Best Form Builders for Windows
On a Windows PC the best form builder is usually one you open in a browser, and Tally gives away more than most: unlimited forms and submissions within fair use, with payments, signatures and file uploads on the free plan. If the form is an internal survey and your office already runs Microsoft 365, Microsoft Forms is the native choice, sending results straight to Excel, though a free personal account stops each form at 200 responses.
Twelve of the fourteen need nothing but a browser and an account. The exceptions are Gravity Forms and WPForms, plugins that live inside a WordPress site you run yourself. Among the rest, the choice turns on two things: how many responses the free plan allows before it stops collecting, and whether a form can take a card payment without an upgrade.
Our picks
- High volume on no budget: Tally. Unlimited forms and submissions within fair use, and the $24 a month Pro plan buys branding removal and custom domains rather than capacity.
- Offices already on Microsoft 365: Microsoft Forms. Included with Microsoft 365 business plans, where each form takes up to 1,000 responses, and results land in Excel.
- Replacing a booking tool and a payment page too: Fillout. Scheduling, PDF generation and payments in one place, with 1,000 responses a month free and Starter at $15 / month.
- Order and registration workflows: Cognito Forms. Repeating sections, calculations and approval steps, with payments on every plan, the free one included.
- Agencies building on WordPress: Gravity Forms. Entries stay in your own WordPress database; a Basic License is $59 per year for 1 site, and Stripe needs the $159 Pro licence.
At a glance
| Option | Free plan | What's free | Cheapest paid plan | Where it runs | Collects payments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100-999source | Up to 200 responses per form or quiz on a free personal Microsoft account (1,000 on paid accounts)source | No standalone plan: included with Microsoft 365 business basic, standard and premiumsource | Online in any browsersource | ||
| Free, no published limitsource | Create online surveys, quizzes and forms, send them out and analyse the responses, at no costsource | No paid Forms plan: sold inside Google Workspace, from $7 per user per monthsource | Online in any browsersource | ||
| 100-999source | Starter: 5 forms, 100 monthly submissions, 1 user and 100 MB of spacesource | Bronze, $34/month billed annuallysource | Online in any browsersource | Included on the free plansource | |
| Under 100source | Unlimited forms, but only 10 responses a month across all of themsource | Basic, 28 USD/month billed yearlysource | Online in any browsersource | Paid plans onlysource | |
| Unlimitedsource | Unlimited forms and submissions, within the fair use guidelinessource | Pro, $24 per monthsource | Online in any browsersource | Included on the free plansource | |
| 1,000 or moresource | Unlimited forms and unlimited seats with 1000 responses a monthsource | Starter, $15 / monthsource | Online in any browsersource | Included on the free plansource | |
| Unlimitedsource | Unlimited responses, all 30+ field types and conditional logicsource | Basic, 19 USD/month billed annuallysource | Online in any browsersource | Included on the free plansource | |
| 100-999source | One user, unlimited forms and 100 entries a monthsource | Pro, $24 /mo.source | Online in any browsersource | Included on the free plansource | |
| 100-999source | 3 forms, 500 submissions a month and 200 MB of file storagesource | Online in any browsersource | Included on the free plansource | ||
| Under 100source | 30 submissions and 5 payment submissions a month, 1 user, with Paperform brandingsource | Essentials, $24 /month billed as $288/yearsource | Online in any browsersource | Included on the free plansource | |
| 100-999source | 5 forms, 100 entries and 10 fields per formsource | Starter, billed $195 annuallysource | Online in any browsersource | Paid plans onlysource | |
| Free trial onlysource | A 14-day trial of the Forms product with full access and no credit cardsource | Forms, $83/mo paid annually ($99 monthly)source | Online in any browsersource | Paid plans onlysource | |
| No free plansource | Nothing: no trial version, only a demo site to trysource | Basic License, $59 per year for 1 sitesource | WordPress pluginsource | Add-on requiredsource | |
| Free, no published limitsource | The free Lite plugin, with 2100+ pre-built form templatessource | Basic licence, normally $99.00 a yearsource | WordPress pluginsource | Included on the free plansource |
Do you need to install anything on Windows?
