The short version. Tally is free with unlimited submissions, which makes most of this comparison academic. Fillout gives you 1,000 responses a month free and $15 after that. Typeform is the prettiest and charges $28 a month for 100 responses, which works out at 28 cents each. Jotform is the one with every integration and every compliance option. Airtable is the answer when the form was never the point and the database was.
Every price here came off the vendor’s own pricing page on 16 August 2026.
Building the process behind the form? We keep directory shortlists for operations managers and review them on a schedule.
Count your responses before you look at anything else
This category hides its real cost in the response limit, and the spread is wider than in anything else we have compared. Same job, wildly different bills:
- Tally is free with unlimited forms and unlimited submissions under fair use.
- Fillout gives you 1,000 responses a month free, then $15 for 2,000.
- Jotform gives you 100 a month free, then $39 for 1,000.
- Typeform gives you 100 a month on Basic at $28, and 1,000 on Plus at $56.
A thousand responses a month costs nothing on Tally, $15 on Fillout, $39 on Jotform and $56 on Typeform. Those are not small differences, and the products are more similar than that spread suggests.
So we ranked on cost at real volume, whether the free tier is a plan or a trial, and whether the form connects to whatever has to happen next. The AI features across this category are mostly the same thing, which is generating a form from a description, and none of them should decide your purchase.
1. Tally: free, unlimited, and slightly suspicious for it
Free with unlimited forms and unlimited submissions under fair usage guidelines. Pro $24 a month, or $288 a year with two months off. Business $74 a month, or $888 a year. Verified 16 August 2026.
Unlimited submissions on a free plan is not a trial trick, it is the product. Tally makes money on the Pro tier’s branding removal, custom domains, payments and integrations, and leaves the actual form collection uncapped.
It works like a document. You type, and typing a slash gives you a question. Anyone who has used Notion is productive in about four minutes, and that matters because forms are usually built by whoever is free rather than by a specialist.
What you pay for on Pro is looking like your own company rather than like Tally, plus the integrations that make a submission trigger something. For a lot of small teams the free tier genuinely never runs out.
Who it is wrong for: anyone needing HIPAA compliance, deep enterprise integrations or a long audit history. This is a lean product and the depth is not there.
2. Fillout: the most generous paid tiers
Free with 1,000 responses a month. Starter $15 a month, or $180 a year, with 2,000 responses. Pro $40 a month, or $480 a year, with 5,000. Business $75 a month, or $900 a year, unlimited. Verified 16 August 2026.
Fillout is what you buy when Tally’s free tier is fine but you want the branding gone and better logic without a large jump. At $15 for 2,000 responses it is the best value in the middle of this market by a wide margin.
Conditional logic is where it is genuinely stronger. Multi-page forms that branch based on earlier answers, calculations, and scheduling built in are the things that turn a form into an intake process, and Fillout handles them without the workflow becoming a diagram.
Its integrations with databases are also better than the category norm, which matters if the responses need to land somewhere structured rather than in an inbox.
Who it is wrong for: anyone whose form is three fields and a submit button. You will not use any of the reason to pay, and Tally does that for free.
3. Typeform: pays for design, charges by the response
Basic $28 a month, or $336 a year, with 100 responses a month. Plus $56 a month, or $672 a year, with 1,000. Business $91 a month, or $1,092 a year, with 10,000. Talent $119 a month with 3,000. Growth Flow $266 a month with 10,000. Verified 16 August 2026.
Typeform invented the one-question-at-a-time form and it still does it best. Completion rates on long forms really are higher, the interaction feels considered, and for a customer-facing survey where the experience is part of the brand impression, that is worth something real.
The response limits are the problem and they are severe. One hundred responses a month on a $28 plan is 28 cents per response. If a campaign does well you hit the ceiling in a week, and the upgrade to 1,000 responses doubles the price to $56, which is still less than Fillout gives you for $15.
Buy it when the form is customer-facing and the design matters commercially. Do not buy it for internal intake, where nobody cares and you are paying per submission for a feeling.
Who it is wrong for: anything high volume. The pricing model actively punishes success, which is a strange property for a lead capture tool.
