Jotform vs Tally: Free Plan Limits and When You'd Pay for Either

Tally and Jotform charge for opposite things. Tally gives away volume and charges for branding and team features. Jotform gives away nearly all its features and charges for volume.

So the question to ask is which limit you’ll hit first. If it’s the number of responses, Tally’s free plan goes much further. If it’s a specific capability, such as a choice of payment processors, approval flows, or HIPAA features, Jotform has more of them built in.

This comparison is based on each company’s pricing pages and help documentation as of October 13, 2026. We haven’t tested either product hands-on.

Free plans side by side

Sources: Jotform pricing and Tally pricing.

On volume, the two aren’t close. Jotform’s free plan stops at 100 submissions a month across five forms. When you pass that, Jotform warns you and then disables your forms until the month resets or you upgrade.

Tally sets no monthly cap. What it has is a fair-use policy.

What Tally’s fair-use policy says

“Unlimited” has a ceiling, and Tally publishes it. Its fair-use policy gives these as examples of extensive usage:

• Consistently collecting 50,000 submissions a month
• Consistently collecting 100 GB of file uploads a month, or 500 GB of total storage
• Consistently sending 50,000 email notifications a month

Above that, Tally says it will offer a custom plan based on your usage. If you decline, it says it will give you time to move to another tool.

For most small businesses, those thresholds are far above what a form will see. The policy is still worth reading once, because it also restricts sharing one subscription across separate organizations.

When you’d pay for Tally

Tally Pro is about how your forms look and who works on them. Tally’s pricing page lists these Pro features:

• Removing Tally branding
• Custom domains
• Unlimited team members in shared workspaces
• Custom CSS and more design options
• Partial submissions and drop-off analytics
• Removing the 10 MB per-file upload limit

Pro costs $29 a month on monthly billing. On yearly billing it’s $290, which works out to about $24 a month. Tally’s pricing page shows the yearly rate by default, so the first number you see is $24.

When you’d pay for Jotform

With Jotform, you pay when your usage grows:

• More than 100 submissions a month
• More than 5 forms
• More than 10 payments a month
• More than 500 stored submissions
• Removing Jotform branding

The first paid plan, Bronze, is $39 a month or $34 a month billed yearly, and includes 1,000 submissions and 25 forms. The rest of the plans are in our Jotform Pricing guide.

Team access is where the two differ most at the paid level. Tally Pro lists unlimited team members. Jotform’s help center says only its Enterprise plan supports inviting team members.

Payments

Both let you take payments on the free plan, with different trade-offs.

Tally connects to Stripe. Its help page says standard Stripe fees apply and that Tally adds no extra fees of its own. We didn’t see a monthly cap on the number of payments.

Jotform connects to a longer list of processors, including Stripe, PayPal, Square, and Authorize.Net, and also says it charges no fee of its own. It does cap payment submissions by plan: 10 a month on the free plan and 100 on Bronze.

If Stripe works for you and you take more than 10 payments a month, Tally’s free plan handles that without an upgrade. If you need PayPal or Square, Jotform has them.

Customization and built-in tools

Tally keeps custom CSS, custom domains, and branding removal for Pro. Jotform allows custom CSS on its forms and lists more than 20,000 templates, and it removes its branding on any paid plan.

Beyond the form itself, Jotform has more in the box. Its product line includes approval workflows, a document e-signature tool, a report builder, PDF generation, and a mobile app that works offline. We didn’t find equivalents for all of these in Tally’s pricing and help pages, though we didn’t review Tally’s full feature list.

Tally’s free feature list covers what many forms need: payments, signatures, uploads, logic, and calculations. If that list covers your form, the extra Jotform tools won’t matter to you.

Compliance notes

Jotform offers HIPAA features on its Gold and Enterprise plans, where they have to be enabled on the account. We didn’t find HIPAA terms on the Tally pages we read, and we didn’t check further, so ask Tally directly if you handle patient data.

Tally states on its site that it’s made and hosted in the EU. Jotform says it hosts data in the U.S. and the EU and keeps EU data in the EU. If data location matters to your business, confirm the details with each vendor.

Who should choose which

A newsletter writer, community organizer, or startup collecting lots of sign-ups. Tally. Volume is the constraint, and Tally doesn’t cap it.

A small team that wants shared access without an enterprise plan. Tally Pro includes unlimited team members.

A service business that takes PayPal or Square payments and needs signed documents and approvals. Jotform has those built in.

A clinic or practice that needs HIPAA features. Jotform Gold.

A solo business with a low-traffic contact form. Either free plan works. Pick the one whose paid features you’re more likely to need later.

If Jotform’s built-in tools are what you’re after, you can test them on the free plan. See Jotform’s free plan and current limits

FAQ

Is Tally really free? Tally says its free plan includes unlimited forms and submissions within its fair-use guidelines, with no time limit.

Is Tally cheaper than Jotform? At the paid level, yes. Tally Pro is $29 a month, or about $24 a month billed yearly. Jotform Bronze is $39, or $34 billed yearly. The two plans cover different things.

Does Tally have a submission limit? No monthly cap. Its fair-use policy lists consistent use above 50,000 submissions a month as extensive usage that may require a custom plan.

Can Tally take payments? Yes, through Stripe, on both free and Pro plans. Tally says it adds no fee on top of Stripe’s.

Which has better team features? Tally Pro includes unlimited team members. Jotform’s standard plans are single-user.

For a comparison with a tool that charges by response volume, see Jotform vs Typeform. For other options, see our Jotform Alternatives guide.