SurveyMonkey, launched in 1999, is still one of the most recognised survey tools around. It is also one people outgrow quickly. The free Basic plan gives you ten questions per survey, a capped number of viewable responses, one user — and, the limit that catches most people out, no data export at all. Everything useful sits behind a paid tier.
If you are hitting those walls, or you simply want a tool that fits your budget or the way your audience actually answers, there are strong free options. Below are eight, each with what its free plan really includes, what it does well, and where it falls down.
What to look for in a SurveyMonkey alternative
Before comparing tools, work out which of these matters most for your use case:
- What "free" actually means. It ranges enormously. Free can mean unlimited responses (SurveyPlanet, SurveyHero), five forms (forms.app, JotForm), or 25 responses a month (Survicate). Read the cap, not the badge.
- How your audience answers. A static form suits an email or embedded survey. A live, on-screen survey suits a class, meeting or event where you want to react to the answers together.
- Anonymity. Honest feedback needs the option to answer without a name attached, especially for employee or event feedback.
- Export. Check this before you commit. SurveyMonkey blocks export on free, and so do SurveyPlanet and Survicate. Getting your data into a spreadsheet is often the thing you pay for.
- Room to grow. Look at the first paid tier now. Some jump from free to $99 a month.
Quick comparison
| Tool | What the free plan gives you | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| AhaSlides | Unlimited surveys and presentations; 50 live participants per session; anonymous by default | Live feedback with an audience in the room or on a call |
| forms.app | 5 forms, unlimited questions and unlimited responses, with logic and payments | Polished forms that expect a high volume of replies |
| Google Forms | Unlimited forms, questions and responses, synced to Sheets | Simple, no-cost email and internal forms |
| SurveyPlanet | Unlimited surveys, questions and responses; export is Pro-only | High-volume surveys read in-app |
| JotForm | 5 forms, 100 submissions a month, 500 stored in total | Template-driven and mobile data collection |
| QuestionPro | 10 surveys, 100 questions each, 200 viewable responses per survey | Research-grade question types on a budget |
| Survicate | 25 responses a month, 3 seats, no export | Website and in-product user research |
| SurveyHero | Unlimited surveys, questions and responses, active for 30 days each | One-off surveys with a fixed fieldwork window |
1. AhaSlides — the live-survey alternative
If your feedback happens with people in the room or on the call, AhaSlides works differently from everything else on this list. You build a survey in minutes, share a join code or QR, and answers appear on screen in real time as people respond on their phones. You can ask a question in a training session or all-hands, show the group's answers instantly, and talk through them together rather than emailing a summary a week later.
There are two ways to run it. A standalone self-paced survey is shared by link and collects responses without a participant cap. Run the same questions live inside a presentation and the free plan seats 50 participants per session, with unlimited sessions per month.
Pros
- Results appear on screen as people answer, so feedback becomes a shared moment instead of an inbox chore
- Anonymous by default — respondent identity is set per survey and both options work on every plan, including free
- Unlimited surveys and presentations per month, and unlimited sessions
- Question types built for engagement: polls, word clouds, rating scales, open-ended and quizzes
- Participants join in a phone browser, with no app to download
Cons
- Excel export sits on the Essential plan and above, not on free
- Live sessions on the free plan cap at 50 participants
- Free presentations limit interactive slides, so long questionnaires belong in the standalone survey builder rather than in a deck
- For a purely asynchronous email survey, a form-first tool below will fit better — that is the honest trade-off
Free plan: unlimited surveys and presentations, 50 live participants per session, self-paced survey mode, anonymous responses.
Best for: classrooms, workshops, conferences, all-hands and team meetings.
2. forms.app — the most generous free plan for volume
forms.app is a form builder with an AI assistant that drafts a whole form from a short prompt, then lets you refine it in a drag-and-drop editor. Its free plan is unusual: most tools cap responses and give you unlimited forms, and forms.app does the opposite. You get five forms, but the responses are genuinely unlimited.
Pros
- Unlimited responses on the free plan — almost nobody else offers that at this feature level
- Conditional logic, email notifications, payment collection and auto-scoring are all included free
- AI form generation and a question paraphraser speed up the first draft considerably
- Clean, mobile-friendly forms out of the box
- Unlimited team members on free
Cons
- Five forms on the free plan, so you will be archiving old ones to make room
- The template library and integrations start at the Basic tier, despite the homepage pitch
- 10 MB of file storage on free
- forms.app branding stays on free forms
Free plan: 5 forms, unlimited questions, unlimited responses, conditional logic, payments, unlimited team members.
