Free Open Source Survey Software

What "Free" Actually Means for Survey Software

The word "free" in software has two meanings that matter for survey tools. Free as in cost means no money changes hands, you pay nothing to download, install, or use the software. Free as in freedom means you can inspect the source code, modify it, and redistribute it under the terms of the license. Open source survey tools are typically free in both senses.

This distinction matters because many commercial survey platforms offer "free" tiers that are free in cost but restricted in functionality. SurveyMonkey's free plan limits you to 10 questions per survey and 40 responses per survey. Typeform's free plan caps you at 10 questions and 10 responses per month. Google Forms is genuinely free but stores all data on Google's servers with no self-hosting option.

Open source survey tools have none of these artificial restrictions. When you self-host LimeSurvey Community Edition, you can create surveys with unlimited questions, collect unlimited responses, and run as many concurrent surveys as your server can handle. The software imposes no limits, the only constraints are your server's hardware capacity.

LimeSurvey Community Edition

LimeSurvey Community Edition is the gold standard for free survey software. Released under the GPL license, it provides the full feature set of a professional survey platform with no functionality withheld for paid tiers. Over 80 question types, complex conditional logic through the expression manager, multilingual surveys, quota management, token-based access control, and comprehensive data export to CSV, Excel, SPSS, R, and Stata are all included in the free edition.

The Community Edition runs on PHP with MySQL or PostgreSQL. Hosting costs start at around $5 per month on a basic VPS from providers like DigitalOcean or Hetzner, or zero additional cost if you deploy on existing infrastructure. Many universities run LimeSurvey on their existing web servers at no marginal cost, making it truly free for institutional deployments.

LimeSurvey also offers commercial editions (Professional, Expert, Enterprise) that add cloud hosting, premium themes, and priority support. These are paid services, but the Community Edition itself is not a stripped-down version. It is the full application, maintained by the same development team, with all survey creation and data collection features intact.

Formbricks

Formbricks is free under the AGPL license, which means the complete platform is available for self-hosting at no cost. The AGPL adds one requirement beyond standard GPL: if you modify Formbricks and make it available over a network, you must release your modifications under the same license. For most organizations running Formbricks internally or for their own surveys, this requirement has no practical impact.

Self-hosted Formbricks has no response limits, no feature restrictions, and no usage caps. You get the same in-app survey capabilities, website survey triggers, link surveys, pre-built templates, and integrations that the managed cloud service provides. The only features exclusive to paid plans are some advanced integrations and higher support tiers.

Formbricks also offers a free cloud tier for teams that want to try the platform before self-hosting. The free cloud plan includes limited monthly responses and basic features, with paid plans available for higher volumes. But the self-hosted version is always completely free with unlimited everything.

SurveyJS Form Library

The SurveyJS form library is MIT-licensed, which is one of the most permissive open source licenses available. You can use it in any project, commercial or non-commercial, without attribution requirements or copyleft obligations. The library handles survey rendering, question types, conditional logic, validation, and response collection entirely on the client side.

The important distinction with SurveyJS is that the form library (survey-core, survey-react, survey-angular, survey-vue) is free, while the Survey Creator component (the visual drag-and-drop designer) uses a commercial license starting at $749 per developer for commercial projects. If your development team can define surveys in JSON without needing a visual designer, or if your project qualifies for the free non-commercial license, SurveyJS costs nothing to use.

Because SurveyJS is a library rather than a hosted platform, there are no server costs for the survey engine itself. Surveys run in the browser as part of your web application. You do need a backend to store responses, but this can be any existing API or database your application already uses.

HeyForm

HeyForm provides a free, self-hostable form builder under the AGPL license. The platform offers drag-and-drop form creation, conditional logic, custom themes, and integrations through webhooks, Zapier, and Make.com. Self-hosting through Docker gives you unlimited forms, unlimited responses, and full access to all features.

HeyForm also operates a managed cloud service with free and paid tiers. The self-hosted version has no feature restrictions compared to the cloud plans, making it a genuinely free option for teams willing to manage their own Docker deployment.

Typebot

Typebot is free under the AGPL license for self-hosted deployments. The conversational form builder creates chat-style survey experiences that feel more engaging than traditional form layouts. Self-hosting through Docker gives you unlimited chatbot forms, unlimited responses, and access to all features including the visual flow editor, conditional branching, AI integrations, and data connectors.

Like other AGPL projects, Typebot's managed cloud service has usage-based pricing, but the self-hosted version is unrestricted. Teams that want conversational forms without per-response charges can deploy Typebot on a VPS for a fixed monthly hosting cost.

The Real Cost of "Free" Software

While the software itself is free, self-hosting involves costs that organizations should budget for realistically.

Server Hosting

A basic VPS suitable for running LimeSurvey, Formbricks, or HeyForm costs $5 to $15 per month from providers like DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Linode, or Vultr. This covers a server with 2 GB of RAM, 1 to 2 CPU cores, and 50 GB of storage, which handles small to medium survey workloads comfortably. Larger deployments with thousands of concurrent respondents may need beefier servers in the $20 to $50 per month range.

Administration Time

Self-hosted software requires someone to handle initial setup, security updates, backups, and occasional troubleshooting. For organizations with existing IT staff, this is a marginal addition to their workload. For small teams without dedicated IT resources, the time investment is worth considering when comparing self-hosted open source tools against managed commercial services.

Email Delivery

Survey tools need to send emails for invitations, reminders, and notifications. Transactional email services like Amazon SES cost about $0.10 per thousand emails, making this cost negligible for most survey operations. Free-tier options from SendGrid and other providers may cover small-volume needs entirely.

Total Cost Comparison

A self-hosted LimeSurvey or Formbricks deployment with a basic VPS and Amazon SES costs approximately $6 to $16 per month total. Compare this with SurveyMonkey at $25+ per user per month, Typeform at $25+ per month, or Qualtrics at enterprise pricing often exceeding $1,500 per year. For organizations running surveys regularly, the cost savings compound significantly over time, often paying back the initial setup effort within the first month.