Formspree vs Tally vs splitforms: Which Is Cheapest?

The three tools in one paragraph each

Formspree is the original form-to-email backend, around since 2014. You point an HTML form's action at formspree.io/f/<id> and submissions hit your inbox. It works. The free tier is 50/month, which most sites blow through in week one, and pricing climbs fast after that.

Tally is a Typeform-style hosted form builder. You design forms in their UI, embed an iframe, and visitors fill out a styled survey hosted on tally.so. Free tier has unlimited responses but most useful features (conditional logic, custom CSS, no branding, webhooks, file uploads) sit behind the $29/month Pro plan.

splitforms is a developer-first form backend. Same HTML-form-with-action-URL contract as Formspree, but cheaper, with free webhooks, AI spam filtering, an MCP server, and no branding at any tier. Founded 2025, run by an indie dev (me).

These three serve overlapping but different jobs. Formspree and splitforms are head-to-head competitors (both are HTML-form backends). Tally is a different category — hosted survey builder — but people compare it because the question is usually "cheapest way to collect form submissions in 2026."

At-a-glance comparison (12 rows)

Numbers verified 2026-05. Plans shift, so double-check the vendor sites before signing up — but as of this writing:

The dollar-per-1k row is the clearest signal. At splitforms' Pro plan you pay $1 per 1,000 submissions. Formspree's entry plan is $10/1k — ten times more for the same outcome (a row of data hitting your inbox). Tally's $29 is flat regardless of volume, but the comparison only makes sense if you actually need the survey UX.

Formspree, deep dive

Formspree is the OG. It invented the "point an HTML form's action at our URL" pattern that splitforms, Web3Forms, Getform, Basin, and a dozen others now copy. If you've seen a static-site contact form on Jekyll, Hugo, or Astro built before 2023, it's probably wired to Formspree.

Pricing (as of 2026-05)

• Free: 50 submissions/month, 1 form, basic spam filter, "Powered by Formspree" on emails.
• Personal — $10/mo: 1,000 submissions, 5 forms, file uploads, 2 webhooks, branding-free emails.
• Professional — $40/mo: 5,000 submissions, 25 forms, unlimited webhooks, advanced spam (Akismet), team seats.
• Business — $60/mo: 10,000 submissions, 100 forms, audit logs, priority support.

What's good

It's rock-solid. A decade of uptime, predictable deliverability, and a clean dashboard. The docs are good. If you don't care about cost and you want zero surprises, Formspree is the boring-but-safe pick. Team features (audit logs, SSO on enterprise) are also genuinely solid for agencies who need governance.

What's missing or annoying

The 50-submission free tier is hostile to indie projects. One Hacker News post or one Reddit thread and you're upgraded or rate-limited. Webhooks gated behind $10/month is jarring in 2026 — they're commodity infrastructure. Spam filtering is keyword/regex-based and gets bypassed by anything resembling LLM-generated spam. And the $40/month Professional jump for unlimited webhooks is the cliff most growing accounts hit.

Verdict

Use Formspree if you're already on it, the bill is small, and you don't want to think about it. Otherwise, the math doesn't work. Compare splitforms vs Formspree side by side, or skip ahead to the 5-minute Formspree migration guide.

Tally, deep dive

Tally is the budget Typeform. Hosted form builder, drag-and-drop UI, conditional logic, multi-page surveys, slick mobile responsiveness. It became popular as a Typeform alternative in 2022 because the free tier said "unlimited responses" and Typeform's free tier was painfully limited.

Pricing (as of 2026-05)

• Free: Unlimited forms, unlimited responses, but the useful stuff (file uploads, conditional logic, calculations, hidden fields, custom thank-you redirects, branding-free) is locked.
• Pro — $29/mo (or $24/mo annual): All features, custom domain, remove branding, webhooks, integrations, API access, file uploads.
• Business — $89/mo: Team seats, SSO, advanced analytics, white-label.

What's good

The form builder UI is genuinely the best in this comparison. If you need a no-code, beautifully-styled survey with logic jumps, payment collection, and a hosted page, Tally is excellent. The unlimited-responses claim is real — you won't get throttled on quantity. For non-technical users who can't edit HTML, it's a strong pick.

What's missing or annoying

Tally is not a form backend. You can't paste a <form action="..."> at your site and have it post to Tally — the form has to live on tally.so or in an iframe. That means you give up control over markup, accessibility, design system fit, and analytics. The free-tier feature gating is aggressive: file uploads, hidden fields, calculations, and removing branding all require Pro. And $29/month for a single user is steep when the actual data path is "form submission goes into a database."

Verdict

Use Tally if you specifically need a hosted survey product with conditional logic and zero HTML. For anything you'd build into your own site as a contact form, lead form, or signup — splitforms is significantly cheaper and gives you full control. See splitforms vs Tally and best Tally alternatives 2026.

splitforms, deep dive

splitforms is what I built because I got tired of Formspree's pricing and Tally's feature gating. Same HTML-form-with-action-URL pattern, but built for 2026 — webhooks free, AI spam classifier on every plan, MCP server for AI agents, and an absurdly cheap 4-year plan.

Pricing (as of 2026-05)

• Free: 1,000 submissions/month, unlimited forms, webhooks, AI spam, file uploads, no branding.
• Pro — $5/mo: 5,000 submissions/month, custom SMTP, priority delivery, advanced dashboard analytics.
• $59 for 4 years: Pro plan locked in for 4 years (~$1.23/month). The cheapest deal in the category.

