If you’re in the market for a survey maker, you might hear that Google Forms and SurveyMonkey are the two most popular online survey tools. Both let you design basic surveys at little to no cost. For business, personal, and educational questionnaires, they each have their offerings.



Now, you might be having trouble choosing between the two, this deep-dive Google Forms vs SurveyMonkey comparison should answer your questions. Also, this will make it easier to determine which tool is better than another one.

In case, if neither tool fulfills your needs, here I also provide you one more alternative to these two services i.e. Pabbly Form Builder. It is the only form builder that does not restrict you on features like form submissions, file uploads, payments, etc. In the below section, we will explain why you should try this tool.

Let’s begin:

Google Forms vs SurveyMonkey

Here in this blog, we covered both Google Forms & SurveyMonkey for providing you a closer look at both the software to see which one’s a better fit for you. Let’s compare both software using the following criteria to judge each solution:

Round 1: Pricing

Are you only in the market for a free tool or are you willing to pay for some extra features?

Google Forms is absolutely free regardless of your design, number of questions or amount of responses. With it, you can create as many surveys as you like, save them all, and turn them into templates to use again. If you want a tool that costs nothing, then Google Forms is a splendid choice.

Well, you can’t really beat software that comes at no cost. But, SurveyMonkey has both free and paid plans. With it, you can create unlimited surveys. The paid plans that SurveyMonkey offers are subscription-based and it provides few more options like accept payments, analyze filter data, and export results.

Survey Monkey Pricing


How to decide: If you really want all the bells and whistles, then SurveyMonkey is the one to check out. But, if you want to stick with a free tool for basic surveys then you can go for Google Forms.

Round 2: Features

Google Forms has some excellent features, but the advanced ones really need some scripting experience to set up.

Whereas, SurveyMonkey is clearer and more intuitive, as well as containing some extra features that are not available in Google Forms like it offers question bank, themes, print style, etc. Save your time and create more effective surveys by choosing from over 1,600 predefined questions. Further, it lets you find survey respondents in specific demographics.

How to decide: Both the software are simple to use and intuitive for the most part. But it’s clear to see that SurveyMonkey gives many useful features that Google Forms does not. In particular, the Question Bank provides help with wording questions & the logic options offer you the flexibility to control how your survey is completed.

Round 3: Integrations

You can access the Google Forms API yourself for custom development. But you can only integrate it with other Google Apps or with other programs through Zapier.

Whereas, SurveyMonkey integrates with several email marketing and customer relationship platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Excel, Trello, WordPress, Mailchimp, Salesforce Sales Cloud, and many more.

How to decide: SurveyMonkey is the clear winner of this round as it offers more integration options than Google Forms. Also, you can go for some other form services like Pabbly Form Builder to get the support of more number of integrations like ConvertKit, Google Analytics, etc.

Comparison Of all 3 Form Builders
Services Google Forms SurveyMonkey Pabbly Form Builder
Pricing Free Free Trial, 3 Premium plans starts from $21/M Free Trial, One Premium plan of $10/M, No additional fee/tax
Features Restrict features Some advanced features Unlimited access to all features
Integrations Only with Google Apps With 1500 apps on Zapier Unlimited Webhooks & direct integrations
Language Support No 15+ Languages Multilingual
Analysis & Reporting Pie Chart, Graph Pie Chart, Graph, Bar chart Pie, Graph, Bar chart with download option
Templates 16 templates 200 templates 250+ responsive templates
Payment Configuration Not possible Not possible Possible (via PayPal & Stripe)
Scheduling Not supported Not supported Supported

Round 4: Language Support

Google Forms currently does not support more than one language being displayed in your forms, though there are third-party apps that can be added as a workaround.

SurveyMonkey has translations for all standard elements of the form like buttons and fields in 55 languages. Further, you can include more than one language in the same form for bilingual responders. While questions and answers are not translated automatically but there is a multilingual library of common questions available.

