Comparisons

Typeform vs Tally vs Fillout: Which Form Builder Is Actually Worth Paying For?

Flat vector illustration of a large friendly online form with question bubbles and toggle switches being completed by floating cursors, with sparkles around a glowing submit button

Every form builder can build a form. The real question is what you get before you pay — and what your first paid dollar actually unlocks. Typeform charges premium prices for the most beautiful forms on the internet. Tally gives away unlimited forms and unlimited submissions for free. Fillout sits in the middle with the deepest logic builder of the three. We compared them on the axis that decides this purchase: free-tier generosity, response limits versus price, and how far the logic engine goes. Short version: Tally wins free, Fillout wins power-per-dollar, and Typeform wins only if the form itself is the brand experience.

Quick verdict: If your forms need to be gorgeous and on-brand for lead generation, pay for Typeform — but budget for Plus ($79/mo), because Basic’s 100-response cap won’t survive a real campaign. If you want the most free, Tally’s unlimited submissions cost nothing. If you want the smartest forms — deep conditional logic, 50+ field types, unlimited seats — Fillout’s free 1,000 responses/month and $15/month Starter are the best value in the category.

Typeform vs Tally vs Fillout: At a Glance

Feature Typeform Tally Fillout
Best for Beautiful lead-gen forms Maximum free usage Powerful logic, low cost
Free plan 10 responses/mo Unlimited forms & submissions 1,000 responses/mo
Starting paid price $39/mo ($28/mo annual) $29/mo ($24/mo annual) $15/mo
Responses on entry plan 100/mo Unlimited 2,000/mo
Remove branding Plus $79/mo Pro $29/mo Pro $40/mo
AI form generation Yes Yes Yes
Conditional logic Logic jumps (advanced) Yes (solid) Best-in-class depth
Free trial Free plan instead Free plan instead Free plan instead
Try Typeform Try Tally Try Fillout —

Typeform: The Premium Beauty Pick

Best for: lead-generation forms where the experience itself sells.

Typeform invented the conversational form — one question at a time, beautifully designed — and it still makes the best-looking forms in the business. For lead gen, event registration, and brand-forward quizzes, the format genuinely lifts completion rates: answering feels like a conversation, not paperwork. The AI form builder generates the form from a description, and integrations cover Slack, Zapier, HubSpot, and Salesforce. If your captured leads need somewhere to live after submission, see our best AI CRM for small business guide. If the form is a brand touchpoint, nothing else here looks this good.

Pricing (verified October 2026): Free ($0 — 10 responses/month, Typeform branding); Basic $39/month ($28/month billed annually — 100 responses/month, 1 user); Plus $79/month ($56/month annually — 1,000 responses/month, 3 users, branding removal, custom subdomain); Business $129/month ($91/month annually — 10,000 responses/month, 5 users, drop-off analytics, conversion tracking). Growth Flow ($379/mo) and Talent ($169/mo) serve specialist teams.

Real use cases:

  • A SaaS company running a conversational demo-request form on its pricing page — the format lifts completion versus a static form.
  • An agency building client intake quizzes where the polished experience justifies the agency’s rates.
  • An event organizer collecting registrations where branding and media-rich questions matter.

Pros:

  • The most beautiful, highest-converting form experience available
  • AI-powered form creation plus genuinely advanced logic jumps
  • Trusted at scale — Typeform reports 150,000+ customers including a majority of the Fortune 500

Cons:

  • The free plan (10 responses/month) is a demo, not a product
  • Response caps are the quiet trap: Basic’s 100 responses/month disappears in days on any real campaign — production use really starts at Plus ($79/mo)
  • No offline support; the conversational format frustrates respondents who want to scan all questions first

Tally: The Free-Tier Champion

Best for: anyone who wants unlimited forms and submissions without paying.

