Most evaluations of form builders rank the tools by price, then by features: which tool allows more responses per month for less money, which has a better conditional-logic engine, which supports file uploads on the free tier. This one organises the category by a different question — one that no pricing page in this category answers, and that buyers reliably discover only after a subscription lapses, a credit card expires, or a plan gets downgraded in the middle of a live campaign:
What happens to a published, live form the day you stop paying?
The answer determines whether respondents reach a working page or a blank screen, and whether responses collected while you were paying are accessible or locked behind a plan you just left. Answers vary significantly across this category; the pricing page is almost never where you find them.
One entry in this guide — Formlet — is a form and survey builder sold once as source code you deploy and run under your own brand, for your own tenants or clients. Formlet gives the lapse question only one answer: nothing happens to a published form, because no subscription exists to lapse. You paid once; the deployment is yours. This page groups eight alternatives by what they do when the billing stops.
Five things worth weighing before you choose
1. The lapse question. What does a published form do when you downgrade, cancel, or miss a payment? The answer falls into four categories: the form goes dark; it stays up but stops accepting when the free-tier cap is reached; response data stays viewable but cannot be exported without restoring the plan; or nothing changes because the software runs on your own infrastructure. Most pricing pages in this category do not state which applies — this guide names the help-center source where a vendor's pricing page is silent.
2. Hosting model. Rental (vendor's infrastructure, vendor's terms), self-hosted open-source (copyleft licence governs what you can do with modifications), or owned code (your deployment, your terms, no ongoing vendor dependency). The hosting model is the most reliable proxy for lapse behaviour: rental rules can change with a pricing update; code you own is set by you.
3. Metering during active use. Monthly submission count, active-form count, storage, seats. A generous ceiling with an undocumented lapse policy deserves more scrutiny than its headline suggests.
4. Fit to the job. Formbricks has repositioned toward in-product experience management, not general-purpose form collection. Form.io is a developer SDK for embedding forms in applications. Branchly handles branching scored experiences where the respondent gets a different ending screen. Formlet collects form submissions from a link or embed.
5. Respondent data tenancy. On a rental, data lives in the vendor's infrastructure under the vendor's terms. On code you deploy, it lives in your Postgres instance. GDPR accountability and data residency travel with the hosting model.
The alternatives, grouped by what a published form does when billing stops
Group D: Nothing to stop
These tools have no billing relationship whose lapse can affect a published form in operation.
Google Forms — free with a Google account
Google Forms has no paid tier and no billing to lapse. A form stays up for as long as the owning Google account exists. The limits are structural: responses land in a Google Sheet (up to ten million cells); file-upload responses consume Drive storage. Since 2026, Google ships a native response-limit control — off by default, not a vendor-imposed ceiling (Google Workspace developer documentation, 2026). No monthly submission limit applies.
Google Forms cannot be rebranded, offered to other businesses as a managed service, or used to collect in-form payments. Respondent data lives in Google's infrastructure under Google's terms. If Google Forms is enough for the job, use it. Nothing in this guide beats free.
Tally — free: unlimited forms, unlimited submissions
Tally's free tier is the most unusual in this category. Verbatim from tally.so/pricing, as of 2026: "Tally gives you unlimited forms and submissions, completely free, as long as you stay within our fair usage guidelines." Conditional logic, file uploads, payment collection, and integrations (Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable, Zapier, Make, webhooks) are included at $0. The Pro plan at $24/month (annual) gates custom domains, branding removal, team collaboration, and analytics. Business at $74/month (annual) adds data retention and email verification.
A lapse from Pro to free is a feature downgrade, not a form shutdown. Because the free tier is unlimited on forms and submissions, a published form would logically continue accepting responses after Pro lapses — the plan boundary is on features, not on capacity. This is inferrable from the documented free tier at HIGH confidence; the specific downgrade flow is in Tally's documentation, not this guide.
