The short version
This comparison is built from both vendors’ official pricing pages: Jotform captured on 2026-09-14 in both billing states (full breakdown in our Jotform terms check) and Tally captured 2026-08-30, the page data behind our hands-on Tally review and Tally pricing pages. One side of this is genuinely hands-on (we exercised Tally’s free plan end to end) and the other is page-verified (we did not build a form in Jotform) — read it with that asymmetry in mind.
Three structural differences:
- “Free” has opposite shapes. Jotform gives 5 forms, 100 monthly submissions and 100 MB for $0 — a small fixed box. Tally gives unlimited forms and submissions at $0, subject to a published fair-use policy with soft trigger thresholds.
- Jotform splits capabilities into sub-limits even on free — 10 payment submissions and 10 signed documents a month are separate ceilings. Tally’s free plan includes payments, webhooks, API and Stripe with no numeric sub-quotas (subject to fair use).
- Paid entry price differs by $10, and what it removes differs. Jotform Bronze is $34/mo yearly ($39 monthly) and mainly expands the box (25 forms, 1,000 submissions, no branding). Tally Pro is $24/mo yearly ($29 monthly, $290/yr) and mainly removes the four free-tier restrictions: Tally branding, custom domains, team workspaces, partial submissions.
Pricing side by side
| Jotform | Tally | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Starter: 5 forms, 100 submissions/mo, 1 user, 100 MB | unlimited forms + submissions claim under fair-use policy |
| Free payment forms | yes, 10 payment submissions/mo, standard features | payments/webhooks/API/Stripe included free (per Tally review) |
| Free signing | 10 signed documents/mo | not a product feature |
| Free storage | 500 total records, 100 MB uploads | — |
| Paid entry | Bronze $34/mo yearly / $39 monthly (25 forms, 1,000 subs, 1 GB, no branding) | Pro $24/mo yearly ($290/yr) / $29 monthly (branding removal, custom domains, teams, partial submissions) |
| Mid tier | Silver $39/$49 (50 forms, 2,500 subs, 10 GB) | — |
| Upper tier | Gold $99/$129 (100 forms, 10,000 subs, HIPAA) | Business $89/mo (compliance: email verification, retention controls — page data, not tested) |
| Branding | removed from Bronze | removed from Pro |
| Model | individual 1-user plans through Gold; Enterprise for teams | workspace plan, seat-agnostic |
Where the free ceilings actually bite
Jotform Starter prints nine limits on the card. The three that arrive first in practice:
- 5 forms total — a contact, booking and feedback form nearly exhausts it.
- 10 payment submissions/mo — an order form can take ten paid transactions before the paywall.
- 500 stored records lifetime — monthly traffic can stay under 100 and history still fills up.
Tally Free has no published numbers on the card; the governing document is a fair-use policy that publishes soft trigger thresholds (documented in our Tally pricing piece). For a normal small business this is effectively no cap; for high-volume viral forms the policy is the ceiling.
So the honest comparison is not “100 vs infinity” — it is a predictable small box (Jotform: you always know exactly when you’ll pay) versus an unbounded claim with a policy behind it (Tally: almost all users never hit it, but the vendor defines abuse).
What Jotform includes that Tally doesn’t, and vice versa
- Jotform at $0 includes: 10,000 monthly form views, 20,000+ templates, widgets, signed documents (10/mo), approvals, PDF editor/reports, HIPAA eligibility at Gold, nonprofit and education discounts of 50% (printed on the pricing page). The feature catalog is wider; the volume box is smaller.
- Tally at $0 includes: unlimited forms/responses claim, payment forms (Stripe and others), webhooks, API, conditional logic — the things competitors gate. The product surface is narrower (it’s a form builder, not a workflow suite), but the builder itself is not paywalled.
- At paid entry: Tally Pro ($24 yearly) buys mostly restriction removal; Jotform Bronze ($34 yearly) buys mostly volume plus de-branding, still on a 1-user plan. A team of three already needs Jotform Enterprise (Bronze/Silver/Gold are all “1 User Individual Plan” on the cards we captured); Tally Pro workspaces are not per-seat.
Who should pick which (terms-level)
- Pick Jotform if you need the feature catalog — signed documents, approvals, PDF reports, 150+ integrations, nonprofit/education pricing, HIPAA at Gold — and your volume fits five forms with small traffic, or you’re fine paying $34+ for a 1-user toolkit.
- Pick Tally if you want the cheapest path to branded forms with payments and custom domains ($24/mo yearly), expect unpredictable form volume, or need unlimited free forms for a small operation — and can accept the fair-use policy as the only stated ceiling.
- The one case Jotform clearly loses on its own page: a team. Every Jotform plan below Enterprise is an individual plan; Tally’s Pro is a workspace plan at a lower price.
No star rating: we exercised Tally hands-on but Jotform only at the pricing-page level. Full single-tool context: Jotform review, Tally review, Tally pricing, Tally alternatives.
Methodology & sources
- jotform.com/pricing — captured 2026-09-14 in yearly and monthly states (Payment Periods control exercised), Starter card cropped; evidence in /reviews/jotform-review/.
- tally.so/pricing and tally.so/help/plans-and-pricing — captured 2026-08-30/31 behind our hands-on Tally coverage; Pro/Business figures in this article come from those pages (Business row is page data, not tested). Jotform’s numbers are two weeks newer; we re-confirmed its free tier matched our own 2026-08-30 official-page quote in the Tally alternatives piece.
- Checked 2026-09-14. Pricing pages change; re-verify before paying.