How to decide: Here, you also know SuveryMonkey is better than Google Forms as it supports more languages.

Round 5: Analysis And Reporting

In Google Forms, your survey data is available in simple bar graphs, pie charts, and text displays. The users can’t filter results by questions & answers, but exported the data into a Google Spreadsheet.

Analytics And Reporting - Google Forms


SurveyMonkey gives a number of graphs, charts and filtering tools to analyze your data. Some versions of SurveyMonkey lets you export data to your computer to analyze the data in SPSS or another predictive analytics program.

How to decide: Here both the software show reports in bar graphs, pie charts and text form. But SurveyMonkey offers more advanced options for analysis & reporting. With it, you can convert your data into any custom format like charts and reports to show off your results.

So, you can choose any of the software according to your business requirements.

What is missing in Google Forms?

If you go with Google Forms then you cannot schedule and automate surveys, segment users, or email surveys to a mass audience.

Google Forms does have some limited branching logic like section jumps. In fact, their branching logic only works on specific question types only. So, this might be frustrating if you are a Google power user.

  • It does not support any options for collecting payments.
  • The overall survey is a little bit too simple – some have believed it unprofessional.
  • You need to purchase the add-ons for creating the advance form and It can be a bit pricey. And, the prices can range from 10 cents to $3.50 depending on how tricky you get with it.
  • While it does have cool-looking graphs and analytics, you’ll have to pay for them too.

What are the limits of SurveyMonkey?

  • SurveyMonkey’s collaborative features are only available with a paid, premium membership.
  • No payment collection options available.
  • If you’d like to remove the branding then you need to pay $75/month for the premier plan.
  • SurveyMonkey offers a very limited free tier. So, you have to pay extra to unlock the extra responses.
  • Sometimes, it creates difficulty to set up two or three-part questions into the form.
  • Further, creating conditional questions can be a little bit tricky with SurveyMonkey.

Here at this point, you know Google Forms is a simple tool that can be good for creating simple forms. On contrary to that SurveyMonkey is a more advanced tool but it’s not free like Google Forms. Also, a few features like limitless submissions, integrations, security, customization, branding, etc, are only available in its Enterprise plan which costs a lot. So, it might be quite difficult for you to pick any one from these two options.

What’s The Top Alternative Of Google Forms & SurveyMonkey?

Try Pabbly Form Builder! Why?

Because this software incorporates all those features due to which you refused to use both Google Forms & SurveyMonkey.

With it, you can create and distribute a survey at a very reasonable cost with all the premium & necessary features. This is the reason why I am saying that the Pabbly Form Builder is the best choice over both the tools

It is the only software that does not restricts you on features. That means, it offers unlimited submissions, file uploads, Webhooks, views, and much more. And, the interesting thing about this is it does not charge much for all this.

Pabbly Form Builder

Yes, you can get access to all its features for creating amazing surveys just at the cost of $10 per month. Unlike SurveyMonkey, it comes at a very affordable price. Also, it supports a bundle of features that both the tools don’t.

Finally, check the following at-a-glance feature comparison of all the 3 software to compare everything more clearly.

On the basis of the above comparison, it’s very clear which tool is the best for you.

Then, what are you waiting for?

Get Pabbly Form Builder now and create amazing surveys very easily that too at a very reasonable price.

Wrap Up!

In the end, it all comes down to what you prioritize the most.

As for the battle between these two major tech brands, it’s quite difficult to say which one is best. So to come up with some results, here we compared both the tools in an unbiased way. As a result, we found that SurveyMonkey keeps the title of being the King of Surveys in between these two.

But, it also has some limitations that I mentioned above.

Therefore, to help you pick the best, I also recommend the best alternative to these two tools i.e. “Pabbly Form Builder”. With it, you can create amazing surveys at a very reasonable cost.

I recommend you to try this tool once. Then, you will know why I call it the best.

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