No, for twelve of these. Jotform, Typeform, Fillout, Cognito Forms and the rest are web apps, so any computer with a browser gets the same product. Microsoft Forms is the closest to a Windows tool only in the sense that it saves to your Microsoft account and feeds Excel.
Gravity Forms and WPForms are the two to be careful with. Both install on a WordPress site, not on your PC, so they only make sense if you already run one. WPForms has a free Lite plugin; Gravity Forms has no free version and no trial, only a demo site.
How far each free plan stretches
Tally and forms.app both allow unlimited responses, but forms.app caps you at five forms and 10 MB of file storage, so it suits a couple of busy forms. Fillout allows 1,000 responses a month with unlimited forms and seats. Zoho Forms gives 500 submissions a month across only 3 forms. Jotform and Cognito Forms allow 100 a month, Jotform across just 5 forms, and Wufoo's 100 entries come with a limit of 10 fields per form.
At the thin end, Paperform allows 30 submissions a month and Typeform just 10, counted across every form you own. Formstack has only a 14-day trial, and its Forms product then starts at $83/mo paid annually. Microsoft Forms counts differently from everyone else: 200 responses per form on a free account, not per month. Google Forms publishes no cap at all.
Taking card payments on a free plan
Eight of the fourteen collect payments without an upgrade, though some ration it: Zoho Forms allows 10 payment submissions and Paperform 5 a month. WPForms takes Stripe payments in its free Lite plugin but adds a 3% platform fee until you buy a licence, normally $99.00 a year. Typeform, Wufoo and Formstack reserve payments for paid plans, Gravity Forms needs its Pro licence, and neither Microsoft Forms nor Google Forms can take a payment at all.
The options in detail
Microsoft Forms
The form builder already sitting inside Microsoft 365, and the closest thing here to a native Windows option: it opens in a browser tab, saves to your Microsoft account, and sends results straight to Excel. It is free with a personal Microsoft account, but a free account's form stops collecting at 200 responses, while business plans raise that ceiling enormously. The trade-off is depth: no payment collection, limited branding, and far fewer question types and integrations than the dedicated builders. Best when your workplace or school is already on Microsoft 365 and the form is an internal survey, quiz, or signup.
Google Forms
The other free default: part of the Google Docs Editors suite, so anyone with a Google account can build a form in a browser and watch answers land in a Sheet in real time. Google publishes no response cap and charges nothing for it, which is why it is still the go-to for event signups, class quizzes, and quick internal polls. It cannot take payments, and the styling options are thin, so it is the wrong tool when the form is customer-facing and needs to look like your brand. Paid capability only arrives as part of a Google Workspace subscription.
Jotform
The kitchen-sink option: a huge template library, an app-style drag-and-drop builder, and payment integrations available even on the free Starter plan. Free means 5 forms and 100 submissions a month carrying Jotform branding, which is enough to test an idea but tight for anything live; the first paid tier, Bronze, is $34 a month billed annually. Its breadth is also the main complaint, since the interface carries a great deal you will never use.
Typeform
Builds forms that ask one question at a time, so filling them in feels like a conversation, which is why marketing and research teams pay for it. The free plan is now close to a demo: 10 responses a month across every form you own, with payments, file uploads and most integrations reserved for paid plans. Basic starts at 28 USD a month billed yearly. Worth the money when completion rate matters more than volume, and hard to justify for an ordinary contact form.
Tally
Tally makes the opposite pricing bet to everyone else: unlimited forms and unlimited submissions free, within a fair-use policy, with conditional logic, signatures, file uploads and payments included at no cost. The editor works like typing in a text document, so a simple form takes minutes, though anyone who wants fine design control will find it limiting. The $24 a month Pro plan buys branding removal, custom domains and team features rather than extra capacity, which makes it unusual value for high-volume, low-budget use.
