Tally vs Jotform: a free-forever feel against a plan ladder

Tally and Jotform, side by side

Each cell links to the vendor's own page it comes from. The last column is MangoForm, limited to features it has today.

The verdict

Pick Tally if start with Tally Free, because it covers payments, signatures, uploads and logic at $0 and only asks for money once you want your own branding, domain or a team on it. Pick Jotform if pick Jotform if you need HIPAA-enabled features, a high volume of payments or signed documents, PDF output or a long list of ready-made templates and integrations, and you accept paying for the caps. Consider MangoForm if you want to pay once: MangoForm is $25 once with no cap on forms or responses, skip logic, custom branding and a custom domain per form, but it has no payments, signatures or uploads, so it only suits surveys, feedback and lead forms.

What Tally costs

Prices from Tally's public pricing page, in USD, checked on October 10, 2026. Taxes excluded. Vendors change prices; follow the source links to see today's.

What Jotform costs

Prices from Jotform's public pricing page, in USD, checked on October 10, 2026. Taxes excluded. Vendors change prices; follow the source links to see today's.

The math over 1, 3 and 5 years

We compare each tool's cheapest paid plan. Tally Pro is $290 a year, or $29 a month if you pay monthly. Jotform Bronze is $408 a year at $34 a month, or $468 at $39 a month. They are not the same product: Pro removes branding and adds a domain and unlimited teammates, while Bronze lifts the free caps to 25 forms and 1,000 submissions a month for one user.

Yearly-billing prices where offered (each vendor's cheapest rate), assuming today's prices never go up. MangoForm is a single $25 payment.

Two ways of drawing the line between free and paid

Tally draws the line around presentation and collaboration. Its pricing page puts unlimited forms, unlimited submissions, payments, signatures, file uploads, conditional logic and calculations on the free plan. Pro is where the Tally branding goes away, where you get a custom domain, partial submissions, custom CSS and unlimited team members.

Jotform draws the line around volume. Its Starter plan says all features are included, and the limit is how much you use them: 5 forms, 100 submissions a month, 100 MB of space, 10 payment submissions and 10 signed documents a month. Moving up a plan mostly means bigger numbers, plus branding removal on every paid plan and HIPAA-enabled features on Gold.

So the question is rarely which tool has more features. Ask whether your own growth looks like more forms and responses, which Jotform charges for, or like a need for a polished, branded setup, which is what Tally charges for.

What the first paid year looks like

If you pay monthly, Tally Pro runs $348 over twelve months and Jotform Bronze $468. On yearly billing, Pro is $290 and Bronze is $408. Over three years on yearly billing that is $870 against $1,224, assuming neither vendor changes its prices.

The gap widens quickly once Jotform's caps bite. Silver, at $39 a month billed yearly, is $468 a year for 50 forms and 2,500 submissions. Gold is $99 a month billed yearly, or $1,188 a year, for 10,000 submissions a month. Tally's page shows no equivalent step: Business at $890 a year adds data retention controls and email verification rather than more volume.

Jotform's page also says that when you pass your total stored submissions, the oldest response is deleted to make room. That is why it tells you to download and purge old entries first. If you keep a long archive of answers, check that number on each plan before you pick one.

Where Tally is the safer default

For a small business, a creator or a side project, the likely answer is Tally Free. A contact form, a waitlist, an event registration, even a paid signup, all fit inside it. You only meet a charge when you want your own domain or when you stop wanting a Tally mark on the form.

Tally Pro is not priced per seat on its page, because it lists unlimited team members. A five-person team pays the same $29 a month as a solo user. Jotform's four self-serve plans each list one user, and the page names Enterprise as the multiuser option.

Where Jotform earns its price

Jotform is built for organizations that run on forms. Its page lists HIPAA-enabled features on Gold, single sign-on, SLAs and data residency on Enterprise, and its menus link to PDF templates, approval workflows, app templates and a large integration catalog. If a compliance reviewer is going to read your setup, the free-tier comparison stops mattering.

It also gives you the clearest numbers for payments and signatures: monthly allowances printed on every plan, from 10 on Starter to 1,000 on Gold. That is easier to plan against than a fair use policy, though it is also a meter you can run out of.

Where MangoForm fits, and where it does not

MangoForm is for the person who has looked at both bills and wants neither. It costs $25 once, shows one question at a time with a progress bar, and has around 20 question types, skip logic, your own colors, fonts, logo and CSS, password protection, embeds, CSV export and a webhook on each response. It does not count forms or responses.

It will not replace Tally Free for most people, because Tally Free is also free. It is meant for forms where you would otherwise pay Pro or Bronze every month just to remove a logo or lift a cap. Read the table above before you decide: every row marked as missing for MangoForm is something you would give up.

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