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Fillout vs Formbricks

An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.

The short answer

Both sides assessed

Fillout compared with Formbricks

These solve different halves of the problem. Fillout is a hosted form builder aimed at forms people arrive at, from a link, an embed, or an email; Formbricks is an open-source survey platform aimed at surveys that find people inside a product, triggered on an action or a user attribute. Self-hosting Formbricks is also the only way either tool costs nothing at volume, which matters if response counts are high or the data cannot leave your infrastructure. Pick Fillout for external-facing forms with logic and integrations, Formbricks for in-product research you want to own outright.

Formbricks compared with Fillout

Fillout is the operational front end, Formbricks the research instrument. Fillout routes submissions, writes to databases, generates documents, and books meetings, with SOC 2 and unlimited seats at 15 to 75 dollars; Formbricks triggers surveys on user behavior, segments by attributes, and can be self-hosted for free. Cloud-to-cloud, Fillout is far better value for collection; nothing in Fillout replaces in-app survey targeting.

Choose Fillout if

Startups and small operations teams that want a form to actually do something: route to an owner, write into Airtable or Notion, generate a document, book a meeting. Especially strong for teams of five to fifty, since seats are unlimited on every plan and only the response count is billed.

Choose Formbricks if

Product, growth, and research teams at startups that need surveys triggered inside their own application, targeted by user attributes, and teams with strict data-residency or data-ownership requirements who would rather self-host an AGPLv3 survey engine than send customer feedback to a US SaaS vendor.

Side by side

13 attributes
AttributeFilloutFormbricks
CategoryFormsForms
Starting price$15/mo (Starter, billed monthly; $180/yr annually) (free plan available)$0 self-hosted (AGPLv3); $74/mo for the cloud Pro tier (free plan available)
Pricing modelResponse-metered subscription across five tiers (Free, Starter, Pro, Business, Enterprise) with unlimited seats and unlimited forms on every plan; annual billing saves roughly 20 percent.Dual model: an AGPLv3 open-source core that is free to self-host with unlimited responses (enterprise modules separately licensed), alongside a response-metered EU-hosted cloud with three published tiers.
Free plan1,000 responses per month with unlimited forms and unlimited seats, including multi-page forms, embedding, conditional logic, calculations, file uploads, pre-fill, payment collection, and workflows.Cloud Hobby tier: 250 responses per month, 1 workspace, link, website, and in-product surveys, all question types, conditional logic, hidden fields, partial responses, file uploads, and full API access.
Free trialNo time-limited trial needed; the free plan is permanent at 1,000 responses per monthFree Hobby cloud tier plus a free Enterprise Edition trial license for self-hosted proofs of concept
Best forStartups and small operations teams that want a form to actually do something: route to an owner, write into Airtable or Notion, generate a document, book a meeting. Especially strong for teams of five to fifty, since seats are unlimited on every plan and only the response count is billed.Product, growth, and research teams at startups that need surveys triggered inside their own application, targeted by user attributes, and teams with strict data-residency or data-ownership requirements who would rather self-host an AGPLv3 survey engine than send customer feedback to a US SaaS vendor.
Setup timeA basic form is a same-hour job. A routed workflow that writes into Airtable, generates a PDF, and books a meeting is realistically a half day to a day of configuration and testing.A link survey is a same-hour job on the cloud. In-app surveys take an engineering sprint: install the SDK, decide which attributes and events to send, and instrument them. Self-hosting adds a Docker deployment, a Postgres database, and an upgrade routine.
Learning curveLow for form building, moderate for workflows. The concepts that take longest to internalize are pre-fill versus pre-fetch and how login forms scope a respondent to their own record.Moderate to high, and the highest of these five products. The survey editor is straightforward; the targeting model (contacts, attributes, segments, event triggers) requires the team to think like a product-analytics user rather than a form builder.
PlatformsWeb app, Embeds (popup, slider, side tab, full screen), Hosted links and QR codes, Custom domains (Business and up)Cloud (EU, hosted in Frankfurt), Self-hosted via Docker, Web SDK and React library, iOS and Android SDKs (Pro), Link surveys and email embeds
ComplianceSOC 2 Type II, 256-bit AES encryption at rest, CAPTCHA and spam protection on public formsSOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR compliant with EU (Frankfurt) hosting, CCPA alignment, DPA documentation provided
Founded20222022
HeadquartersUnited States (operating as Restly, Inc.); public trackers list Chicago, IllinoisKiel, Germany (Formbricks GmbH)
OwnershipVenture-backed (angel-led seed)Venture-backed (open-source specialist investor)

Strengths and limitations

Fillout

Strengths

  • Workflow and routing depth well beyond a normal form builder: post-submission automation, record updates, PDF generation, and scheduling in one flow.
  • Unlimited seats and unlimited forms on every plan including free, which makes it the cheapest option in the category for teams with many form owners.
  • Login forms and pre-fetch let respondents authenticate and edit their own submissions, a capability most rivals in this price band simply do not have.
  • SOC 2 Type II and published encryption details make it the easiest of these five to get through a vendor security review.

