Best online form builder
We make one of the tools below, and it is not the one most people reading this should pick. If you are building a form from nothing, choose Jotform, Google Forms or Typeform on the merits set out here.
First: does your form already exist?
Every tool on this page starts you at a blank canvas. That is the right place to start when you are inventing a form. It is an hour of retyping when the form already exists as a PDF, a scan or a printed sheet, because you are rebuilding something you already have: typing each question, choosing each type, marking each required field, to arrive back where you started.
If that is your situation, none of these is the answer and you can stop reading at the last entry. If your form does not exist yet, read on and pick one of the first five.
The tools, and who each one is for
1. Jotform
The default, and hard to beat if you are building from nothing.
- Best for
- Anyone who wants the widest set of ready-made templates and integrations.
- What it is good at
- A mature drag-and-drop builder, an enormous template library, and years of integrations with everything else you already run. If you are inventing a form and want it wired into the rest of your tools, this is the safe answer.
- Where it is the wrong choice
- The breadth is the cost: there is a lot of product to meet before you have your first form, and none of it helps if the form you need already exists on paper.
2. Google Forms
Free, already installed, and enough for most simple things.
- Best for
- A quick survey, a sign-up sheet, anything inside a Google account.
- What it is good at
- It costs nothing, everybody already has it, and it takes about two minutes to make something that works. For a short internal form, nothing here beats free-and-already-there, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.
- Where it is the wrong choice
- No real signature field, and no way to get answers back as the document you started from. Once a form needs to look like an approved document rather than a Google Form, you have left what it does.
3. Typeform
The best-looking forms in the category, and it shows in completion.
- Best for
- Marketing, research and feedback, where how the form feels is part of the job.
- What it is good at
- One question at a time, carefully designed, and genuinely more pleasant to fill in. On a form somebody chose to open, that experience earns its keep.
- Where it is the wrong choice
- A consent form or an intake sheet is a document, and people need to see the whole thing before they sign it. The same design that lifts a survey gets in the way there.
4. Tally
Feels like typing a document rather than operating a builder.
- Best for
- Somebody who wants a form quickly without learning an interface.
- What it is good at
- You type questions the way you would in a text editor, and a form comes out. It is the least effortful builder in the category and its free tier is unusually generous.
- Where it is the wrong choice
- Still a builder: you are writing the questions. That is fine for a form you are inventing and it is an evening for a form you already have.
5. Fillout
Strong on logic and on where the answers end up.
- Best for
- Forms that branch, and teams who want responses in a database rather than a spreadsheet.
- What it is good at
- Conditional logic that is pleasant to set up, and a good set of destinations for the answers. If your form is really a small application, this handles it.
- Where it is the wrong choice
- The setup is the work, and it is the kind of tool you grow into rather than finish in ten minutes.
6. PDF to Web Form
This is oursNot a builder at all, which is the point.
- Best for
- A form that already exists as a PDF, a scan or a printed page, and whose wording somebody has approved.
- What it is good at
- You build nothing. Upload the document, or photograph the printed copy, and the questions are read off it: no canvas, no dragging a box onto each field, no mapping step. The wording stays exactly as it was, and the answers can come back as your original document with the boxes filled in.
- Where it is the wrong choice
- The editor is basic and meant for corrections, not for designing. If you are starting from a blank page, one of the tools above will serve you better and this page is not going to pretend otherwise.
No prices, plan limits or response caps are quoted here for any of these products. They change without notice, and a stale number is a false claim about somebody else’s company. Check each one directly before you buy.
Questions people ask
What is the best online form builder?
For most people asking, Jotform. It has the widest template library and the most integrations, and it is a mature product. If everyone involved lives in a Google account and the form is simple, Google Forms is free and already installed. If the form is marketing or research and how it feels matters, Typeform. There is no single answer, and any page that gives you one is selling something.
Do I need a form builder at all?
Only if the form does not exist yet. If it is already a PDF, a scan or a printed sheet, building it again in a form builder means retyping every question, choosing every type and marking every required field, to arrive at what you already had. A document can be read instead, which takes about a minute and leaves the wording alone.
What is the best free online form builder?
Google Forms if you have a Google account, because it costs nothing and needs no setup. Tally if you want something that feels less like software. Most paid builders also have a free tier worth trying before you decide, so the honest advice is to make the same form in two of them and keep the one that took less time.
Which form builder handles signatures?
Most paid builders offer a signature field. Google Forms does not have one natively. If the signature matters legally, the question to ask is not whether the tool draws a squiggle but what it records alongside it, and whether you can get the signed document back out in a form somebody else will accept.
What should I look at before choosing?
Whether the form already exists, what happens to the answers, and what you can export. The first decides whether you need a builder at all. The second is where most of the work actually lives once the form is live. The third is what you will care about in a year, when somebody asks for everything you have collected.
If your form already exists
Upload it and see what comes back. The questions are read off the document, so there is nothing to build and nothing to map, and the wording your organisation approved stays as it is. It takes about a minute, and the first one needs no account.
Or look at a finished one first. It was read off a scanned permission slip and nobody built it.