Best survey software in 2026: nine tools by price, response limits and who each suits

Best survey software: the nine tools at a glance

Three questions pick the tool: how many responses arrive in your busiest month, how many people read them, and whether the form must take payments or meet a compliance rule. The nine tools below are priced in US dollars on a named billing basis from each vendor's own pages, as read on October 13, 2026.

• Yay! Forms for AI-sorted comments: Starter is $9 a month, billed yearly, with 200 form submissions a month.
• Tally or Fillout for a no-cost plan; Fillout adds unlimited seats.
• SurveyMonkey or Zoho Survey for research-style surveys.
• Typeform or Jotform for forms that take payments.
• Microsoft Forms or Google Forms for a team already inside Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.

For a team of a few people, see best survey software for small business. For forms rather than surveys, see best form builder software.

Survey software with a free plan: Tally, Jotform, Zoho Survey and Fillout

Tally gives unlimited forms and submissions at no cost within its fair use policy, which gives 50,000 submissions a month and 100 GB of file uploads a month as examples of extensive use. Pro adds branding removal, a custom domain, team members, partial submissions and drop-off analytics, at a price shown on Tally's pricing page.

Fillout's free plan allows 1,000 responses a month with unlimited seats. Starter is $19 a month billed monthly or $15 billed annually and allows 2,000, Pro removes all branding and allows 5,000, and Business allows unlimited responses. Past the limit, Fillout's forms keep collecting.

Jotform's free Starter plan allows 5 forms and 100 submissions a month, and paid plans have no trial. Bronze allows 1,000 submissions, Silver 2,500 and Gold 10,000, at $39, $49 and $129 a month billed monthly or $34, $39 and $99 billed annually. Past the limit, Jotform disables the form and shows Form over quota.

Zoho Survey's free plan allows 10 questions per survey and 100 responses per survey a month. Google Forms lists no price on its Forms page. Yay! Forms' comparison page calls it free with unlimited responses, while Google's help center gives each form up to 500k responses. Google's Gemini summaries of open-text answers need an eligible Workspace or Google AI plan and 3 to 200 responses.

Best for reading open comments: Yay! Forms

Sentiment, emotion and keyword analysis are listed on all three Yay! Forms plans, and its help center says you switch text analysis on for each open-text question. Insights summarize one field's answers for a period you pick and need at least 5 non-null responses in that field. The AI info page and comparison pages place the plain-language chat and text classification, which sorts open answers into categories you define, on Plus.

Starter costs $19 a month on monthly billing or $9 a month, billed yearly, with 200 form submissions a month. Plus costs $39 a month on monthly billing or $29 a month, billed yearly, with 2,000, and Professional $79 or $59, with 20,000. There is no free plan. To test Yay! Forms before paying, use its 7-day free trial; its terms allow a refund request within 7 days of the first payment and ask 15 days' notice to cancel.

Alerts by email, WhatsApp and Slack are a Plus feature, per the vendor's Slack help article, and the help center documents routes to Google Sheets, Zapier, Make and webhooks. Its AI info page lists no native payment fields. The Yay! Forms review covers the plans in full.

Best for research surveys: SurveyMonkey and Zoho Survey

Yay! Forms' own SurveyMonkey comparison page names advanced statistical analysis and a paid respondent panel as SurveyMonkey's strengths, and Yay! Forms offers neither. SurveyMonkey's Individual plans run from a free Basic plan, with 10 questions per survey and a limited number of viewable responses, to Premier Annual at 40,000 responses a year. Team plans start at 3 users, billed annually, and prices sit on SurveyMonkey's page.

SurveyMonkey's US-English help center separates two limits. On a per-survey limit, the kind the free Basic plan has, responses over the limit cannot be viewed and are deleted one year after collection. On a plan with a monthly or annual account limit, each response over it costs $0.15 USD. See SurveyMonkey alternatives for six tools priced against it.

Zoho Survey is the low-price route for classic surveys: Basic is $7.42 a month, billed annually only, Plus is $35 a month on monthly billing or $25 billed annually, and Pro is $49 or $35 (Zoho's price list).

Best for payments and compliance: Typeform and Jotform

Typeform's pricing page lists payments through Stripe and a Salesforce integration, and Yay! Forms' own Typeform comparison page concedes native Salesforce, payment fields and SOC 2, HIPAA and ISO 27001 certifications to Typeform. Typeform's page puts SSO and HIPAA on Enterprise only, and caps Basic at 750 responses a month with add-ons. Plus is $79 a month on monthly billing or $56 on yearly billing, with 1,000 responses and 3 users.

Jotform has payment fields and, on its pricing page, HIPAA features from Gold, at $129 a month billed monthly or $99 billed annually. Each self-serve plan has one user. Yay! Forms' AI info page says it has no native payment fields and no HIPAA-eligible plans, SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification.

Inside Microsoft 365: Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms has no price of its own. It is one of the apps in Microsoft 365 Business Basic, $7.00 per user a month, paid yearly. Microsoft's support pages document up to 5,000,000 responses per form on work, school and business accounts, and up to 200 on free personal accounts.

They say Copilot in Forms needs a Microsoft 365 account and a Copilot license. Its settings article lists start and end dates and an Accept responses switch, and no cap on response count. Pick it when your team already pays for Microsoft 365.