Google Forms vs SurveyMonkey

One of these collects answers and hands them to you. The other collects answers and tells you what they mean. That is the entire decision, and the price difference follows from it rather than causing it.

Unlimited replies against limited questions

Google Forms is free with a Google account and has no cap on responses at all. SurveyMonkey's free tier limits the questions per survey rather than the replies you collect — an unusual shape that catches people out, because you can gather plenty of answers to a survey you were not allowed to finish writing.

Google Forms scores 5 for value against SurveyMonkey's 2. Paying SurveyMonkey monthly also costs far more than the annual rate for a smaller allowance, which is the specific trap for anyone who wanted it for one project.

Who does the analysis

SurveyMonkey's reporting and analysis are built in rather than an export away, and its template library covers most standard research instruments — so the questions themselves are often better than the ones you would have written. Respondents recognise the format too, which helps completion on a cold list.

Google Forms writes responses straight into a Google Sheet as they arrive, where they can be filtered, charted and shared like any other data. That is powerful and it is not the same thing: you get the raw material and do the work yourself.

On the forms themselves SurveyMonkey is ahead but not dramatically. SurveyMonkey scores 4 for looks and 4 for logic against Google Forms' 2 and 3, and 3 for customisation against Google Forms' 1. Neither accepts payments and neither does calculations across answers. Google Forms scores 5 for ease and SurveyMonkey scores 5 as well.

Google Forms' quieter limitation is that file uploads require respondents to be signed in to a Google account, which excludes anybody outside your organisation — and it is the sort of thing you discover from the first person who cannot complete the form.

Which should you choose?

Choose SurveyMonkey if this is research, you want cross-tabs and charts without exporting anything, and a recognisable survey format will help your response rate.

Choose Google Forms if you are comfortable in a spreadsheet, the questions are your own, and unlimited responses for nothing matters more than the analysis you can do yourself anyway.