Best free form builders for restaurants

Google Forms

The default answer for a restaurant that just needs a form up today: catering inquiries, a staff availability sheet, a post-meal feedback survey. It is genuinely free with a Google account, publishes no cap on responses or forms, and every submission drops into a Google Sheet your managers can already read. The gap that matters for a restaurant is money: Google Forms has no built-in way to take a deposit, so a catering booking still needs an invoice or a payment link pasted into the confirmation. Design control is thin too, and forms look unmistakably like Google Forms.

Microsoft Forms

Microsoft's counterpart to Google Forms, free with an ordinary Outlook.com or Hotmail account and the obvious pick if your back office already runs on Microsoft 365. You can build up to 400 separate forms, which covers a catering inquiry, a private-event request, a job application and a feedback survey with room to spare. The catch is the shape of the free cap: a free personal account stops a form at 200 responses in total, not 200 a month, so a busy catering form eventually has to be exported, cleared and reused. There is no built-in payment collection either.

Jotform

The most restaurant-ready free plan of the mainstream builders, because payment integrations are included rather than paywalled: a catering order form can take a deposit on the free Starter plan, up to ten paid submissions a month. Jotform's template library is the largest here and includes ready-made restaurant order, reservation and event-booking forms. The limits are the binding constraint: five forms and 100 submissions a month across all of them, and every free form carries Jotform branding. A restaurant taking more than a few inquiries a week will hit the ceiling.

Tally

The standout free plan in this table: unlimited forms and unlimited submissions, with payments, signatures and file uploads all included rather than held back for paying customers. For a restaurant that means one form for catering, one for private events, one for job applications and one for feedback, none of them counting down a monthly allowance, and a deposit collectable on any of them. Tally is subject to a fair-use policy rather than a published number, and the paid Pro plan exists mainly to remove Tally branding and add a custom domain. The editor is deliberately plain, closer to a document than a form designer.

Typeform

The best-looking forms here, one question at a time, which suits a private-dining inquiry you want to feel like part of the restaurant's brand. It is the worst free plan in this table for actually running a restaurant: ten responses a month across every form you own, and the payment question is paid-only, so no deposits. Typeform has also stopped showing the free plan on its pricing page at all, which tells you where it sits in the company's thinking. Treat the free tier as a way to try the builder, not to run your catering inbox.

Fillout

The most generous free plan that still looks and behaves like a modern form builder: unlimited forms, 1,000 responses a month, and no per-seat charge, so an owner and two managers can all work in the same account without paying. Payments, scheduling forms and file uploads are all in the free tier, which covers a catering deposit and a private-event booking in one tool. It is less known than Jotform or Typeform, so there are fewer restaurant-specific templates to start from, and the interface assumes some comfort with conditional logic and integrations.

forms.app

An unusual split among free plans: unlimited responses but only five forms, which is the opposite trade-off to Jotform and Wufoo. For a restaurant that is often the better deal, because the four or five forms you actually need (catering, private events, jobs, feedback) fit inside the limit while a busy inquiry season does not blow through a monthly allowance. Payments are included free, and so are unlimited team members, so managers do not need to share one login. File storage on the free plan is only 10 MB, so it is a poor fit if you want resumes attached to job applications.

Cognito Forms

Cognito puts payments on every plan including the free one, and pairs that with unlimited forms, so a restaurant can run separate catering, event and application forms and take a deposit on any of them without paying anything. The ceiling is entries: 100 a month on the Always Free tier, shared across all your forms, and free forms carry Cognito branding. Its calculation and conditional-logic engine is stronger than most competitors', which matters if a catering form needs to price a headcount and add tax before the customer pays.

Zoho Forms

The free plan with the highest submission ceiling of the metered builders: 500 a month, five times Jotform's or Wufoo's, plus 200 MB of file storage, which is enough to accept resumes on a job application. Payments are included free but capped at ten paid submissions a month, so it suits taking occasional catering deposits rather than running steady online ordering. Three forms is the pinch point for a restaurant that wants a separate form for each purpose. Zoho Forms is most compelling if you already use other Zoho tools, since the whole suite shares one login and one contact record.

Wufoo

One of the oldest form builders still running, and it shows in a free plan that has not moved with the market: five forms, 100 entries a month, and only ten fields per form, which a catering inquiry asking for date, headcount, menu and contact details will use up quickly. Payments and file uploads are both absent from the free plan's feature list and appear only from the paid Starter tier up. Wufoo is dependable and simple, and the reporting is better than the free-plan limits suggest, but for a restaurant in 2026 it is hard to pick over Tally, Fillout or Jotform.

WPForms Lite

Only an option if the restaurant's website runs on WordPress, but in that case it is a strong one: the forms live on your own site and database, so no vendor is metering your submissions. Stripe payments are included in the free Lite version, which covers catering deposits. The Lite/Pro split is the thing to check before committing, because file uploads and conditional logic are both Pro features, so a job application that accepts a resume or a catering form that changes questions based on headcount needs the paid licence. Reviewers also note the free version limits what you can see of stored entries.

Youform

A newer, cheaper answer to Typeform: the same one-question-at-a-time style with unlimited forms and unlimited responses on the free plan, plus file uploads up to 10 MB. For a restaurant collecting catering inquiries at volume that is a far better free deal than Typeform's ten responses a month. The trade-off is payments, which are held back for the Pro plan, so deposits are not collectable free. The free tier is also single-user, so an owner and a manager cannot both have logins without upgrading, and being a small product it has fewer integrations than the established names.

Fluent Forms

The other serious free WordPress form plugin, and the more generous of the two: conditional logic, form scheduling and Stripe payments are all in the free version, where WPForms holds logic back for Pro. For a restaurant on WordPress that means a catering form can branch on party size and take a deposit without buying a licence. Everything is stored on your own hosting, so there is no monthly submission cap to watch. It needs a WordPress site to exist at all, and the paid tier is sold as an annual per-site licence rather than a subscription, which suits a single restaurant better than a group.