Google Forms vs Jotform vs Tally: Which Form Builder?

Your booking form needs to do two things a plain contact form doesn’t: collect a deposit and receive a photo from the client. Google Forms is right there in your Google account, but it isn’t obvious it can handle either one. That’s usually the moment people start comparing Google Forms vs Jotform vs Tally.

All three build forms without code. The difference is where the limits kick in: payments, file uploads, logic and how many responses you can collect.

This comparison uses only the official help and pricing pages of each tool.

Infographic: Google Forms, Jotform or Tally? 5 questions: do you need to take payments, will people upload files, do you need conditional logic, how many responses a month, where should responses go

Google Forms vs Jotform vs Tally: the short answer

Pick Google Forms if you need simple questions, answers in Google Sheets and nothing to collect money. Pick Tally if you want payments, file uploads without a login and logic on a free plan with no fixed submission cap. Pick Jotform if you need a specific payment gateway and can work within its monthly limits.

Simple survey, RSVP or contact form: Google Forms.
Deposits, photos and branching questions on a budget: Tally.
Payments through PayPal, Square or another specific gateway: Jotform.

Feature	Google Forms	Jotform	Tally
How you get it	Your Google account; included in all Google Workspace plans	Free Starter plan; paid plans from $34/month billed annually	Free plan; Pro from $24/month billed yearly
Response limit without upgrading	Up to 500k per form (from September 2026)	100 per month	Unlimited, under a fair use policy
Collect payments	Not described in Google’s help	Yes, 10 payment submissions a month on Starter	Yes, through Stripe
File uploads	Yes, respondents must sign in to Google	Yes, up to 1 GB per file; 100 MB space on Starter	Yes, 10 MB per file on free, no login
Conditional logic	Section jumps on Multiple choice and Dropdown	Yes	Yes, free
Calculations	Quiz points only	Form Calculation widget	Calculated fields, free
Webhooks, Zapier, Make	Not listed in Google’s help	Yes	Yes, free

Free plans and their limits

Google Forms has no plan of its own. You create forms at forms.google.com with your Google account, and the Workspace pricing page includes Forms in every business plan. Limits are per form: up to 300 pieces of content (Edit your form), and from September 2026, Google’s responses help page says each form can have up to 1 GB of total storage (not counting uploaded files) and up to 500k responses.

Jotform‘s free Starter plan is the tightest of the three. The pricing page lists:

5 forms and 100 fields per form
100 monthly submissions and 10,000 monthly form views
100 MB of upload space and 500 total submission storage
10 monthly payment submissions
Jotform branding on your forms, removable on a paid plan

Watch the storage number: Jotform’s pricing FAQ says that once you exceed it, the oldest response is deleted to make room.

Tally offers unlimited forms and submissions on its free plan, “as long as you stay within our fair usage guidelines.” The Fair Use Policy gives examples of extensive usage: consistently collecting 50,000 submissions a month, 100 GB of uploads a month (or 500 GB stored), or sending 50,000 email notifications a month. Beyond that, Tally offers a custom plan. Free forms show a “Made with Tally” button; removing the branding needs Pro.

Paid plans

Google Forms has no Forms-only upgrade; it’s part of every Workspace plan, starting with Business Starter at $7 per user per month with a 1-year commitment.

Jotform and Tally list a monthly price and a lower annual one:

Plan	Billed monthly	Billed annually	Main limits
Jotform Bronze	$39/month	$34/month	25 forms, 1,000 submissions/month, 1 GB, 100 payments/month
Jotform Silver	$49/month	$39/month	50 forms, 2,500 submissions/month, 10 GB, 250 payments/month
Jotform Gold	$129/month	$99/month	100 forms, 10,000 submissions/month, 100 GB, 1,000 payments/month
Tally Pro	$29/month	$24/month	No branding, no 10 MB file limit, respondent emails
Tally Business	$89/month	$74/month	Pro plus email verification and data retention controls

Prices checked in October 2026. Plans and prices change, so confirm on the official pricing page (Jotform, Tally, Google Workspace) before you buy.

For a year of Jotform Bronze, that’s $34 × 12 = $408 billed annually, or $39 × 12 = $468 if you pay month to month. Tally’s Pro help page lists Pro at $290 per year. Jotform has no free trial but offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.

If you handle health information, Jotform’s pricing page lists its optional HIPAA features on Gold and Enterprise plans only; this isn’t legal advice.