Best for: building a polished form quickly when you expect a lot of replies.
3. Google Forms — the default free option
Google Forms is free with any Google account, unlimited on every axis that matters, and wired directly into Google Sheets. It is the least exciting tool here and, for a great many jobs, still the correct answer.
Pros
- Genuinely unlimited forms, questions and responses at no cost
- Responses sync live to a Google Sheet, so export is free and instant
- No learning curve for anyone who has used a Google product
- Since early 2026 you can close a form automatically after a set number of responses or at a set date and time
- File upload questions are supported
Cons
- Forms look like Google Forms, and there is little you can do about it
- Logic is basic section-based branching — no piping, scoring or advanced routing
- Reporting stops at simple charts; real analysis means going to the Sheet
- File uploads count against the form owner's Drive quota, and respondents usually need to sign in
- The linked Sheet's 10-million-cell limit is the practical ceiling, and it slows down long before that
Free plan: unlimited forms, questions and responses, with free export to Sheets.
Best for: simple internal or email surveys, particularly on Google Workspace.
4. SurveyPlanet — unlimited volume, paywalled analysis
SurveyPlanet has the most generous free plan here on raw volume: unlimited surveys, unlimited questions and unlimited responses, with no monthly reset to watch. The catch is what you can do with the results once you have them.
Pros
- Unlimited surveys, questions and responses on the free plan, with no expiry
- A pre-written question library that saves real time on standard surveys
- Clean, uncluttered builder that is quick to learn
- Pro is unusually cheap for what it unlocks — $20 a month, or $180 a year
Cons
- Exporting results is Pro-only, which is a serious limitation if you plan to analyse in a spreadsheet
- Question branching and skip logic are Pro-only, so free surveys are strictly linear
- Custom themes are Pro-only; free gets basic themes
- No live or real-time presentation mode
Free plan: unlimited surveys, questions and responses; basic themes; results viewable in-app only.
Best for: high-volume, straightforward surveys where reading results in the dashboard is enough.
5. JotForm — templates and mobile data collection
JotForm is a form builder with an enormous template library and one of the better mobile experiences in this category, including an app that collects responses offline and syncs later. Its free tier is real but tight, and the limits that bite are not the ones people expect.
Pros
- Thousands of ready-made templates covering almost every form you might need
- Strong mobile forms and an offline-capable app for field data collection
- Conditional logic and payment fields are available on the free plan
- A large library of widgets and integrations
Cons
- 500 total stored submissions is a lifetime cap, not a monthly one — this is what stops most free accounts, not the monthly figure
- 5 forms and 100 submissions a month on free
- 1,000 monthly form views, which a public form burns through quickly
- JotForm branding on every free form, and a 100-field limit per form
Free plan: 5 forms, 100 monthly submissions, 500 stored submissions total, 1,000 monthly views, 100 MB upload space.
Best for: template-driven forms and mobile or field data collection at modest volume.
6. QuestionPro — research-grade features for free
QuestionPro's free Essentials tier is the closest thing here to SurveyMonkey's feature depth without paying. It is a lifetime free plan rather than a trial, and it includes question types and logic that most free tiers reserve for paying customers.
Pros
- A wide range of question types, including proper research formats most free tools omit
- Skip logic and branching are included on the free plan
- Shareable dashboards with real-time analysis
- 5,000 email invitations on free, which is unusually generous for distribution
- Lifetime free, with no trial clock
Cons
- 200 responses per survey is a viewable cap — the survey keeps collecting past it, but you must upgrade to see the rest, which is worth knowing before you launch
- Capped at 10 surveys and 100 questions per survey
- Single user on free
- The interface is dense, and there is more to learn than with a form builder
- The step up to paid is steep at $99 per user per month billed annually
Free plan: 10 surveys, 100 questions per survey, 200 viewable responses per survey, 5,000 email invitations, one user.
Best for: small-business and academic research where question types matter more than sheer volume.
7. Survicate — surveys where your users already are
Survicate is built for surveys that reach people in context: a pop-up on your website, a prompt inside your product, a one-question rating embedded in an email. Note that the free plan is not listed on the pricing page — you land on it if you decline to upgrade when the trial ends.