Fillout
A newer all-in-one that bundles forms with scheduling, PDF generation, payments and approval workflows, and more than 50 question types. Its free plan gives unlimited forms and unlimited team seats with 1,000 responses a month, the most generous capped free tier in this table, and Starter is $15 a month, the cheapest paid entry point here. A good fit when you would otherwise pay for a form tool, a booking tool and a payment page separately.
forms.app
forms.app sells itself on the free plan, and the plan backs it up: unlimited responses, all 30-plus field types, conditional logic, e-signatures and unlimited payments without paying anything. The catch is a five-form cap and 10 MB of file storage, so it suits a couple of busy forms rather than a growing library of small ones. Basic, at 19 USD a month billed annually, lifts that to 25 forms and 10 GB of storage.
Cognito Forms
Cognito Forms is the strongest of these at structured data: repeating sections, calculations and approval steps, with unlimited forms and payments on every plan, free one included. The free tier caps you at 100 entries a month and a single user; Pro at $24 a month covers two users and 2,000 entries, with extra users $5 each. Pick it when the thing you are building is really a small business process, such as an order or registration workflow, rather than a contact box.
Zoho Forms
Zoho Forms makes most sense if you already live in Zoho: even the free plan pushes submissions into CRM, Desk, Books and the rest, and includes 500 submissions a month, 10 payment submissions and generated PDFs. The free tier is limited to three forms and one user, which is the constraint that pushes most people to upgrade. Zoho does not print plan prices in the text of its pricing page (they load per country), so the paid figure is left blank here rather than guessed at.
Paperform
Paperform builds forms that read like a page of writing, with the most design freedom of the hosted tools here, plus built-in payments and appointment booking. Its free plan is small at 30 submissions a month, so treat it as an extended trial; Essentials is $24 a month, billed as $288 a year. Choose it when the form is public-facing and you care how it looks on your site.
Wufoo
One of the oldest hosted form builders, now part of SurveyMonkey, and still a straightforward pick for building a form and reporting on its entries. The free plan covers 5 forms, 100 entries and only 10 fields per form, and taking payments means moving to a paid plan, with Starter billed $195 a year. The editor and templates feel dated beside the newer tools in this table, which is the main reason to look elsewhere.
Formstack
Formstack aims at regulated and enterprise teams: approval routing, document generation, eSignatures and Salesforce-native forms sit alongside the form builder. There is no free plan at all, only a 14-day trial, and the Forms product starts at $83 a month paid annually, by far the highest entry price here. It is the right answer only when compliance requirements and internal workflow justify that cost.
Gravity Forms
The premium WordPress plugin, and a different proposition to everything else here: the form lives on your own site and the entries stay in your own WordPress database, which is why agencies and developers standardise on it. There is no free version and no trial, only a hosted demo; a Basic licence is $59 per year for one site, and payment gateways such as Stripe need the Pro licence at $159. It is only a candidate if you already run a WordPress site and are comfortable maintaining it.
WPForms
The beginner-friendly WordPress alternative to Gravity Forms, with a free Lite plugin in the WordPress directory and a very large template library. Stripe payments work in the free version, but transactions carry a 3% platform fee until you buy a licence, which is the catch to watch. Paid licences start at $99 a year for the Basic tier and are frequently discounted. Like Gravity Forms it needs a WordPress site, so it is not an option if you just want a link to send people.
How we researched this
We took "for Windows" to mean which service a Windows user should sign up for, since nearly every builder worth using runs in a browser. PDF form software such as Adobe Acrobat and Nitro does a different job, laying out a document rather than collecting responses, so it is not here. Formsite was read and left out as trial-only at $21/month without adding anything new, 123FormBuilder and SurveyMonkey are survey tools first, Basin and Formspree are developer backends with no builder, and LimeSurvey does not state its free terms on its own site.
The paid-plan column keeps each vendor's wording because the bases differ: Typeform's 28 USD is its yearly-billed rate, Wufoo's $195 is an annual total, and Gravity Forms and WPForms sell yearly licences per site. The empty payment cells for Microsoft Forms and Google Forms mean neither can take payments, and Zoho Forms has no paid price because Zoho loads its prices per country and prints none in the page text. Response caps are the terms as of September 2026; before a form goes out to a large list, make sure your tier still allows that many answers.