The short version

Checked against the live Jotform pricing page on 2026-09-14, in both billing states (the page has a Payment Periods: Monthly / Yearly control, “Yearly — Save up to 20%”):

  • Starter — Free. 5 forms, 100 monthly submissions, 1 user (individual plan), 100 MB storage, 10,000 monthly form views, 500 total submission storage, 100 fields per form, 10 monthly payment submissions, 10 monthly signed documents, Jotform branding on forms, HIPAA features unavailable.
  • Bronze — $34/mo billed annually, $39/mo billed monthly: 25 forms, 1,000 submissions, 1 GB, no branding.
  • Silver — $39/mo billed annually, $49/mo billed monthly: 50 forms, 2,500 submissions, 10 GB (the page marks this tier “Best value”).
  • Gold — $99/mo billed annually, $129/mo billed monthly: 100 forms, 10,000 submissions, 100 GB, HIPAA-enabled features available.
  • Enterprise — custom quote, unlimited forms and submissions, SSO and SLA.

This is a terms check, not a hands-on test: we captured the page in a real Chrome session and exercised the Monthly/Yearly control, but we did not create an account or build a form. We have, separately, quoted Jotform’s free tier in our Tally alternatives comparison from an official-page capture on 2026-08-30 — the free numbers (5 forms, 100 submissions, 100 MB) are identical two weeks later, so the Starter limits look stable rather than mid-rollout.

The free tier has more than one ceiling — and two of them are easy to miss

“100 monthly submissions” is the number everyone quotes, but the Starter card prints nine limits, and three of them bite before 100 submissions does:

  1. 5 forms total. Not five per workspace slot — five forms, full stop. A contact form, a booking form, a feedback form, and you are nearly done. Typeform’s free plan allows unlimited forms (its ceiling is responses); Jotform’s ceiling is the form count itself.
  2. 10 payment submissions per month. You can connect a payment integration on the free plan, but only the first 10 paid submissions each month are included — a shop taking eleven orders hits the paywall. Paid tiers step this to 100 (Bronze), 250 (Silver), 1,000 (Gold).
  3. 10 signed documents per month and 500 total submission storage (lifetime stored records, not monthly traffic). Even if monthly traffic stays at 80 submissions, the stored history caps at 500 records.
  4. Jotform branding is on until Bronze. The page lists “Jotform Branding” as a plan feature in the same row where paid plans list “No Branding.”
  5. 100 MB available space for uploads, 100 fields per form, and HIPAA features are unavailable until Gold.

The monthly premium is small — and the yearly ceiling is fixed, not per-seat

Jotform’s paid ladder is individual (1 user) through Gold, and the billing-state delta is modest compared to tools that charge 40–67% more monthly:

Bronze Silver Gold
Yearly (billed annually) $34/mo $39/mo $99/mo
Monthly $39/mo $49/mo $129/mo
Monthly premium +14.7% +25.6% +30.3%

Two structural notes:

  • Silver at $39/yearly is the only place two adjacent tiers nearly touch. Bronze yearly is $34, Silver yearly is $39 — a $5 gap that takes you from 25 to 50 forms and from 1,000 to 2,500 submissions. The Bronze→Silver jump gives 2.5x the submissions for ~15% more money, which is presumably why the page tags Silver “Best value.”
  • The page advertises “Save up to 20%” on yearly; the realized savings are 12.8% (Bronze), 20.4% (Silver), 23.3% (Gold) computed from the two captured states — “up to” is doing work, and the largest plan actually exceeds the advertised ceiling.

