Tally vs Jotform: Unmetered Forms or Forms With Workflows

The short answer: if your team runs many simple forms, campaign sign-ups, feedback, event registrations, Tally carries them free with no submission meter below the 50,000 a month its fair use policy names as heavy use, while Jotform's free Starter stops at 5 forms and 100 submissions a month. Jotform earns its Bronze plan, $39 billed monthly or $34 a month billed yearly, when submissions have to be approved, signed or paid in volume; and if three colleagues each need a login, Tally Pro at $29 a month includes unlimited team members, while every Jotform plan below Enterprise is a one-user plan (checked on 26 October 2026 on the Tally and Jotform pricing pages).

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Count these first:

1. Your monthly submissions across all forms. For example, four campaign forms bringing 600 submissions a month in total pass Jotform Starter's 100, so Jotform means Bronze at 12 x $34 = $408 a year on yearly billing; on Tally the same volume stays free, and removing Tally's branding on Pro costs 12 x $24 = $288 a year, using the Jotform and Tally pricing pages.
2. Where submissions go today. Tally lists Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable, Zapier, Make and webhooks among its free features on its pricing page; Jotform's homepage counts 150+ integrations. If your destination is a sheet or a Notion database, either connects to it, and nothing downstream has to move.
3. Submissions someone forwards by hand. Count last month's: an approval asked for by email, a contract attached manually, a payment link sent afterwards. That number is Jotform's case. If it is zero, the meter is the only thing left to compare.

Tally puts its prices on features and its limits in a policy. Jotform puts a number on almost everything, and sells what happens after the form. The rest of this page follows from that.

The two free plans, line by line

Read on 26 October 2026 on the Tally pricing page, the Jotform pricing page and Jotform Workflows.

Where they part

The meter

Jotform prices by counts: forms, monthly submissions, stored submissions, form views, payment submissions and signed documents, each with its own limit per plan on the pricing page. Tally prices by features and leaves volume to a policy: its fair use page treats 50,000 submissions a month, kept up for three or four months, as a sign that a custom plan is due. For a team whose busiest form runs at a few hundred a month, that is the whole argument.

The seats

Tally Pro adds collaboration with unlimited team members in shared workspaces, per its pricing page. Jotform lists Starter, Bronze, Silver and Gold each as a "1 User Individual Plan", with user management, single sign-on and a multiuser platform on Enterprise, priced by quote. Three marketers sharing one Jotform login works until someone leaves.

The step after submit

Tally's free plan already does a lot at the moment of submission: conditional logic, calculations, payments, signatures, redirects. What its pricing page does not list is a step that waits for a person. Jotform Workflows is that step: an approval, a condition, a task, then a document sent through Jotform Sign. The Jotform how-to runs creator contracts through it, and the Tally how-to shows how far a free lead form goes without one.

Prices by band

USD, yearly billing per month with monthly billing in brackets, checked on 26 October 2026 on the Tally and Jotform pricing pages.

Jotform's Enterprise is quoted on request, and nonprofits and schools get 50% off Bronze, Silver and Gold, per its pricing page. Tally's yearly toggle is labelled "2 months off".

One agent step, with a catch in the settings

Both connect to Claude. Jotform's MCP server lists five tools, from create_form to get_submissions, and only workspace admins can install it. Tally's MCP documentation is more specific about what goes live: on a published form, changes to questions and content stay unpublished until you ask the assistant to publish them, while settings and other styling apply at once. So split the job. Ask the agent to rewrite the questions of next month's webinar form and leave them unpublished; a person reads the draft and asks for the publish. Any settings change the agent makes, such as a closing date or a redirect, is live the second it is made, so a person opens the live form straight after.

Free first, and the seat question

Both free plans are enough to decide. Put your three busiest forms on Tally Free for a month and the one form that needs an approval on Jotform Starter, then compare the forwarded-by-hand count from the list above. Neither needs a card for that.

The seat question is where the pricing leans. Jotform keeps a second login behind the Enterprise quote form: the four self-serve plans each carry one user on the pricing page, so the week a colleague needs their own access is the week the conversation moves to sales. Settle who needs to edit forms before you settle the plan.

Choose Tally if your job is

• Running many lead, feedback and registration forms without counting submissions.
• Giving a small marketing team shared workspaces for $29 a month, or $24 billed yearly.
• Keeping form data in the EU by default: Tally says it is Belgian and stores form data in Europe, on its GDPR page.

Choose Jotform if your job is

• Holding a submission until someone approves it, then sending a contract or a payment request.
• Signing up to 100 documents a month on the form's own account.
• Working in an organisation that will buy Enterprise for user management and single sign-on.

FAQ

What happens when a Tally form gets very popular?

Nothing, at first. The fair use policy calls occasional spikes fine; only sustained volume around 50,000 submissions a month for three or four months leads Tally to propose a custom plan, billed quarterly on top of any subscription.

Where does each store form data?

Tally stores all form data in Europe and acts as processor for the form creator, per its GDPR page. Jotform's EU data residency guide says accounts created in the European Union use its Europe data centre automatically, and others can move under Settings, Data, GDPR Datacenter.

Can both collect a signature on the free plan?

Yes, in different ways. Tally lists signature collection among its free features on its pricing page; Jotform's Starter plan includes 10 signed documents a month through Jotform Sign, per its pricing page.