Tally is the value disruptor: unlimited forms and unlimited submissions on the free plan — conditional logic, calculations, file uploads, and payment collection included. The Notion-style editor (just type, and blocks become questions) is the fastest builder of the three, with effectively no learning curve. It’s EU-hosted and GDPR-compliant with no cookie tracking, which simplifies life for privacy-conscious teams. The free plan shows “Made with Tally” branding and uses a tally.so subdomain; removing that costs Pro money, but most internal and early-stage use never needs to.

Pricing (verified October 2026): Free ($0 — unlimited forms and submissions within fair use, Tally branding); Pro $29/month (~$24/month billed annually — branding removal, custom domains, unlimited collaboration, partial submissions, advanced customization); Business $89/month (~$74/month annually — data retention control, email verification, version history).

Real use cases:

  • A startup collecting beta signups and user feedback — unlimited submissions free, forever.
  • An HR team running internal pulse surveys — no per-response anxiety, no procurement needed.
  • A freelancer taking client intake forms with payments via Stripe — all on the free tier.

Pros:

  • The most generous free plan in form builders — unlimited everything that matters
  • Fastest builder here; the Notion-style editor needs no training
  • GDPR-compliant, EU-hosted, no cookie tracking — privacy story competitors can’t match at this price

Cons:

  • Advanced analytics are basic — no drop-off tracking to match Typeform’s Business tier
  • No traditional multi-page progress-bar feel; page breaks work differently than Typeform’s flow
  • File uploads capped at 10 MB per file on the free plan

Fillout: The Power-per-Dollar Pick

Best for: teams that need deep logic, integrations, and unlimited seats without enterprise pricing.

Fillout is the builder for people who’ve outgrown simple forms: 50+ field types, 50+ native integrations, payments, scheduling, PDFs, and the best conditional-logic builder of the three — all with unlimited seats on every plan, so adding teammates never inflates the bill. The free plan allows 1,000 responses/month (100x Typeform’s free allowance), and the AI form builder generates forms from a plain-English description. SOC 2 Type II compliance makes it viable for teams with security review processes. If your forms do real work after submission — routing, scheduling, payments — Fillout is the pick.

Pricing (verified October 2026): Free ($0 — unlimited forms, unlimited seats, 1,000 responses/month); Starter $15/month billed annually ($19 month-to-month; 2,000 responses/month); Pro $40/month (5,000 responses/month, full branding removal, custom domain/CSS); Business $75/month (unlimited responses). Annual billing saves 20%.

Real use cases:

  • A services business combining client intake questions with meeting scheduling in one flow — no separate Calendly needed. For scheduling as a standalone category, our AI scheduling assistants comparison breaks down the options.
  • An operations team building approval workflows with conditional routing and PDF generation.
  • A nonprofit collecting applications with payments, on a budget that rules out Typeform Business.

Pros:

  • Best logic builder here, plus scheduling, payments, and PDFs in one tool
  • Unlimited seats on all plans — team size never moves the price
  • Free 1,000 responses/month; cheapest paid entry ($15/mo) of the three

Cons:

  • Design polish trails Typeform — forms look clean, not stunning
  • Smaller template library and community than the incumbents
  • Brand is newer; fewer third-party tutorials and reviews to lean on

Flat vector illustration of three abstract form-builder interfaces side by side with a magnifying glass, coins and a gift box symbolizing free tiers

Head-to-Head: The 4 Criteria That Decide

1. Free-tier generosity. Tally wins outright — unlimited forms and submissions free is unmatched. Fillout is second with 1,000 free responses/month, which is a genuinely usable production allowance. Typeform’s 10 responses/month is last by a mile; it’s a trial with a “free” label.

2. Response limits versus price. Fillout wins: Starter at $15/month (annual billing) buys 2,000 responses; Tally’s Pro at $29/month buys unlimited. Typeform is the worst value on paper — $39/month for 100 responses, and you need $79/month (Plus) for 1,000. If your form gets real traffic, Typeform costs 5x Fillout for the same volume.