Payments and file uploads

Taking a deposit

Google Forms: Google’s official Forms help doesn’t describe any way to collect payments in a form.

Jotform: the payments page lists 40+ payment gateways, including Square, PayPal, Stripe and Authorize.Net. Jotform says it never charges extra transaction fees; you pay your processor’s rate. Starter allows 10 payment submissions a month, Bronze 100.

Tally: its payment forms guide says you need a free or Pro Tally account and a free Stripe account. Type /payment, set the price and currency, then click Connect with Stripe. Standard Stripe fees apply, and Tally adds no fee on top. Tally doesn’t support recurring payments.

Receiving photos and documents

Google Forms: the File upload question requires respondents to sign in to a Google Account, and the files land in a new folder in your Google Drive. For a simple setup, see our guide to a Google Forms contact form for your website.

Jotform: the default file size limit is about 10.6 MB, and you can raise it up to 1 GB per file. Go to Form Builder, click the File Upload field, then the Gear icon, and set Limit File Size on the Options tab, according to Jotform’s file size guide. Files count toward your upload space: 100 MB on Starter.

Tally: file uploads work on every plan, and respondents don’t need to log in. The free plan accepts files up to 10 MB each; Pro removes that limit.

Conditional logic and calculations

Google Forms uses sections for logic: click More at the bottom right and choose Go to section based on answer. The help page notes this works only on Multiple choice and Dropdown questions. There’s no calculation field, only quiz scoring: turn on Make this a quiz in Settings and assign points (quiz help).

Jotform puts logic under Settings > Conditions > Show/Hide Field (show or hide guide). For totals, discounts or fees, add the Form Calculation widget from Add Element > Widgets (calculation guide). Starter includes all features.

Tally says its conditional logic is free with no limit on conditions. Type /logic to jump pages, show or hide blocks, or require answers. Calculated fields are free too, and the result can set the price in a payment block.

Integrations and where responses go

Google Forms keeps it simple. Under Responses, click Link to Sheets to send answers to a spreadsheet, or More > Get email notifications for new responses for an email alert. To pick another spreadsheet, use Select destination for responses (help).

Jotform creates a notification email automatically, but Starter is limited to one notification email and one recipient per form (email notifications guide). In Settings > Integrations you’ll find Google Sheets, Webhooks, plus official Zapier and Make integrations.

Tally lists Google Sheets, webhooks, Zapier and Make as free for all users, plus Notion, Airtable and Slack (integrations). Email alerts to yourself are free, while confirmation emails to the person who filled in the form are a Pro feature.

To pass answers on to other apps, see our Zapier vs Make comparison.

Which one should you choose?

There’s no single winner in Google Forms vs Jotform vs Tally. It depends on what your form has to do:

A quick survey or contact form, and you already use Google: Google Forms comes with your Google account and keeps answers in Sheets.
A form that takes a payment and a photo, starting free: Tally, as long as Stripe works for you and files stay under 10 MB.
You need PayPal, Square or another specific gateway: Jotform, keeping an eye on the 10 payment submissions a month on Starter.
You expect more than 100 responses a month: Google Forms (up to 500k per form), Tally’s free plan, or a paid Jotform plan.

Frequently asked questions

Can Google Forms take payments?

Google’s official Forms help doesn’t describe any built-in way to collect money. For deposits, Tally works with Stripe and Jotform connects to 40+ gateways.

Is Tally really free?

Tally’s pricing page says unlimited forms and submissions are free within its fair usage guidelines. Pro adds no branding, larger uploads and respondent emails.

How many submissions does Jotform’s free plan allow?

Starter allows 100 submissions a month across all forms, with 500 stored in total; Bronze allows 1,000 a month, per Jotform’s pricing page.

Which form builder lets people upload files without an account?

Tally’s file upload guide says respondents can upload files without signing up. Google Forms requires a Google Account sign-in for its File upload question.

Sources

Your Next Step

Today, list what your form must do: take a payment, accept files, branch on answers, and how many responses you expect a month. Then build a test version in the matching tool and send yourself one response. That settles Google Forms vs Jotform vs Tally for your own case. For more help, browse our Forms & Automation guides.

Fernando Pompeu

Fernando Pompeu is a journalist and digital content writer with more than 8 years of experience in media outlets and news portals. He writes to explain things clearly and without jargon. At PlainSetup, he publishes step-by-step guides to the everyday tools small businesses run on, based on each tool’s official documentation and written for owners without an IT team.