Formspree vs Tally vs splitforms: Which Is Cheapest?

The three tools in one paragraph each

Formspree is a long-running form-to-email backend. You point an HTML form's action at its endpoint and submissions reach your inbox. Its free plan lists 50 submissions/month; current paid prices and limits are on the Formspree pricing page.

Tally is a hosted visual form builder. Its Free plan includes unlimited responses and many features, including conditional logic, file uploads, payments, and webhooks, subject to fair-use guidelines. Pro adds branding removal, custom domains, and team features. Its current pricing can vary by region, so check Tally's live pricing page.

splitforms is a developer-first form backend. Same HTML-form-with-action-URL contract as Formspree, but cheaper, with Pro webhooks, rule-based spam filtering, an MCP server, and a small attribution link in generated Free code that paid plans remove. Built and run by developers who use it daily.

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 September 29, 2026. 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 full use, splitforms' Pro plan works out to $1 per 1,000 submissions, and Annual to $0.27. Formspree's cheapest paid plan (Personal, billed yearly) works out to roughly $50 per 1,000 — fifty times more for the same outcome (a row of data hitting your inbox). Tally's Pro plan is a flat $24/month regardless of volume; the comparison only makes sense if you actually need the hosted 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.

Published pricing snapshot

• Free: 50 submissions/month, 30-day history, basic spam filter, "Powered by Formspree" on emails.
• Personal — $15/mo, or $10/mo billed yearly: 200 submissions/month, 1 GB uploads.
• Professional — $30/mo, or $20/mo billed yearly: 2,000 submissions/month, 5 GB. First plan with webhooks, Zapier, and autoresponses.

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

A recurring allowance of 50/month can work for quiet forms and may be tight after a traffic spike. Compare the plan limits and webhook requirements against the workload you expect. SplitForms has a different free limit: 500 total once, plus paid plans for recurring monthly volume.

Verdict

Use Formspree when its existing integrations, workflow, or migration savings make sense for your team. Compare its current plans with your expected monthly volume before switching. See SplitForms vs Formspree or the 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 September 2026)

• 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 — $24/mo: Custom domain, remove branding, integrations, API access, file uploads (webhooks are already included on Free under fair-use guidelines).
• Business — $74/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 $24/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 — Pro webhooks, rule-based spam scoring on every plan, MCP server for AI agents, and a $49/year Annual plan.

Pricing (as of September 2026)

• Free: 500 submissions total, unlimited forms, dashboard storage, and rule-based spam scoring.
• Pro — $5/mo: 5,000 submissions/month, signed webhooks, exports, integrations, retained uploads when Storage is connected, custom SMTP, priority delivery, advanced dashboard analytics.
• Annual — $49/year: 15,000 submissions/month with every Pro feature, about $4.08/month.

What's good

SplitForms Free is 500 submissions total, while Formspree and Web3Forms provide monthly allowances. Compare the account limit model, your expected usage, and paid feature needs before switching. Framework guides are available for Next.js, React, Astro, Vue, and Svelte.

What's missing or annoying

splitforms doesn't carry the same brand recognition as Formspree yet, so it's less of a household name. There's no hosted form page like Tally's — you write HTML, use a framework template, or build it in the dashboard's drag-and-drop builder and paste the snippet into your site. And 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 lowest-cost paid option and the most developer-friendly 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>

Cost at volume: which plan does each tool force you onto?

Pricing pages hide the question that matters: at your volume, which plan are you actually forced onto? Here it is at four realistic monthly volumes:

And if you commit to a year, splitforms' $49 Annual plan covers up to 15,000 submissions a month for about $4.08/month — roughly $0.27 per 1,000 submissions at full use.

Tally's $0 column comes with a lighter asterisk than it looks: unlimited volume and webhooks are included on Free under fair-use guidelines. The branded footer stays until you pay $24/month for Pro. The moment your form needs to look like yours instead of Tally's, the free ride ends.

