Best European Alternatives to Google Forms
Looking for a European alternative to Google Forms? Google collects form responses on US servers. European form builders keep your survey data in Europe with GDPR compliance.
Privacy-friendly form builders offer surveys and data collection without Google's data harvesting.
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
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European ownership, verified
The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA or Switzerland, and processes customer data in Europe. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.
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Category fit and hands-on review
What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.
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Compliance and pricing check
GDPR posture, hosting location and the prices quoted on this page are verified against the vendor’s public pricing before publication, and re-checked when we revisit the category.
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Position on this page
Placement on this page can be paid, and that can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. It never buys a good review: a tool that fails the checks above is not here at any price, and payment does not change the shortcomings we write about. A vendor can ask us to correct a factual error — not to remove a criticism.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a vendor. Paid placement can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. Editorial policy
Why Choose a European Alternative to Google Forms?
GDPR Protection
Your data stays in Europe, protected by the world's strongest privacy laws.
EU Data Centers
Data processed and stored exclusively within the European Union.
No US Surveillance
Free from CLOUD Act and other US data access laws.
Quality Alternatives
Comparable features with European quality and support.
Best European Alternatives to Google Forms
Privacy-focused alternatives from European companies, evaluated for features, privacy, and GDPR compliance.
Key takeaways
- Google's data regions policy does cover Forms responses at rest, so the common claim that Forms falls outside it is wrong.
- That control starts at Business Standard, so a form running on a free Google account has no region, no processing agreement and no audit log.
- Turning on "Limit to 1 response" forces every respondent to sign in to a Google Account, which changes what your form asks of people who have none.
- Tally is the only tool on this page whose free plan matches Google's open-ended one: unlimited forms and unlimited submissions.
- Typeform's free plan stops at 100 responses a month, and its $29 Basic plan stops at 100 as well, which is the single largest downgrade anyone leaving Google Forms will meet.
Why people leave Google Forms
Google Forms is the only part of the Google suite where the people whose data you are handling never agreed to anything. A document is between you and your colleagues. A form is a request you send to patients, applicants, parents, members or customers, and every answer they type becomes personal data that you are responsible for and that Google processes on your behalf.
That relationship is fine when it is written down. The problem is where most forms actually live. A free Google account comes with no processing agreement, nothing to administer it from, no audit trail and no region to pick, and nothing in the interface warns you that the survey you just built for two hundred respondents is running on consumer terms.
This page will not tell you that Google refuses to keep responses in Europe. It does: the data regions policy explicitly covers Forms, including the text, the embedded images, the responses and even the draft responses, at rest. What it will tell you is the price of that sentence — data regions are included from Business Standard at €13.60 per user per month, which is not the plan the average form-maker is on.
- You are the controller and you signed nothing When a form collects names, health details or salary expectations, you decide why and how, which makes you the controller under the GDPR and Google the processor. A processor relationship needs a contract. On a personal Google account there is no such contract to point at, no list of subprocessors to review and no place to record a retention period, and none of that becomes visible until somebody asks for your record of processing activities.
- The region control exists, two plans above the one you have Data regions covers Forms responses at rest, and it comes in two grades: the fundamental version is included with Business Standard and Business Plus, and the broader enterprise version with Frontline Plus, Enterprise Plus or a paid Data Regions add-on. Neither is included with Business Starter at €6.80, and neither exists on a free account at any price. Google also states plainly what the policy cannot cover: logs and cached content are outside it regardless of your plan.
- Anonymous is a setting, not a guarantee Forms can be configured not to collect email addresses, and it can equally be configured to require a sign-in — turning on "Limit to 1 response" means the respondent must sign in to a Google Account before they can answer. Those two settings sit next to each other and nothing in the form tells the person filling it in which one you chose. A respondent who assumes they are anonymous and is not has been misled by your configuration, not by Google's.
- The form is free because it is a feature of something else Forms has no price list of its own and no tier you can upgrade. Its governance, its retention, its export options and its region are all inherited from the Workspace subscription sitting behind it. That is why two organisations running visually identical forms can be in completely different compliance positions, and why the answer to "is our form compliant" is never about the form.
What you have to replace, not just match
Work out which of the three jobs your forms do, because the tools below are strong at different ones and nothing here is strong at all three.
The first is collection at volume: a registration or a survey that has to take thousands of answers and cost nothing. The second is collection under confidentiality: a whistleblowing channel, an intake form, a health questionnaire, where the point is that as few parties as possible can read the answers. The third is collection as a front door, where the form is a piece of marketing and the completion rate is the measure.