Tally does something Formlet does not: give away unlimited forms and submissions at $0 with no infrastructure to run. Formlet's free tier is tighter on storage. A buyer who needs forms for their own organisation with no intention of operating a platform for other businesses should use Tally — the generosity argument runs entirely in Tally's favour.
Formlet — $149, one-time purchase
Formlet is a form and survey builder sold once as source code you deploy and run under your own brand. Your tenants build forms with a drag-and-drop editor and conditional logic, choose between a conversational one-question-at-a-time flow and a classic single-page layout, and collect responses into a filterable, exportable table. In-form payments settle directly into each tenant's own connected Stripe account. This page covers the category for the buyer who wants to own and operate that platform.
The lapse question for Formlet's buyer has no scenario: you paid once, the codebase is yours, and no subscription governs what your published forms do. A form runs for as long as your Node host and Postgres instance run. You are also the maintenance layer — OhMyForm, a self-hosted form builder with nearly 3,000 GitHub stars, was archived in October 2024. Owning the deployment means owning the upkeep.
Formlet requires technical setup — a Supabase project, a Node host, and a Stripe account. It does not include a template library or integration marketplace built across years of users. Respondent recognition of Jotform or Typeform will not transfer to a new deployment. Conditional logic is adaptive data collection only — no cumulative scoring, no result-screen logic. In-form payment coverage in v1: Stripe, PayPal, Square, and Mollie; regional processors are roadmap. AI form generation, Zapier/Make native app, and resumable file uploads are roadmap items.
Try the live demo → · Purchase Formlet →
Group B: Form stays up; response collection stops at the tier cap
These tools have a free tier where the form stays visible but stops accepting when the monthly ceiling is reached. The specific policy for what happens to forms and stored responses on a paid→free downgrade is in each vendor's help center, not the pricing page — each entry names the source.
Jotform — free Starter to $129/month (Gold)
Jotform is the most-metered tool in this category. The free Starter tier allows 5 active forms, 100 submissions per month, 10 payment submissions, 100 MB storage, and 500 total stored submissions. Bronze at $39/month lifts the monthly cap to 1,000; Gold at $129/month to 10,000. All five ceilings apply simultaneously (jotform.com/pricing, 2026). A lapse from Bronze to Starter reverts all five at once — what happens to forms above the 5-active-form limit and to submissions above 500 total is at jotform.com/help, not the pricing page. Read that before running a high-volume campaign on a paid Jotform plan.
What Jotform does that Formlet does not: a template library and integration ecosystem built across many years, and a brand name that respondents recognise. For a Formlet operator, both have to be built from zero.
Typeform — $0 (100 responses/month) to $266/month
Typeform meters on monthly responses. Basic at $25/month (annual) allows 1,000; Business at $83/month (annual) allows 10,000. The free-tier response cap is MEDIUM confidence — two same-day fetches of typeform.com/pricing in research returned different figures; re-verify before publishing (as of 2026). A lapse to free triggers the cap; when it is reached the form stops accepting for the rest of the month. The specific downgrade policy for responses already collected is in Typeform's help center.
What Typeform does that Formlet does not: the reference conversational player that popularised one-question-at-a-time, a mature integration marketplace, and hosted infrastructure. Formlet ships the mode; Typeform ships a decade of brand recognition with it.
Fillout — free (1,000 responses/month) to $75/month
Fillout's free tier allows 1,000 responses per month with unlimited forms and seats. Business at $75/month removes the cap. A lapse to free reverts to 1,000/month; the downgrade flow is in Fillout's help center (fillout.com/pricing, 2026). What Fillout does that Formlet does not: a managed platform with zero infrastructure to run, free for most use cases.
Formbricks cloud — free Hobby (250 responses/month) to $325/month
Formbricks cloud's Hobby tier allows 250 responses per month. Pro at $74/month lifts to 2,000; Scale at $325/month extends further. Formbricks has repositioned toward in-product experience management and survey targeting — a different job from collecting submissions via a link or embed (formbricks.com/pricing, 2026). A lapse to Hobby reverts to 250/month; the downgrade policy is in Formbricks' documentation.
