4 open source tools compared. Sorted by stars — scroll down for our analysis.
| Tool | Stars | Velocity | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
Formbricks Open source survey platform | 12.0k | +17/wk | 71 |
HeyForm Open source form builder | 8.7k | +16/wk | 65 |
| 4.7k | +11/wk | 71 | |
| 1.2k | +6/wk | 55 |
In-app surveys, website pop-ups, and link surveys, all from one platform you can self-host. The open source version is free. You get unlimited surveys, unlimited responses, targeting by user attributes, no-code survey builder, and integrations with webhooks. Self-host it and you own all your survey data. Formbricks Cloud has a free tier (25 responses/month) and paid plans: Startup at $49/mo (250 responses), Scale at $149/mo (1,500 responses), Enterprise custom pricing. The response limits are the main gate. Self-hosting is moderate effort. Docker Compose with Postgres and the Formbricks app. The docs walk you through it, but you're maintaining a Node.js app, database, and keeping up with updates. Solo developers: self-host for free if you want user feedback in your app. The 25 free cloud responses are too few for real use. Small teams: self-host or pay $49/mo, depends on whether you want ops or convenience. Growing teams: the $149/mo Scale tier is reasonable for the analytics and targeting features. The catch: the response limits on Cloud plans are aggressive. 25 responses/month on free is basically a trial. And self-hosting means you're responsible for reliability; if the survey service goes down, you stop collecting feedback.
Drag-and-drop form builder, conversational (one question at a time) layout, conditional logic, integrations with webhooks and Zapier. AGPL v3, TypeScript. The UI is polished for an open source project; it looks like a Typeform competitor, not a developer tool pretending to be user-friendly. Supports file uploads, payment collection (Stripe), and 40+ field types. Self-hosting is free. Docker Compose gets you running in minutes. The AGPL license means if you modify the code, you need to open-source your changes, important for SaaS companies that might want to embed it. HeyForm also offers a hosted version. Free tier with limited submissions. Paid plans start around $19/mo for more submissions and custom domains. Solo: self-host for free or use the hosted free tier. Small teams: self-host to avoid per-seat costs, or pay $19/mo for zero ops. Medium: self-host makes sense at scale: unlimited forms and submissions. The catch: the integration ecosystem is thin compared to Typeform. If you need native CRM integrations, email marketing connections, or advanced analytics, Typeform's paid tier has more. HeyForm handles webhooks well, so you can build integrations yourself, but that's developer time.
SurveyJS is the library that does it. Drag-and-drop form builder, conditional logic, 20+ question types, all rendered inside your React/Angular/Vue/jQuery app. The survey-library (the rendering engine) is MIT licensed and free. You can build forms, collect responses, and do conditional logic without paying anything. But the visual form builder (survey-creator), the drag-and-drop UI that non-developers use to design forms, requires a commercial license starting at $899/year for one developer. There's no cloud service to host. SurveyJS is a client-side library you embed in your app. Your data stays on your servers. The form definitions are JSON objects you store however you want. Solo developers: the free library is powerful enough to build complex forms in code. You don't need the visual builder if you're comfortable writing JSON. Small teams: the $899/year builder license pays for itself the moment a non-developer needs to create forms. Growing teams: the Pro license at $2,499/year adds PDF export and advanced analytics. The catch: the split between free library and paid builder is confusing. The library is free, but the moment someone says "I want a drag-and-drop editor," you're in paid territory.
SurveyJS Creator is that component. Drop it into React, Angular, Vue, or vanilla JS and your users get a visual form builder with conditional logic, branching, scoring, and 20+ question types. This is not a SaaS survey tool. It's a library you embed. Your data stays on your servers, your users never leave your app, and you control the entire experience. The catch: the license situation is the story here. The GitHub license shows 'NOASSERTION' which means you need to read the actual terms carefully. SurveyJS uses a commercial license: the creator component requires a paid license for production use. The open source part is the survey rendering library, not the builder. Developer licenses start around $499/year. Alternatives exist but none match the feature depth of the visual builder.