Limitations

  • Responses are metered on every tier below Business, which is a real cost disadvantage against Tally and Youform for public, high-volume forms.
  • Form analytics and partial submissions are locked to the 75-dollar Business tier, which feels late given both are table stakes elsewhere.
  • No in-app or behavior-triggered survey targeting; Fillout collects, it does not run product research inside your application.
  • Cloud-only with no self-hosting or open-source option, so data-sovereignty-driven buyers have to look at Formbricks instead.

Formbricks

Strengths

  • The only product in this category that runs behavior-triggered surveys inside your own application, targeted by user attributes and tied back to identified contacts.
  • Genuine open source: an AGPLv3 core that self-hosts with Docker for unlimited responses, with development in the open on GitHub and the option to fork.
  • Strong compliance posture for a company this small: SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR with EU hosting in Frankfurt, CCPA alignment, and published DPA documentation.
  • Full API access on every tier including the free one, plus native iOS and Android SDKs, which makes it the most developer-oriented option here.

Limitations

  • Cloud pricing is the least competitive in the category: 250 free responses a month, then 74 dollars for 2,000 and 325 dollars for 5,000.
  • The valuable capabilities require engineering: installing SDKs, sending user attributes and events, and either operating a self-hosted deployment or paying cloud rates.
  • Open source has boundaries that matter in practice: SSO, team roles, audit logs, and white-labeling are commercially licensed even for self-hosters, and AGPLv3 carries copyleft obligations on distributed modifications.
  • Weak as a general-purpose form builder: no payments, no bookings, no PDF generation, no e-signature, and a thinner template and theming story than Paperform or Youform.

Pricing compared

Fillout

Response-metered subscription across five tiers (Free, Starter, Pro, Business, Enterprise) with unlimited seats and unlimited forms on every plan; annual billing saves roughly 20 percent.

  • Free$0
  • Starter$15
  • Pro$40
  • Business$75
  • EnterpriseCustom

Fillout is priced for teams, not individuals. Because seats are unlimited on every tier, a twenty-person company collecting 4,000 responses a month pays 40 dollars, which no per-seat competitor comes close to matching, and Paperform would charge 99 dollars plus per-user fees for a comparable setup. The weakness is the opposite case: a solo founder whose single form draws 8,000 responses jumps from 40 dollars to 75 while Tally and Youform stay at zero. The Business tier is also where the value judgment gets awkward, because analytics and partial submissions being gated there means the jump from Pro to Business is often about features rather than volume. Buy Fillout for the workflows, the integrations, and the SOC 2 report; do not buy it to save money on a simple form.

Formbricks

Dual model: an AGPLv3 open-source core that is free to self-host with unlimited responses (enterprise modules separately licensed), alongside a response-metered EU-hosted cloud with three published tiers.

  • Self-hosted (Community Edition)$0
  • Hobby (cloud)$0
  • Pro (cloud)$74
  • Scale (cloud)$325

There are two Formbricks and they have opposite value profiles. Self-hosted, it is arguably the best deal in the whole category: an in-app survey engine with targeting, segmentation, and mobile SDKs for the cost of a container and a Postgres database, with no response meter and no data leaving your infrastructure. Hosted, it is the most expensive product here by a distance: 74 dollars for 2,000 responses is roughly what Fillout charges for unlimited, and Tally and Youform charge nothing at any volume. The honest read is that the cloud pricing is aimed at teams whose alternative is Qualtrics or Sprig rather than a form builder, and startups comparing on price should either self-host or accept that they are buying the in-app targeting, not the collection.

Editorial verdict on each

Fillout

Momentum

Fillout is the most capable form platform in this group and the one that most deserves to be called a platform. Workflows, native database integrations, login forms, PDF generation, and scheduling combine into something closer to a lightweight operations tool than a questionnaire builder, and the unlimited-seat pricing makes it genuinely cheap for a team where many people own forms. Two things should give buyers pause: the response meter, which is a straight loss against Tally and Youform for public high-volume forms, and the decision to hold analytics and partial submissions until the 75-dollar tier. Buy it for the workflows and the SOC 2 report, not to save money on a contact form.

Read the full Fillout profile

Formbricks

Innovation

Formbricks is two products with one name, and buyers should be clear which one they are evaluating. Self-hosted, it is the best value in this category and possibly the only sensible choice for a team that needs in-product survey targeting but cannot send customer feedback to a US vendor: unlimited responses, an auditable AGPLv3 codebase, and mobile SDKs, for the price of running a container. Hosted, it is the most expensive option here, with 250 free responses and a 74-dollar Pro tier that buys less collection than Fillout's free plan. Nobody should buy Formbricks cloud as a form builder. Product teams that want to ask the right user the right question at the right moment inside their own app should look hard at it, and should probably run it themselves.

Read the full Formbricks profile

Fillout profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Formbricks last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.