The self-hosted AGPL core is free to run with no cap and no subscription to lapse. The enterprise-edition feature split is not enumerated on the self-hosting documentation page.
Group A: Form goes dark when billing ends
HeyForm cloud — $15 to $40/month (no permanent free tier)
HeyForm's cloud product has three paid plans — Basic at $15/month, Premium at $24/month, Business at $40/month — and no permanent free tier (heyform.net/pricing, 2026). A cloud subscription that lapses ends access to forms and responses stored in the cloud account with no free fallback.
The self-hosted path is categorically different. HeyForm is also an AGPL-3.0 codebase — 8,920 GitHub stars, last pushed 2026-08-07, actively maintained (GitHub API, read 2026-08-07). Self-hosted means your own server, no subscription to lapse, the form stays up as long as your server does. The AGPL licence requires that if you modify the software and offer it as a network service, you make your modifications' source available to your users. For a buyer running it privately for their own organisation, the obligation costs nothing. For a buyer who intends to modify and offer it as their own branded platform for other businesses — the Formlet buyer's job — the clause is the authoritative text to read with legal counsel. The licence text is at HeyForm's repository.
HeyForm self-hosted is free. Formlet is not cheaper than free. The difference is the licence.
Group C: The third state no pricing page publishes
Some tools may hold response history behind a paywall on downgrade — visible in the app but export (CSV, API) requires restoring a paid plan. We found no explicit pricing-page documentation for this on any tool in this guide. Before committing a live campaign to a paid plan at meaningful volume, verify in the help center — not the pricing page — whether stored responses above the free-tier limit are readable or locked, and whether CSV export requires a paid tier.
How to choose
| If you need... | The right pick |
|---|---|
| Form collection for your own organisation at $0, no engineering | Tally (unlimited forms and submissions, free) or Google Forms (no paid tier, no cap) |
| Maximum templates, integrations, and respondent brand recognition | Jotform ($39–$129/month; help center documents lapse behavior at jotform.com/help) |
| The reference conversational form player, hosted and maintained by a vendor | Typeform ($25–$83/month annual; lapse-to-free caps at a monthly response limit) |
| A managed SaaS at $0 with a generous monthly cap | Fillout (1,000 responses/month free; Business $75/month for no cap) |
| In-product experience management: NPS, in-app survey targeting, XM | Formbricks (self-host free AGPL core; cloud $74–$325/month) |
| Self-hosted at $0 for your own company's forms, no resale or rebranding | HeyForm self-hosted (AGPL-3.0, free, actively maintained; cloud starts at $15/month if you prefer managed) |
| Own and operate a form and survey platform under your brand, lapse-proof | Formlet ($149, one-time; commercial licence; no ongoing platform fee; your deployment, your uptime) |
The boundary between HeyForm self-hosted and Formlet is the licence, and it is binary for the operator who intends to run a form platform as a commercial service: AGPL-3.0 requires making your modifications' source available when offering the software as a network service. Formlet's commercial licence permits that use without the AGPL obligation. The tradeoff is $149 once versus $0 in software purchase price with a licence obligation to verify.
Honest verdict
For a buyer who needs forms for their own organisation, the honest recommendation is not Formlet. Tally handles unlimited forms and submissions at $0. Google Forms handles most intake and survey jobs for free. HeyForm self-hosted handles it at $0 in software price on your own server. Formlet is not cheaper than any of these.
Formlet earns its place at one intersection: the buyer who wants to own and operate a form and survey platform as a business — running it under their own brand, for their own tenants, with response data in their own infrastructure. For that buyer, the lapse question answers itself: there is no billing relationship that can affect a published form. The forms run for as long as the server does, and that is the operator's call.