Cheapest for a portfolio

Tie: splitforms or Formspree, at $0. A portfolio contact form sees a handful of messages a month, inside everyone's free tier. The difference is headroom: Formspree's 50/month cap is one busy week away from an upgrade prompt; splitforms' 500 total means you'll likely never think about it again. Tally works too if you don't mind the badge and a tally.so-hosted form.

Cheapest for an agency running client forms

splitforms. Unlimited forms on every plan means a dozen client sites fit under one account — 500 total submissions free, then $5/month Pro for 5,000 with webhooks. Formspree runs $20–90/month per meaningful workload, which doesn't pencil out for small-client retainers, and Tally means each client form is hosted by Tally unless you're on the $24/month Pro plan with a custom domain.

Cheapest with webhooks

It depends on whether you need your own HTML. Tally actually includes webhooks on its unlimited Free plan under fair-use guidelines — free, if a hosted, branded form is acceptable. splitforms' HMAC-signed webhooks unlock on the $5/month Pro plan for teams that want their own HTML. Formspree webhooks require the $30/month Professional plan ($20/month billed yearly) — the most expensive of the three to reach.

Real cost scenarios, annualized

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

splitforms' Pro plan is a flat $5/month regardless of volume up to 5,000/month — it doesn't scale with submissions the way Formspree's tiers do, which is why the annual cost stays at $60 across the paid rows up to 5,000/month. Above that, the $49/year Annual plan covers up to 15,000 a month, and it is also the cheaper way to pay for lower volumes: three years of Annual is $147, versus $180 for three years of Pro. That's about six months of Tally Pro, or about two and a half months of Formspree Business billed yearly. Full plan details: /pricing.

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. 500 total free is more than enough for most contact forms. If you grow, $5/mo Pro is a fraction of the cost of Formspree's Professional or Business tiers.

You need a hosted survey with conditional logic, no HTML

Tally. Its hosted builder and unlimited Free responses can fit this workflow; webhooks are included on Free under fair-use guidelines. Pro ($24/month) adds branding removal, custom domains, and team features.

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

If you're on the $15/month (or $10/month billed yearly) Personal plan and don't care about webhooks or rule-based spam scoring, keep using it. Inertia has value. If you're on the $30 Professional or $90 Business 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 (500 total with unlimited forms) means most client sites never hit a paid plan. For the ones that do, $5/mo Pro is trivial to bake into a retainer. Formspree at $20–90/mo per client doesn't pencil out for small business clients.

You need MCP / AI agent integrations

AI-agent workflows: SplitForms and Tally both offer MCP integrations, including free access. Tally's MCP tools operate on Tally forms; SplitForms' server manages its form backend and endpoint. Choose based on where your forms and submissions live. See the SplitForms API reference and Tally's MCP documentation.

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: paid plan. Tally: Pro, $24/month. splitforms: no badge on your own HTML forms; builder forms on Free show a small "Powered by splitforms" line that paid plans remove.
• Per-seat costs. Tally Business is $74/mo for SSO + team. Formspree Business is $60/mo billed yearly ($90/mo monthly) with team seats. splitforms includes 3 team seats on Pro and Annual.
• 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 price, here is where splitforms comes out ahead:

• 500 free submissions to start, no card and no time limit (Formspree Free is 50/month; Tally Free is unlimited but hosted and branded).
• Lowest paid entry of the three ($5/mo Pro for 5,000, vs $10/mo billed yearly for Formspree Personal and $24/mo for Tally Pro).
• Lowest cost per 1,000 submissions of the two code-first backends: $1 on Pro and $0.27 on Annual at full use, vs roughly $50 on Formspree Personal. Tally prices by features, not volume.
• Free includes dashboard capture, rule-based spam filtering, a small generated-code attribution, and MCP support; paid plans remove the attribution and add webhooks, retained uploads, exports.

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 lowest-cost paid pick in 2026: $5/month on Pro or $49/year on Annual.

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