Formbricks vs LimeSurvey
Both are alternatives to Typeform. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as LimeSurvey vs Formbricks — same comparison, one verdict.
Formbricks and LimeSurvey are closely matched on ownership (90 vs 93) — this one comes down to pricing and to which trade-offs below you can live with.
Formbricks
TOP PICKSelf-hosted surveys built for privacy-first teams.
Formbricks is an open survey and experience platform designed to be self-hosted: link surveys, in-app surveys triggered by user behaviour, and website surveys, with responses resting on your own infrastructure. That last point is the reason to choose it — for GDPR-sensitive work, form responses never leaving your servers turns a compliance conversation into a non-event. Around 12.7k stars, actively developed, with a paid cloud for teams who would rather not host. The licence is an open core with some enterprise features commercially licensed, so check which side of the line the feature you need falls on.
LimeSurvey
Twenty years of serious survey methodology, GPL, self-hosted.
LimeSurvey is the survey tool academic and research institutions actually use, and it shows: dozens of question types, quotas, randomisation, complex conditional logic, multilingual surveys and statistical export. It is not trying to be beautiful and it is not conversational — it is trying to be methodologically sound, which is a different and sometimes more important thing. GPL-2.0, self-hosted, with two decades of development behind it. Choose it when the survey is research rather than marketing.
Side by side
6 points of comparison, every one read from a verified field. Green marks the side that wins a row outright. A dash means we do not hold that fact — never that it is zero.
| Formbricks | LimeSurvey | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty ScoreOur transparent 0–100 composite for data ownership and exit cost. | 90 | 93 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first data | Yes | Yes |
| License | Open core (AGPL-3.0 core; enterprise features commercially licensed) | GPL-2.0 |
| Pricing | Free and open source to self-host. Paid cloud and enterprise tiers. | Free and open source to self-host. Paid cloud hosting available. |
Formbricks is Macrostack's recommended Typeform alternative, so it's our pick here.
Weighing both against staying on Typeform? Is Typeform free? What it actually costs →
Formbricks
Strengths
- +Responses never leave your infrastructure — the compliance answer
- +In-app and website surveys, not just link forms
- +No per-response pricing; a successful survey costs nothing extra
- +Modern interface and active development
Trade-offs
- −Some enterprise features are commercially licensed
- −You now run a service, with the upgrades and backups that implies
- −Smaller integration catalogue than Typeform
- −Conversational polish is close but not identical
LimeSurvey
Strengths
- +Most methodologically serious tool here — quotas, randomisation, complex logic
- +Excellent multilingual support
- +Twenty years of development; trusted in academic research
- +GPL-2.0 with a complete self-host path
Trade-offs
- −Interface is dated and the learning curve is real
- −Nothing conversational about it
- −PHP and MySQL to operate
- −Overkill for a contact form or a short marketing survey
Which one fits you
The trade-offs above, turned into a decision. Find the line that describes your team.
Choose Formbricks
if responses never leave your infrastructure — the compliance answer.
Choose LimeSurvey
if a lower exit cost matters more to you than any single feature, and most methodologically serious tool here — quotas, randomisation, complex logic.
Neither, yet
if both carry a real cost you should weigh first — some enterprise features are commercially licensed, and interface is dated and the learning curve is real. If either of those is a dealbreaker for your team, the shortlist is wrong rather than the choice.
Formbricks vs LimeSurvey — common questions
Is Formbricks a better fit than LimeSurvey for forms & surveys?
It depends on what you are optimising for, and the honest split is this: LimeSurvey scores 93 to Formbricks's 90 on data ownership and exit cost, so it is the safer choice if you care about being able to leave. Formbricks earns its place on a different axis — responses never leave your infrastructure — the compliance answer. Neither is a wrong answer for every team; the table above is the actual comparison.
What happens if we want to switch later?
Formbricks keeps its data local or in open formats, so leaving is an export rather than a negotiation. LimeSurvey is still self-hostable, so the files stay on your server either way — but it is not local-first by design, so check what its export produces before you rely on it.
Can I self-host Formbricks or LimeSurvey?
Both can be self-hosted. The difference is what it costs you in time rather than whether it is possible — see the setup and maintenance rows above.
Are Formbricks and LimeSurvey both alternatives to Typeform?
Yes — both appear in our Typeform comparison, which is why they are worth putting side by side. People usually arrive here already having decided to move off Typeform and now choosing between the two replacements, which is a narrower and much easier question.
Related alternative guides
Facts verified 2026-08-07. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.