Tally is built for the first, CryptPad Forms for the second and Typeform for the third. If you try to use one tool for all three you will end up paying Typeform prices for an internal room-booking form, or asking a marketing campaign to run on a tool with no analytics.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Tally | Brussels, Belgium | Free / Pro from $29 per month | EU (Belgium) |
| #2 | CryptPad Forms | Paris, France | Free (50MB) / from about €5/month (5GB) | EU (France) |
| #3 | Typeform | Barcelona, Spain | Free tier / from $25 per month | EU (Spain) |
How each alternative compares to Google Forms
- Which law reaches it. EU (Belgium). Google Forms is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Google Forms is.
- Independently checked. GDPR.
Best for: Schools, clubs and small teams that need unlimited responses without a budget line
Tally is the only tool on this page that does not punish you for leaving a free product. Its free plan carries unlimited forms and unlimited submissions under a fair-use policy, which is the specific thing that made Google Forms the default for every school trip, every AGM and every volunteer rota in Europe.
It is a Belgian company and it stores form data in Europe, so the question that started this page — who processes the answers your respondents gave you, and under whose law — has a one-line answer instead of a plan comparison. The editor works like a document rather than a form builder: you type, and question types appear as you go, which makes building a twenty-question intake form faster than it is in Google Forms.
Where it is thinner is analysis. Google Forms lands in a Sheet and the whole spreadsheet is then available to you; Tally integrates with Google Sheets, Notion and Airtable and can push to webhooks, but the analysis lives outside the tool. It is also closed source, so unlike CryptPad on this page the privacy position is a promise rather than something you can inspect.
What Tally does better than Google Forms
- A Belgian company processes the responses, so no US legal process reaches your processor
- Unlimited forms and submissions on the free plan, where Google's equivalent governance starts at €13.60 per user per month
- Form data is stored in Europe by default rather than as a setting on a higher plan
- Paid plans are priced per workspace, not per user, so adding colleagues does not change the bill
- Conditional logic, calculations, payments and signatures are in the builder rather than bolted on with add-ons
Where Tally is a step down from Google Forms
- No native spreadsheet at the end of it, where a Google Form lands in Sheets automatically
- Closed source, so the handling of responses has to be taken on trust
- A much smaller company than Google, which matters for a form you intend to run for a decade
- Responses are readable to the provider, so it does not answer a confidentiality requirement
Standout against Google Forms. It is the only replacement here that keeps a form free at unlimited volume, which is the reason the tool you are leaving became universal in the first place.
- Which law reaches it. EU (France). Google Forms is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. France.
- Source code. Open source, where Google Forms is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.
Best for: Whistleblowing channels, intake forms and anything where the host should not be able to read the answers
CryptPad Forms is part of the CryptPad suite from XWiki SAS in Paris, and it inverts the usual arrangement: responses are encrypted in the browser and the server stores material it cannot decrypt. Google Forms cannot do this and no configuration will make it, because the dashboards and summary charts people like require the provider to read the submissions.
That matters most for the forms nobody puts in a screenshot. A reporting channel for misconduct, an intake questionnaire at a clinic, an application form that asks about a disability — these are the cases where "anonymous" on the form is a promise about the operator as well as about you, and this is the only tool here that can keep it.
The cost is everything built on reading the data. There is no response analytics to speak of, no CRM integration, no spam scoring, and a lost key means the responses are gone with nobody at CryptPad able to get them back. The free tier is a small storage allowance rather than a response count, and the fair way to use it is to self-host, which is free and puts the server in your own building.
What CryptPad Forms does better than Google Forms
- Responses are encrypted in the browser, so the operator stores answers it cannot read — something Google Forms offers on no plan
- Open source and self-hostable, so the claim can be audited instead of believed
- French company and French hosting on the public instance, with no US parent in the chain
- The form sits beside encrypted documents, sheets and kanban boards rather than in a separate product
Where CryptPad Forms is a step down from Google Forms
- Almost no analytics, because summarising answers requires reading them
- No integration with a spreadsheet the way a Google Form feeds a Sheet
- A lost key means lost responses, with nobody able to reset anything
- Small storage allowances on the hosted plans compared with Google's effectively unlimited free tier
Standout against Google Forms. It is the only form builder on this page where the sentence "only we can see your answers" is a statement about mathematics rather than about a privacy policy.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Spain). Google Forms is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Google Forms is.
- Independently checked. GDPR.
