SurveyMonkey vs. Google Forms [2025]

Google Forms and SurveyMonkey are leaders in their category for different reasons: one is a completely free and simple tool belonging to a tech behemoth, and the other has been the poster child for survey creation for over two decades.

I’ve been updating this article for a few years now, and this year, I went back in to test them and see how things have developed. After spending time in each app, setting up mock surveys, and tinkering with features, here’s what I found.

Google Forms vs. SurveyMonkey at a glance

When it comes down to it, Google Forms is better suited for forms, and SurveyMonkey is better suited for surveys. It’s a subtle difference (without a standard definition), but generally, forms collect specific data (think: purchase orders or event registrations), while surveys are meant to collect nuanced feedback or opinions. 

But, of course, there’s more to it than that. Here’s a quick rundown of features—take a look, and then keep reading for a fuller rundown.

Google Forms is easier to get started with

The only thing you need in order to use all of Google Forms’ features is a Google account. So if you already use Gmail, there are no extra steps for signing up, no new password, and no fishing for a confirmation email to solidify a new account. The beauty of Google.

Once you’re in the Google Forms dashboard, you can start a new form from scratch or choose from 17 basic templates. The template options aren’t robust, by any means, but depending on what you’re collecting data for, there might be something that works.

If you decide to create a form from scratch, you can choose from 12 different question types, including form-specific options for date, time, and even file upload, which could be useful for IT ticket systems or the like. The newest question type, rating, lets you set a scale from 1-10 stars—great for general feedback questions.

To the right side of your questions, you’ll notice a small, vertical bar with six icons, starting with a plus sign. These icons give you quick access to add questions, images, videos, and sections as you build your form. 

Google Forms can even assist you with generating answer types automatically. For example, I started typing a question about rating the customer experience, and Google Forms automatically provided a linear scale answer type (pictured above). I did the same with the question, “When would you like to schedule your appointment?” and it generated a date field for the answer.

One feature I found especially convenient was the ability to insert images directly from Google Search. (The selection may include copyrighted images, so be mindful of that.)

And Google has finally introduced generative AI features, too. If you want a rewrite of a question or heading, just type it out or paste it first and choose a quick prompt to rephrase, shorten, or change the tone. You can also give it a specific prompt, like “make this question funnier” as I did below.

Even better: as of this writing, Google users who’ve been invited to Google Workspace Labs can use Gemini, Google’s AI assistant, to generate entire forms using a simple prompt.

In terms of customization, you can add some basic form logic, sending users to a different section of the form depending on their answer, but there isn’t much advanced power beyond that. Choose from some basic fonts, customize your color and header image, and then once your survey is ready, hit send, and you’ll see three options to share your survey: email, link, or embed code. 

Once folks have filled out your form, accessing your data is simple. Just click the Responses tab, and you’ll be able to see results in a summary view, a question-based view, and an individual responder view. You can even see new results come in as responders submit without needing to refresh.

You can also export your data to Google Sheets, or by connecting Google Forms to Zapier, send your data to wherever you want to store it.

So why did I just walk you through the entire process of creating a form in Google Forms? Because that’s literally all there is to it. It’s a simple tool with basic features—but it absolutely gets the job done.

SurveyMonkey supports you more as you create your surveys

For the most part, with Google Forms, what you see is what you get. SurveyMonkey, on the other hand, has so much bubbling underneath the surface. You’ll need to explore and tinker, but you’ll find any feature you could possibly want. Of course, you’ll have to pay a premium for these features—I’ll touch on that in a bit—but it’ll be worth it if you want to create robust and authoritative surveys.

The main difference here: you have to do almost everything from scratch in Google Forms. Other than the 17 templates and basic AI prompts, there’s not much support for you: no recommended questions, no question banks, nothing (though once fully AI-generated forms are available to all Google users, this could change).

With SurveyMonkey, you get multiple starting options. You can of course choose to build a survey from scratch, but you can also choose from hundreds of templates, copy and paste questions and answers you already have, or create your survey with AI. With the Build with AI feature, you’ll choose a sample prompt—for example, customer satisfaction or market research—or write your own prompt using up to 1,000 characters. You can get as detailed as you want and within seconds of submitting, you’ll have a complete form ready for editing and sending.

