/month, which—as you might guess from the name—is only offered with annual billing. It's only for individual users and includes just 2,500 responses per year, and from what I can tell, you'll only see it if you sign up for the free plan first, then go to the pricing page while logged in.

If you prefer to pay month-to-month, there's a big pricing leap to $149/month—and even then, you'll face a 1,000-responses-per-month cap. For teams, your cheapest option is $30/user/month with a minimum of three users, billed annually, for 50,000 responses per year. If you go over the response limit, you'll pay $0.15 for each additional response.

SurveyMonkey has more advanced features

Google Forms covers the basics, but there's a lot it can't do. SurveyMonkey goes much further, both in terms of features (like advanced logic and AI scoring) and use cases (like on-demand market research with access to millions of panelists).

Form logic is a great example of this. With Google Forms, you can use a simple "jump to section" function to skip certain parts of the form based on how users answer. SurveyMonkey lets you skip individual questions, show or hide entire pages, use answer piping to reference data you collected earlier in the form, and randomize question order. You can also use disqualification logic to screen people out of your survey. And with in-survey A/B testing, you can show different versions of a question to different respondents to see if the wording changes how people answer.

SurveyMonkey is even more powerful for research studies. You can buy responses from a panel of 335 million people in 130+ countries, with options to filter by over 200 criteria including age, income, and location. Responses start at $1 each. SurveyMonkey also offers ready-made studies (starting at $1,000) for market research backed by real methodology, including product concept testing, packaging testing, name testing, and logo testing. According to SurveyMonkey, results can arrive within an hour.

Once you get your responses, either from your own audience or from respondents you've recruited through SurveyMonkey's panel, its analytics platform gives you plenty to work with. You can filter and compare results, customize your charts, and track how answers change over time. With a paid plan, you'll get AI analysis features that gauge sentiment, flag low-quality responses, and sort open-ended answers into themes.

Finally, SurveyMonkey has a mobile app, and Google Forms doesn't. It's nice to have the option to check your survey results on the go, and with AI, it's actually pretty feasible to spin up an entire survey from the comfort of your smartphone.

But there's also a bit of an edge case that matters a lot to some people: offline surveys. SurveyMonkey has a separate mobile app called SurveyMonkey Anywhere that lets you collect offline responses in places that don't have a reliable internet connection, like trade shows, retail outlets, or while doing field research. Just know that offline surveys are only available for users on the Enterprise plan.

Both apps integrate with Zapier

SurveyMonkey offers over 200 native integration options, including Salesforce, Mailchimp, and HubSpot. Google Forms has a smaller selection of integrations, but it works nicely with the rest of Google Workspace (especially Sheets), and you can extend it with add-ons.

Both Google Forms and SurveyMonkey integrate with Zapier, so you can connect them to thousands of other apps, sending your survey data wherever it needs to go. Describe the workflow you want—say, "when a feedback form comes in, log it in Sheets and alert the account owner in Slack"—in an AI tool like Claude, Cursor, or ChatGPT, and your agent can build it and deploy it to Zapier. It then runs on Zapier with triggers, retries, and a run history instead of disappearing when you close the chat. Agentic management fixes common problems like timeouts and expired connections, and you can see every workflow in one place. And because it works across 9,000+ apps, you can build workflows across your entire tech stack. Learn more about how to automate Google Forms and how to automate SurveyMonkey.

Google Forms or SurveyMonkey: Which should you use?

If you're not quite sure which platform to go with, here are some final thoughts to keep in mind as you make your decision.

Choose Google Forms if:

• Your budget is $0

• You're creating forms for personal use or internal teams

• You already use Google Workspace and don't want to add another app to your stack

• You need to collect a lot of responses without paying for them

• You're building simple forms that don't need advanced logic, piping, randomization, or survey methodology

Choose SurveyMonkey if:

• You're creating surveys that will be used to drive real business decisions

• You need advanced features like branching logic, answer piping, or A/B testing

• You want the ability to modify and analyze surveys by chatting with AI

• You want on-demand access to survey respondents for market research studies

Related reading:

• The best online form builder apps

• The best survey apps

• The best free survey tools and form builders

• 6 Google Forms settings you should know about

• Google Forms vs. Jotform: Which should you use?

• WPForms vs. Gravity Forms: Which WordPress form plugin is best?

• The best Google Forms alternatives

This article was originally published in April 2019 by Laura McPherson. The most recent update was in October 2026.