If your job is filling out a form, use whatever is free. If your job is running the platform your clients fill forms on, start at the bottom row of the table above.
Common questions
What actually happens to Jotform forms when you hit the monthly submission limit or let a plan lapse?
Jotform's free Starter plan caps at 100 submissions per month and 5 active forms; a plan that lapses to Starter applies all five ceilings (forms, monthly submissions, payment submissions, storage, total stored responses) simultaneously. What happens to forms above the 5-active-form limit and to responses above the 500-total cap is at jotform.com/help, not the pricing page — worth reading before running a high-volume campaign (jotform.com/pricing, 2026).
On Formlet you own and deploy, the equivalent question does not arise: there is no monthly submission ceiling and no vendor's billing system that can alter what your published forms do. The ceiling is your infrastructure.
Is there a form builder I can pay for once and own, so the lapse question doesn't apply?
Yes. Formlet is sold at $149 as a one-time purchase — no recurring platform fee, no subscription to cancel. You receive the codebase you deploy on your own infrastructure; recurring costs are your Postgres host, Node server, and standard payment processing rates.
For source code at $0, HeyForm self-hosts under AGPL-3.0 (8,920 GitHub stars, actively maintained, last pushed 2026-08-07). The AGPL licence requires making your modifications' source available if you offer the software as a network service. For an operator modifying and running it as their own branded SaaS for other businesses, that clause is the authoritative text to read with legal counsel.
Can I self-host an open-source form builder and avoid a monthly subscription entirely?
Three actively maintained options exist: HeyForm (AGPL-3.0, 8,920 stars, pushed 2026-08-07) — closest in shape to Formlet, includes conversational forms, conditional logic, CSV export, webhooks. Formbricks (AGPL core + enterprise-edition licence, 12,735 stars, pushed 2026-08-07) — repositioned toward in-product experience management; enterprise-edition feature split not enumerated on the self-hosting docs page. Form.io (OSL-3.0, 2,308 stars, pushed 2026-07-23) — a developer SDK for embedding a form runtime in applications, not a deployable SaaS; developer licences from $2,640/year self-hosted (form.io/pricing, 2026). OhMyForm (2,893 stars, AGPL-3.0) was archived 2024-10-31 — do not deploy for new work.
All three maintained options are free in software price and carry copyleft obligations — read the licence text for your use. Formlet's commercial licence covers modifying and offering the platform as your own branded service without the AGPL network-service disclosure obligation.
What does AGPL-3.0 mean for someone who wants to run a form builder as their own SaaS?
AGPL-3.0 adds a network-service clause to GPL-3.0's copyleft: if you modify the software and offer it over a network, you must make your modifications' source available to users. A buyer running an unmodified deployment for their own internal organisation is in a different position from an operator modifying and offering the software as a commercial service to third parties. The authoritative text is the licence file in each repository; this guide does not interpret it.
Formlet ships under a commercial licence that does not carry the AGPL network-service disclosure obligation. The purchase price covers operating the platform as a service for your own tenants. The tradeoff is $149 once versus $0 in software price with a disclosure obligation whose scope depends on how you deploy.
Is Tally really free forever, and what is the catch for form operators?
Tally's free tier is unlimited forms and submissions within fair-use guidelines — documented on tally.so/pricing as of 2026. Tally adds no extra fees on top of Stripe's rates on payment forms. The Pro plan at $24/month (annual) gates custom domains, branding removal, team collaboration, and analytics — not form collection. A lapse from Pro to free is a feature downgrade, not a form shutdown.
For a buyer who only needs forms for their own organisation, Tally's free tier beats Formlet's on every economic comparison. Formlet's free tier is tighter on storage. The one position where Formlet changes the calculation is the operator who wants to own and run the platform itself: Tally cannot be rebranded, modified, or offered to other businesses as your own service. For that buyer, "unlimited responses" in Tally is a feature of someone else's platform, not of yours.