4. Jotform: the one that has everything
Starter free with 5 forms and 100 monthly submissions. Bronze $39 a month, or $408 a year, with 25 forms and 1,000 submissions. Silver $49 a month, or $468 a year, with 50 forms and 2,500. Gold $129 a month, or $1,188 a year, with 100 forms and 10,000. Enterprise custom. Verified 16 August 2026.
Jotform has been around long enough to have built every integration, every field type and every compliance option somebody has ever asked for. HIPAA, signatures, payments, PDF generation, approval flows.
That is exactly why to buy it, and it is a narrow why. If you need HIPAA compliance or a specific integration nobody else has, this is the answer and the price is irrelevant. If you do not, you are paying $39 for 1,000 submissions that Fillout provides within a $15 plan.
Note the form count limits as well as the submission limits. Twenty-five active forms on Bronze catches agencies and operations teams who accumulate forms over time and never delete any.
Who it is wrong for: straightforward use. It is the most feature-dense and the most cluttered, and the depth costs you speed on the simple job.
5. Airtable: when the form was never the point
Free tier. Team $20 per seat per month billed annually. Business $45 per seat per month billed annually. Enterprise Scale custom. Its pricing page does not state AI credit allowances per tier. Verified 16 August 2026.
Here is the pattern worth naming. Somebody builds a form, the responses go to a spreadsheet, then a status column appears, then a second sheet, then a view for each person, and eight months later you have built a database badly.
If that is where your forms end up, the form was never the product. Airtable’s forms are unremarkable and they write directly into a real structured base with typed fields, views and an API, which is what the process actually needed.
It is the most expensive option here at $20 a seat, and it is not really a form builder. It is on this list because a meaningful share of people comparing form builders should be comparing databases.
Who it is wrong for: public-facing forms where design matters, and anyone who only needs the responses in an inbox. Per-seat pricing also gets expensive fast if several people need access.
Teams this list will not help
Regulated data collection. HIPAA, clinical or financial data narrows this to Jotform or an enterprise tool, and that determination comes first.
Developers building product forms. A form inside your own application is a coding job, not a subscription.
Large survey research. Sample management, weighting and panel work are a different category entirely.
Anyone whose problem is what happens after submission. Every tool here collects the response. If your issue is that nobody actions them, that is a process problem and a fancier form makes it slightly faster to accumulate.
Considered, and left off
Google Forms. Free, unlimited, and adequate for internal use. If it is doing the job, none of this is an upgrade worth paying for.
Formstack and the enterprise builders. Sold by quote to organisations with procurement, which puts them outside what this comparison can honestly cover.
Notion forms. Fine if you already live in Notion and the responses belong in a Notion database. Not a reason to adopt Notion.
The AI form generators. Every tool here can now build a form from a description, and it is a two-minute saving on a job you do occasionally. Do not let it decide anything.
Questions people ask us
What does 1,000 responses a month cost?
Nothing on Tally, $15 on Fillout, $39 on Jotform Bronze and $56 on Typeform Plus. That is the whole comparison in one line, and it is why Tally ranks first.
Is Typeform worth four times the price?
Only when the form is customer-facing and completion rate has commercial value, such as a lead capture form or a customer survey representing your brand. For internal intake it is money spent on a feeling nobody is having.
Is Tally’s free tier really unlimited?
Unlimited forms and submissions under fair usage guidelines, per its own pricing page. The paid tier sells branding removal, custom domains, payments and integrations rather than capacity, which is an unusual model in this category and the reason it stands out.
Which handles conditional logic best?
Fillout, comfortably, and it is the main reason to move off Tally’s free tier. Multi-page branching, calculations and scheduling are all handled without the form turning into a flowchart you are afraid to edit.
Should I use a form builder or a database?
If the responses need a status, an owner and a next step, you want a database with a form on the front. That is Airtable. If they need to arrive somewhere and be read, a form builder is correct and cheaper.
Do the AI features matter?
Barely. They all generate a form from a description, which saves a couple of minutes on a task you do rarely. Choose on response limits and logic, and treat the AI as a small convenience.
See our maintained directory picks for operations managers.
Last reviewed: 16 August 2026. Every price was read off the vendor’s own pricing page on that date. Airtable does not publish AI credit allowances per tier and we have said so rather than estimating. We review this page quarterly.
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