Where Jotform sits vs Tally and Typeform

Against the two form builders we have covered on Toolproofs (all numbers from the vendors’ own pages on the capture dates — ours is a terms comparison, not a side-by-side hands-on):

Free tier (2026) Jotform Starter Tally Free Typeform Free
Forms 5 unlimited unlimited
Monthly submissions 100 unlimited claim (fair-use policy) 10 per our 2026-09-06 capture; the live page no longer prints the number (details)
Payment submissions 10/mo payment features on free plan (see Tally review) not on free
Storage 100 MB — —
Branding Jotform branding Tally branding Typeform branding

Practical reading:

  • Jotform’s free tier is the most usable for a handful of small forms. 100 submissions is 10x Typeform’s historical 10, and the free plan includes payment and document signing (with tiny sub-limits), widgets, and all standard features per the page’s own FAQ.
  • It is not competition for Tally’s free tier at volume — five forms with 100 submissions each is a hobby ceiling, and the paid entry ($34) costs more than Tally’s yearly entry ($24/mo per our Tally pricing capture) while adding a form-count cap Tally does not have.
  • Against Typeform specifically, the interesting swap is Silver at $39/yearly vs Typeform Basic at 28 USD/mo yearly (page text in our 2026-09-26 re-capture) for roughly similar small-team use — note that Typeform’s numbers were not readable as page text in our 2026-09-14 capture; the render history is explained in our Typeform pricing piece.

For the full alternatives framing, see Tally alternatives and Tally vs Typeform.

Other terms worth knowing

  • Nonprofit and education discounts: the page states 50% off Bronze/Silver/Gold and 30% off Enterprise for qualified nonprofits and educational institutions.
  • HIPAA compliance is Gold and up — Bronze and Silver both list “HIPAA-Enabled Features Unavailable.” Healthcare use starts at $99/mo yearly.
  • All standard features are included on free (“All Features Included” on the Starter card): templates, payment integrations, and widgets are not paywalled — only volume and branding are.

Is Jotform safe?

Checked against jotform.com/security on 2026-09-29:

  • All traffic runs over 256-bit SSL (SHA-256 certificates) on every plan, including free.
  • Submissions can optionally be encrypted in the browser with RSA 2048 before they leave the device; encrypted submissions are decrypted server-side when you view them.
  • Payments are certified at PCI DSS Level 1 (service provider); privacy compliance covers GDPR and CCPA, with FERPA and StateRAMP snapshot material published for public-sector review.
  • HIPAA-enabled forms exist but are a paid tier — our pricing section above shows them listed as unavailable on Bronze and Silver.
  • Jotform states forms are hosted on Google Cloud and AWS rather than in-house servers. On SOC 2: the company describes its dedicated environment as aligned to the five SOC 2 trust principles — that dedicated environment is an Enterprise upgrade, not the free plan’s shared hosting.

Practical read: on the free tier, the day-to-day protections are the SSL transport and the optional client-side encryption; the compliance certifications above the free tier are what your legal reviewer would ask about if regulated data is involved.

Verdict (terms-level, no score)

We did not build a form in Jotform, so no star rating. On the terms alone, Jotform runs the most feature-complete genuinely-free tier of the three big form builders (payments, signing, widgets all present at $0), but it stacks five overlapping ceilings on it — form count, submissions, storage, payment submissions, signed documents — and the free tier’s real shape is “five small forms,” not “a form platform.” The paid ladder is priced close at the bottom ($34/$39) and the Bronze→Silver value jump is unusually obvious; above that, $99 Gold exists mainly for HIPAA and volume. Anyone choosing on price should compare the exact ceiling they will hit first, not the headline submission number.

Methodology & sources

  • jotform.com/pricing — captured 2026-09-14 (UTC) in a headless Chrome session: full rendered text and full-page screenshot in the default yearly state and after selecting Monthly (Payment Periods control; prices re-rendered and “Billed annually” labels disappeared), plus a Starter-card crop (evidence above). Primary source for every number here.
  • Our own official-page capture from 2026-08-30 quoted in Tally alternatives — free-tier cross-check, zero drift on Starter limits (5 forms / 100 submissions / 100 MB).
  • Cross-references within Toolproofs: Tally pricing, Typeform pricing, Tally vs Typeform.
  • Re-checked 2026-09-26 (UTC): both billing states re-captured — Starter limits, Bronze $34/$39, Silver $39/$49 and Gold $99/$129 all showed zero drift (yearly default and Monthly state both re-rendered identically to 2026-09-14). Raw dumps: eval-ops runs, runId 2026-09-26-price-refresh-sweep.
  • Checked 2026-09-14, re-checked 2026-09-26 with zero drift. Pricing pages change; re-verify before citing.