What's good

The free tier is 20x Formspree's. The Pro plan is 1/2 the price of Formspree's entry plan with 5x the submissions. Webhooks are free, AI spam is free, file uploads are free. Frameworks have first-class support — Next.js, React, Astro, Vue, Svelte. And custom SMTP means you control deliverability — plug in Gmail, SES, or your own server.

What's missing or annoying

splitforms is newer than Formspree, so the brand is less well-known. There's no hosted form builder UI like Tally — you write HTML (or use a framework template). And the team has fewer people than Formspree's engineering org, so enterprise features (SSO, audit logs, SOC2) aren't there yet. If you need those, Formspree Business or Tally Business is a better fit.

Verdict

For 95% of indie devs, freelancers, agencies, and small businesses building HTML contact forms, splitforms is the cheapest and most feature-rich pick of the three. Grab a free access key at splitforms.com/login — no credit card required.

Here's the basic embed:

<form action="https://splitforms.com/api/submit" method="POST">
  <input type="hidden" name="access_key" value="YOUR_ACCESS_KEY" />
  <input type="text"  name="name"    required />
  <input type="email" name="email"   required />
  <textarea           name="message" required></textarea>
  <input type="checkbox" name="botcheck" style="display:none" tabindex="-1" />
  <button type="submit">Send</button>
</form>

Real cost scenarios, annualized

The table above is abstract. Here's what real volumes cost across a year:

The 4-year row is the punchline. Pay $59 once, get 4 years of Pro. That's less than two months of Formspree Professional or Tally Pro. If you're willing to commit, splitforms is unbeatable on cost.

Which one should you pick? A decision tree

Skip the analysis paralysis. Here's a flat answer by use case:

You're building a contact form on a static site or Next.js app

splitforms. Write the HTML, point the action at splitforms.com/api/submit, done. 1,000/month free is more than enough for most contact forms. If you grow, $5/mo Pro is 1/8th the cost of equivalent Formspree.

You need a hosted survey with conditional logic, no HTML

Tally. Genuinely the best in this comparison for that specific use case. The free tier is generous on responses, just budget for $29/month if you need to remove branding or use webhooks. There's no embedded-form alternative to Tally in this trio.

You're already on Formspree and it's working fine

If your bill is under $10/month and you don't care about webhooks or AI spam, keep using it. Inertia has value. If you're on the $40 or $60 plan, run the migration math — you'll save hundreds per year by switching. The migration takes 5 minutes per form.

You're an agency managing forms for 10+ clients

splitforms. The free-tier headroom (1k/mo per form) means most client sites never hit Pro. For the ones that do, $5/mo per Pro account is trivial to bake into a retainer. Formspree at $40/mo per client doesn't pencil out for small business clients.

You need MCP / AI agent integrations

splitforms is the only one of the three with an MCP server. If you're wiring forms into Claude, Cursor, or a custom AI agent, this is the only viable option today. See /api-reference.

How to switch (if you decide to migrate)

From Formspree, it's a 5-minute HTML edit per form. The fastest path:

1. Sign up at splitforms.com/login and copy your access key.
2. Replace the form's action="https://formspree.io/f/..." with action="https://splitforms.com/api/submit".
3. Add <input type="hidden" name="access_key" value="YOUR_KEY" />.
4. Deploy. Test with a real submission.

Full step-by-step including webhook re-wiring and field-mapping cheat sheet: Migrate from Formspree to splitforms in 5 minutes.

From Tally, it's more involved because Tally hosts the form. You'll need to rebuild the form as HTML on your site, then wire it to splitforms. If Tally's survey UX was load-bearing, splitforms isn't a drop-in replacement — but for plain contact / lead forms, it's a strict upgrade.

Hidden costs and final verdict

Before the verdict, the sticker price isn't the whole bill. Hidden costs that bite later:

• Branding removal. Formspree: $10/mo. Tally: $29/mo. splitforms: $0 — never branded.
• Per-seat costs. Tally Business is $89/mo for SSO + team. Formspree Business is $60/mo with team seats. splitforms is single-account today (team plan is in the roadmap).
• Overage fees. Formspree blocks submissions once you hit your cap and prompts an upgrade. Tally is unlimited responses on free but locks features. splitforms allows soft-overage on Pro (no hard block, you just get a usage notification).
• Email deliverability. Formspree and Tally use their own SMTP — when their reputation dips, your emails land in spam. splitforms' custom SMTP support lets you use SES, Gmail, or your own server. See contact form not working.

On pure price, splitforms wins all three comparisons:

• Cheapest free tier (1,000/mo).
• Cheapest paid plan ($5/mo, or $59 for 4 years).
• Lowest $-per-1,000 submissions ($1, vs Formspree's $10 and Tally's flat-$29).
• Most features included free (webhooks, AI spam, file uploads, no branding, custom SMTP, MCP).

Tally is the right answer only if you specifically need a hosted no-code survey builder. Formspree is the right answer only if you're already on it and the bill is small. For everyone else — indie devs, freelancers, agencies, small businesses — splitforms is the cheapest pick in 2026 by a margin that's not close.

Start free at splitforms.com/login, or browse more comparisons in the splitforms blog. If you want a pre-built template, grab the free contact form. Questions about the request contract or webhook payloads are answered in /docs and the FAQ. For deeper benchmarks on spam, see AI form spam detection.

FAQ