3. Logic and AI depth. Fillout wins — the deepest conditional logic, 50+ field types, and AI generation from plain English, plus scheduling and PDF workflows the others don’t attempt. Typeform’s logic jumps are polished but narrower in scope, and Tally’s logic is solid for the price (free) but not the reason you choose it.

4. Design and brandability. Typeform wins and it’s not close — the conversational format, media-rich questions, and full brand control (Plus and up) make forms people enjoy completing. Fillout looks clean and professional; Tally looks simple and functional. If the form is customer-facing marketing, this criterion alone can justify Typeform’s premium.

Final Verdict: Which Should You Buy?

  • Lead generation and brand-forward forms: Buy Typeform — but budget for Plus at $79/month, not Basic. Basic’s 100-response cap won’t survive a real campaign, and branding removal (the thing that makes it look like your form) starts at Plus. If the conversational format appeals but you want an actual chatbot instead of a form, see our 6 best AI chatbot builders for small business.
  • Research surveys with real methodology: Buy Fillout Pro ($40/mo) for logic depth, or consider SurveyMonkey if you need its respondent panel and advanced survey analytics — its paid plans start around $25–39/month for individuals, but the free plan is heavily limited, so it’s a researchers-only pick.
  • Internal forms, HR, and early-stage startups: Use Tally free. Unlimited submissions at $0 is simply unbeatable, and Pro ($29/mo) is there if you ever need white-labeling. Most teams never need to upgrade.
  • Template depth and all-round forms: Jotform deserves a look — 20,000+ templates, a usable free plan (5 forms, 100 submissions/month), and Bronze at $39/month ($34/month annually). It’s the safe incumbent pick when you want every feature in one place.

How We Compared

We scored the three builders on free-tier generosity, response limits relative to price, logic and AI depth, and design/brandability — weighted toward free-tier generosity and true cost-per-response because that’s where buyers consistently misjudge this category (Typeform’s advertised $39 entry price versus its real $79 production price is the classic example). We treated “unlimited” claims at face value only where fair-use terms are published, and we did not invent usage statistics or conversion benchmarks. Pricing checked against the vendors’ pricing pages in October 2026; form builders reprice tiers frequently, so confirm before you buy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Tally really free?

Yes — Tally’s free plan includes unlimited forms and unlimited submissions (within fair use), plus conditional logic, calculations, file uploads up to 10 MB, and payment collection. The trade-offs are “Made with Tally” branding and a tally.so subdomain. Removing branding and adding a custom domain requires Pro at $29/month (about $24/month on annual billing).

Why is Typeform so expensive?

You’re paying for the conversational format and design polish, which genuinely lift completion rates on customer-facing forms. The pricing sting comes from response caps: Basic ($39/month) allows only 100 responses/month, so real campaigns need Plus ($79/month, 1,000 responses) or Business ($129/month, 10,000 responses). If your form gets volume, compare the per-response cost against Fillout ($15/month for 2,000 responses) before committing.

Which is better for surveys: Fillout or SurveyMonkey?

Fillout is the better form builder — deeper logic, cheaper, 1,000 free responses/month. SurveyMonkey’s edge is research-specific: advanced survey analytics, benchmarking, and a paid respondent panel for sourcing answers. If you’re designing the survey yourself and distributing it yourself, Fillout wins. If you need respondents or statistical tooling, SurveyMonkey justifies its price.

Can I collect payments with these form builders?

Yes, all three: Typeform supports Stripe and PayPal on paid plans, Tally includes Stripe payments even on its free plan, and Fillout has built-in payments across plans. Jotform goes further with 40+ payment gateways if payment flexibility is the priority.

Which form builder has the best conditional logic?

Fillout — its logic builder handles complex branching, calculations, and post-submission workflows (scheduling, PDFs, integrations) that go beyond question routing. Typeform’s logic jumps are polished but narrower in scope, and Tally covers the essentials well for free.

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