Best for: Customer-facing forms where the completion rate is the thing being bought
Typeform is a Spanish company in Barcelona and it solves a problem Google Forms never tried to solve. One question at a time, full screen, with the next question depending on the last: it reads as a conversation rather than a questionnaire, and on a customer-facing survey that difference shows up in the completion rate.
For a page about leaving an American provider it is worth saying what this buys you beyond design. Typeform SL is established in the EU, so the processor you contract with is a European company rather than a European region of an American one. For a marketing team already paying for a form tool, that is a swap with no compliance homework attached.
The reason it ranks third is arithmetic. The free plan allows 100 responses a month and the $29 Basic plan allows the same 100; 1,000 responses means $59 a month and 10,000 means $99. Coming from a Google Form that took as many answers as arrived, for nothing, that is a genuine downgrade and the wrong choice for an internal or high-volume form.
What Typeform does better than Google Forms
- A Spanish company is the processor, so there is no US parent behind your respondents' answers
- One question at a time with branching, which measurably outperforms a scrolling Google Form on customer-facing surveys
- Design control over fonts, colours and layout, where a Google Form has a small palette and a header image
- Built-in response analytics, drop-off reporting and CRM integrations rather than a spreadsheet you analyse yourself
Where Typeform is a step down from Google Forms
- The free plan caps at 100 responses a month, against a Google Form that accepts them without limit
- Paid plans are priced by response volume, so a successful form costs more than an ignored one
- Closed source and cloud only, with no self-hosted option
- Overkill for internal forms, where the conversational format slows people down rather than charming them
Standout against Google Forms. It is the only tool here that is bought for what happens to the person filling the form in, rather than for what happens to the data afterwards.
What actually breaks when you switch
The printed link is the one that catches people out. A Google Form URL ends up on a poster, in a newsletter, on a noticeboard and in an email signature, and when the form is deleted the link simply fails. Keep the original open and accepting answers for a fortnight after the replacement goes live, then replace its content with a single question pointing at the new address rather than deleting it outright.
The second is the spreadsheet everyone built on top. A Google Form feeds a Sheet, and around that Sheet there is usually a pivot table, a chart in a slide deck and an Apps Script that emails somebody on Tuesdays. Moving the form breaks all of it silently. Find out who owns that spreadsheet before you migrate, because it is rarely the person who owns the form.
The third is the rebuild itself. Nothing exports form logic, so branching, validation, required fields and section jumps get recreated by hand. Do it with the old form open beside the new one and submit a real test response through every branch, because a conditional path that silently skips a mandatory question is the kind of error that only surfaces after two hundred people have already answered.
If Google can keep form responses in Europe, what exactly is wrong?
Nothing, if you are on a plan that has the control and you have switched it on. Data regions names Forms among the covered services and protects the text, the embedded images, the responses and the draft responses at rest. For an organisation on Business Standard or above, the storage question is answered and answered properly.
Two things remain. The first is that the control begins two tiers above free, and the overwhelming majority of Google Forms in circulation were made on accounts that have no such setting, by people who never chose a plan at all. The second is that a region governs where bytes sit and not which state can compel the company holding them; Google LLC is in Mountain View and that does not change with a dropdown.
So the honest split is this. If your objection is a procurement question about storage location, buy Business Standard and move on. If your objection is that a third country's legal process can reach the responses your members gave you, a European processor is the only thing that answers it.
Can I promise respondents their answers are anonymous?
Only if you have checked what the form is set to do, and only if you are also willing to describe what the provider can see. Google Forms does not attach an identity to a response unless you tell it to, but it can be told to, and "Limit to 1 response" does exactly that by requiring a Google sign-in before the form can be answered.
Even with every identifying setting off, the answers are stored in a readable state by the provider, which is a different promise from the one people hear when you say anonymous. For a staff satisfaction survey that difference is theoretical. For a harassment reporting channel it is the entire design requirement.
CryptPad Forms is on this page because it is the only option here that can make the stronger promise: the responses are encrypted in the browser and the server stores material it cannot read. If you have ever written the word anonymous on a form, that is the standard you were implying.
What does it cost to leave a free tool?
Less than people assume, because one of these matches Google on the thing that made Forms ubiquitous. Tally's free plan carries unlimited forms and unlimited submissions within its fair-use policy, so a school, a club or a small charity can move across without a budget line appearing.
Typeform is the opposite case and it should be stated before you fall in love with the interface. Its free plan allows 100 responses a month, and its $29 Basic plan allows the same 100; 1,000 responses a month means the $59 Plus plan and 10,000 means Business at $99. Against an unlimited free Google Form that is a genuine step backwards, and it is only worth taking if completion rate is what you are buying.