Pros
- Website, in-product, mobile, email and link surveys all run from one tool
- 400+ templates covering NPS, CSAT, churn and onboarding research
- Audience targeting and follow-up logic, so you can ask the right subset of users
- 3 team members on the free plan, where most rivals give you one
Cons
- 25 responses a month on free — the tightest cap on this list, and collection simply stops when you hit it
- No data export on the free plan
- The free plan is unadvertised, which makes it awkward to plan around
- Paid tiers start high, from $114 a month billed annually
Free plan: 25 responses a month, up to 1,000 stored responses across active surveys, 3 seats, no export.
Best for: product and user-research teams testing in-product survey targeting before committing budget.
8. SurveyHero — unlimited, but on a clock
SurveyHero is a clean drag-and-drop builder that produces better-looking surveys than most free tools manage. Its free Basic plan is unlimited on volume and limited on time instead, which is an unusual trade and a good one for certain jobs.
Pros
- Unlimited surveys, questions and responses on the free plan
- Attractive default styling, so a free survey does not look like a free survey
- Straightforward drag-and-drop builder with a short learning curve
- Logic and a decent spread of question types on the free tier
Cons
- Each survey stays active for only 30 days after its first response, then needs a paid plan to keep collecting
- Multi-language surveys start at the Business tier, $45 a month billed annually
- True white-labelling on your own domain is Enterprise-only, $125 a month billed annually, and a "Powered by SurveyHero" line persists below that
- A smaller integration ecosystem than JotForm or forms.app
Free plan: unlimited surveys, questions and responses, with a 30-day active window per survey.
Best for: one-off surveys with a defined fieldwork window, like event or course feedback.
How to choose
Start with where your feedback happens. If it is live — in a room, a lecture or a video call — choose a tool built for real-time participation like AhaSlides, where the answers are the discussion. If it is asynchronous, sent by email or embedded on a page, a form-first tool does the job: Google Forms if you want it free and simple, forms.app if you expect volume, JotForm if you want a template to start from.
Then check three things before you build anything. Match the free-plan cap against how many replies you actually expect, not how many you hope for. Confirm you can export the results, because that is the limit most often paywalled. And look at the first paid tier now, so an upgrade later is a decision rather than a shock.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a completely free alternative to SurveyMonkey?
Yes. Google Forms, SurveyPlanet and SurveyHero all offer unlimited surveys, questions and responses at no cost, and AhaSlides offers unlimited surveys and presentations with anonymous responses on its free plan. All four are more generous than SurveyMonkey's ten-question free tier, which also blocks data export entirely.
What is the best SurveyMonkey alternative for live audiences?
AhaSlides. SurveyMonkey does offer live polling, mostly through one-question surveys and its Zoom and Teams integrations, but it has no dedicated presenter mode with results built into your slides. AhaSlides is designed around that: participants answer on their phones and the chart updates on screen as part of the presentation.
Can these alternatives collect anonymous feedback?
Most can. AhaSlides surveys are anonymous by default on every plan including free, with sign-in as the alternative — worth using for sensitive topics like employee wellbeing or honest event feedback, because anonymity lifts both response rates and candour. Google Forms is anonymous unless you switch on email collection. Check the setting on each tool, since some default the other way.
Do I need to pay to export my results?
Often, yes, and it is the limit people notice last. SurveyMonkey's free plan does not allow export at all. SurveyPlanet puts export on Pro, Survicate puts it on paid tiers, and AhaSlides puts Excel export on Essential and above. Google Forms is the reliable free exception, since responses flow straight into a Google Sheet.
What is the catch with free survey tools?
Usually one of four things: a response cap, a form or survey count, a time limit, or a paywall on getting your data out. Every tool on this list has at least one. The trick is picking the one whose limit you will not hit — a 25-response cap is irrelevant for a team retro and fatal for a customer survey.
The bottom line
SurveyMonkey is capable, but its free plan is tight and it was never built around live audiences. If you gather feedback in meetings, classrooms or events, a real-time tool will serve you far better. If you only need simple email forms, a free form builder covers it comfortably. Match the tool to how your audience answers, check the one limit that would actually stop you, and you will get more responses for less money.
Build a live survey and watch the results roll in with the AhaSlides survey creator — free to start, and live in minutes.
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