Even if you’re creating a survey from scratch, you can still take advantage of SurveyMonkey’s recommended questions. Tell SurveyMonkey what kind of survey you want to create from a dropdown menu of choices, and it will give you plenty of questions and answer choices to go with them. From there, you can add the questions you want to a side panel and put them in your survey. And if you don’t like the results or want more variety? You can change the category to generate a new set of questions. (This feature actually comes with the free plan, but only for up to 10 questions per survey.)

SurveyMonkey also gives you the neat option of importing questions from elsewhere. All you have to do is format each question and possible answers (if applicable) on separate lines, and SurveyMonkey will import the questions into the survey.

Another reason SurveyMonkey works better for serious survey creators is that you can recycle previously used questions. Instead of having to duplicate the same survey and edit from there (hello, Google Forms), SurveyMonkey stores questions you’ve used in prior surveys and lets you add them to your new survey. Even if you delete a question on an unpublished survey you’re still working on, SurveyMonkey will still remember the question for you. The process is made even more efficient with the search bar at the top.

Creating a well-researched, unbiased survey is a lot of work—SurveyMonkey does most of the heavy lifting for you. 

Google Forms is totally free to use

As long as you have a Google account, you can access Google Forms in its entirety—completely free. SurveyMonkey does have a free Basic plan, but it’s pretty limited, especially compared to everything you get at no cost with Google Forms:

• Pictures and backgrounds. In Google Forms, you can upload any picture you want as a header, including your company logo, and change the background of your form to any color. Plus, you can search for any picture that exists in Google Images and insert it directly into your survey (just be sure you’re not violating any copyright). In SurveyMonkey, changing the header picture and the background color are both paid features, and you can’t source images directly from the web.

• Fonts. Google Forms allows you to change the font and size of your header text, questions, and any other text. SurveyMonkey requires an upgrade for this.

• Templates: All 17 templates in Google Forms are free to use. SurveyMonkey has over 250 templates, but most of them require a paid plan.

• Question types. You get access to all 11 question types that Google Forms has to offer for free. Once again, SurveyMonkey has more question types, but not all of them are free.

• Logic. SurveyMonkey has more advanced logic configurations, but they’re only available for paid users. Google’s (albeit basic) logic options are free.

• Quizzes. In Google Forms, you can set point values and correct answers for each question, along with automatic feedback—you can even batch-grade quizzes or grade individually. Any kind of quiz configuration in SurveyMonkey is part of an upgraded plan.

• Responses. The limit does not exist when it comes to the number of responses you can receive in Google Forms—or at least there isn’t an official limit set by Google. SurveyMonkey’s free (Basic) plan caps the number of responses you can view at 25. That’s not going to get you very far.

• Questions per survey. Google Forms lets you ask as many questions as you want in a form (tread lightly). On its free plan, SurveyMonkey limits you to 10 questions per survey.

• Exporting responses. You can choose to save your Google Forms responses to a Google Sheets spreadsheet. With a paid plan, SurveyMonkey lets you export your data in a few different formats, like PDF or CSV.

So how much does SurveyMonkey cost? The cheapest plan is $39/month (billed annually), but it’s only for individuals. If you prefer to pay month-to-month, the price is $99/month. For a team plan, your cheapest option is $25/user/month with a minimum of three users, billed annually, so $75/month if you’re at the bare minimum. It’s not overpriced, given the advanced features—more on that in a minute—but it’s a far cry from free.

SurveyMonkey is more feature-rich

While Google Forms does offer a lot of basic features that SurveyMonkey charges for, SurveyMonkey has every feature you could ever want.

A/B testing

In SurveyMonkey, you can do A/B testing within your surveys—I’ve used several survey tools in the past, and this was a new option for me. You can test two versions of text, an image, or a question and choose which percentage of your respondents sees either option. This could help you see if your survey-takers answer differently when a question is phrased differently, or to see if they engage more or less when presented with one piece of content over another.