CryptPad sits in the middle: free at a small storage allowance, a few euros a month above that, and free entirely if you run the server yourself. Encryption is included rather than an upgrade, which is the reverse of how this usually goes.
Will my existing forms and responses come with me?
The responses will. Every Google Form writes to a spreadsheet, that spreadsheet exports to CSV, and every tool on this page imports CSV. Historical answers are the easy part of this migration and you should get them out before anything else, because a CSV in your own storage is the only copy that does not depend on an account staying open.
The forms themselves will not. There is no interchange format for form logic, so branching rules, required fields, validation patterns, section jumps and the response-limit settings all get rebuilt by hand. For a five-question form that is ten minutes. For a multi-page application form with conditional sections it is an afternoon and a careful test.
The part people forget is the live links. A Google Form URL that is printed on a poster, embedded in a webpage or pinned in a chat channel stops resolving when the form is deleted, and there is no redirect. Keep the old form open and accepting answers for a fortnight after the new one launches, then close it with a message pointing at the replacement.
Which one to pick
If you are leaving because a form on a free Google account has no contract behind it and you want that fixed without a budget conversation, Tally is the answer. Unlimited responses, a Belgian processor, and European storage as the default rather than as a plan feature.
If you are leaving because you wrote the word anonymous on a form and then thought about what that actually commits you to, CryptPad Forms is the only option here that can support the claim, and self-hosting it costs nothing but a server.
If the form is customer-facing and you are measured on how many people finish it, Typeform is worth its price and its European establishment comes free with the purchase — but check the response allowance against last year's volume before you sign, because that is where the surprise lives.
And if your forms are internal, low-volume and already running on a Business Standard subscription with data regions turned on, there is no urgent case here. Turn the setting on, write the retention period down, and spend the effort somewhere it buys more.
Frequently Asked Questions
Tally if you want the same open-ended free plan with a Belgian company behind it, which is the closest thing to a straight swap. CryptPad Forms if the answers are sensitive enough that the host should not be able to read them. Typeform if the form is a marketing asset and completion rate is what you are optimising. The deciding question is who is answering the form and what they were promised.
It can. Google's data regions policy lists Forms among the covered services and protects the text, embedded images, responses and draft responses at rest in your chosen region.
The fundamental version of the policy is included with Business Standard and Business Plus, and the broader enterprise version with Frontline Plus, Enterprise Plus or a paid add-on. Neither is part of Business Starter and neither exists on a free personal Google account. Logs and cached content stay outside the policy on every plan.
With a paid Workspace subscription it can be, because that comes with a data processing agreement, an admin console and an audit trail. On a free personal Google account there is no processing agreement to rely on, which is a problem whoever built the form, because you are the controller for every answer your respondents give. The form itself is not the compliance object; the account underneath it is.
Usually not, but it depends on a setting you control. Google Forms can be answered without signing in, and turning on "Limit to 1 response" changes that: respondents must then sign in to a Google Account before they can answer. That is worth knowing before you send a form to a membership list, a patient group or a school community where plenty of people do not have one.
Tally, and it is the only one on this page that matches Google here. Its free plan carries unlimited forms and unlimited submissions under a fair-use policy, along with conditional logic, file uploads and integrations. CryptPad is free within a small storage allowance, and free without limit if you host it yourself. Typeform is not that tool: its free plan stops at 100 responses a month.
Use CryptPad Forms, which encrypts responses in the browser so the server stores material it cannot decrypt. No mainstream form builder, Google Forms included, offers that, because the features they compete on — dashboards, live charts, integrations, spam filtering — all require the provider to read the submissions. The trade is that you give up those features in exchange for the guarantee.
The responses yes, the form no. Responses live in a linked Google Sheet, which exports to CSV and imports anywhere. The form itself has no interchange format, so branching logic, validation rules and section jumps are rebuilt by hand in the new tool. Export the CSV first, then rebuild, then run both forms in parallel for a fortnight before you delete the original.
Three things. It writes straight into Google Sheets, which is where most people actually analyse their results, and no European tool integrates with Sheets as tightly as Sheets integrates with itself. It costs nothing at unlimited volume. And it is already installed for everyone with a Google account, so there is no onboarding of any kind. You are trading those for a processor you have a contract with.
Tally is not: its free plan is open-ended, and Pro is €20 a month for the whole workspace rather than per user, which stays cheaper than a Workspace upgrade for a small team. Typeform is more expensive in the way that matters, because it prices by response volume rather than by seat. CryptPad is cheap or free depending on whether you host it, and the cost there is the person who runs the server.
Who worked on this review
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