Google Forms vs Tally

This is the most useful page in this wave for anybody who assumed free meant Google. Both of these cost nothing for a normal workload, and they are not close on what you get.

What free buys in each case

Google Forms is free with a Google account, has unlimited responses and no branding to remove. Google Forms scores 5 for value, and nothing about it requires a paid plan.

Tally's free plan carries unlimited forms and unlimited submissions within a published fair-use policy, and includes conditional logic, calculations, signatures and file uploads. Tally scores 5 for value as well. What it charges for is presentation: removing branding needs the Pro plan, and capturing part-finished responses is paid.

So Google Forms is free with its branding absent, and Tally is free with its branding present but nearly everything else included.

The gap in what the form can do

Tally scores 5 for logic against Google Forms' 3, 4 for customisation against 1, and 4 for looks against 2. Concretely: Tally accepts payments, does calculations across answers and collects signatures. Google Forms does none of the three, and its file uploads require respondents to be signed in to a Google account.

Google Forms answers on destination and familiarity. Responses can be written straight into a Google Sheet as they arrive, and there is nothing to learn if you have used any other Google tool. Google Forms scores 5 for ease and Tally scores 5 as well.

Tally also stores form data in the EU by a company based there, where Google Forms does not offer that choice. For a European business collecting personal data, that is not a preference.

Which should you choose?

Choose Tally if the form needs logic, a payment, a signature or a calculation, or if EU data storage is something a client will ask about — and accept the Tally branding unless you are willing to pay twenty-four dollars a month.

Choose Google Forms if the answers belong in a spreadsheet, the form is plain by nature, and having no branding at all without paying is worth more to you than everything Tally adds. For an internal form nobody outside will see, that is a reasonable place to land.