Purchasing responses

Another huge departure from Google Forms: instead of only collecting responses from your own, potentially small audience, in SurveyMonkey, you can buy responses from a much broader and larger group. SurveyMonkey lets you purchase this data by either (a) using audience profiles that the platform creates or (b) building custom audiences based on over 90 criteria, including country, gender, age, income, or even shopping app usage.

I didn’t go forward with purchasing any responses, but to give you an idea of cost and delivery expectations: for the Community survey I created, SurveyMonkey automatically assigned me a target audience with 200 responses, at $1.40 per response with less than an 8-hour turnaround time. When I chose one of their pre-crafted audience profiles consisting of parents, the cost per response went up to $3.40 with 250 responses and still a sub-8-hour turnaround. You can make adjustments to the number of responses, but the price doesn’t change for the most part.

Logic and branching options

SurveyMonkey’s survey logic is also much more nuanced than Google Forms’. In Google Forms, you can only jump around from section to section. SurveyMonkey, on the other hand, has advanced branching logic to set conditions and actions for any of your survey questions. You can set limits on how many people can answer a question, and also randomize the way your questions, pages, or groups of pages (aka blocks) appear to the respondent (to reduce order bias).

AI features

As I mentioned earlier, with Build with AI, you only have to provide a simple prompt, like “I run a flower shop and I want to survey my customers about their shopping experience.” From there, SurveyMonkey will generate a custom survey for you. If you need to make changes, just edit the survey directly or write another prompt.

Analytics

SurveyMonkey also has Google Forms beat in the analytics department. You get access to eight different chart types, and you can change the color of your charts and even the labels for each of your answer choices. For my users out there who are very particular about chart appearance or need to impress stakeholders, you can go into Display Options to customize the actual data that shows up in your charts, along with the format, including configuring decimal places or displaying percentages versus absolute values.

Saving and exporting responses

As far as saving your responses, SurveyMonkey lets you export data in multiple formats, including PDF, XLS, CSV, PPTX, or SPSS.  If you’re a Dropbox user, SurveyMonkey directs you to Zapier, where you can easily automate a bunch of workflows, like uploading your responses as Dropbox files or creating folders for every new response.

Mobile app

Google Forms currently doesn’t have an official mobile app (despite the many copycats you may see on the app stores).

SurveyMonkey, on the other hand, has a native app that makes creating surveys on mobile a seamless experience. You can’t immediately access capabilities like importing questions or Build with AI, but once you start editing and designing the survey, it feels really intuitive.

You can easily move, copy, or delete questions, change color themes, and even access the question bank to insert pre-written questions. And when it comes to analyzing the survey data, you can still customize how you see your charts and graphs.

Creating and editing surveys on mobile is never ideal, but the app does a decent job of making it a smooth process.

Both apps integrate with Zapier

SurveyMonkey is jam-packed with over 100 native integration options, including Salesforce, Mailchimp, HubSpot, and even Google Forms (although in my testing, the Google Forms integration is pretty finicky). But both Google Forms and SurveyMonkey integrate with Zapier, so you can connect them to thousands of other apps, sending your survey data wherever it needs to go.

Learn more about how to automate Google Forms and how to automate SurveyMonkey, or get started with one of these pre-made templates.

Google Forms or SurveyMonkey: Which should you use?

As you can tell, it’s kind of apples and oranges here. Google Forms is a simple tool and totally free; SurveyMonkey is a robust, paid app.

Choose Google Forms if:

• Your budget is $0

• You’re creating forms for personal or small-scale use

• You already use Google Workspace and don’t want to add another app to your stack

• You’re creating simple forms that don’t need advanced logic or question types

Choose SurveyMonkey if:

• You’re a medium to large-sized business that uses surveys for marketing purposes

• You need to create surveys that may require advanced features like logic branching or A/B testing

• You want help creating a survey, including templates, question banks, and entirely AI-generated forms

• You want built-in access to survey respondents

Related reading:

This article was originally published in April 2019 by Laura McPherson. The most recent update was in October 2024.