HeyForm is free only if you are the one running the server
Look for a free plan on HeyForm's pricing page and you will not find one. Not a small one, not a limited one, none: what the cloud offers is a 7-day trial, after which Basic costs $15 a month (as of July 2026).
Free HeyForm is real, though, and it runs entirely through your own server. The whole product sits on GitHub under AGPL-3.0, an OSI-approved open source license, and a self-hosted instance carries no response cap and no tier gates. If you came here hoping to sign up at heyform.net and pay nothing, better you learn that in the first paragraph than in week two.
Facts checked July 2026
HeyForm free plan at a glance
- Free plan score
- 59/100Usable
- Is it really free?
- Yes, within limits
- Paid plans from
- $15/month
59 out of 100, and the free cloud tier it does not have
HeyForm scores 59, which is Usable, and the missing hosted free tier accounts for most of the gap between it and its nearest rival. Generosity sits at 55 for exactly that reason: one free path, and it runs through Docker. Formbricks offers the same self-hosted freedom plus a small free cloud plan on top, which is why it scores 67 against HeyForm's 59 despite the two being close in spirit.
Where HeyForm does well is freedom at 72, and some of that is credit for honesty. HeyForm calls its 7-day cloud offer a trial rather than dressing it as a free plan, which more vendors in this category should do. Feature depth at 62 reflects a self-hosted build with nothing switched off, narrower than the paid leaders on integrations and templates.
59/100
Usable
Free if you run it yourself; the cloud is a 7-day trial, then $15 a month.
- Free plan generosity35% of the score
55/100
One free path, and it runs through Docker: self-hosting the AGPL-3.0 build is free with no response cap. The hosted cloud has no free plan at all, only a 7-day trial, after which Basic is $15 a month for 5,000 responses (as of July 2026). Formbricks offers the same self-hosted freedom and a small free cloud tier on top, which is why this scores below it.
- Feature depth for the category25% of the score
62/100
Self-host and you get the whole product, conversational forms, quizzes, polls, logic, theming and file uploads, with no tier gating anything off. It is narrower than the paid leaders here on integrations and templates, and we have not load-tested a self-hosted instance at volume, so treat high-traffic behavior as untested by us.
- Freedom and honesty20% of the score
72/100
Our data records HeyForm as AGPL-3.0 with the full source on GitHub, so a self-hosted instance is yours: no quota, no branding rules, no vendor holding the data. HeyForm is also straight about the cloud being a 7-day trial rather than a free plan. The caveat we will not skip: free here means you run and patch a Docker deployment, and the Premium cloud plan takes 1% of payments.
- What free users report20% of the score
50/100
One score only, Trustpilot 4.4 (checked 24 July 2026), with no G2 or Capterra presence. A single provider is not a pattern, and we cannot tell whether those reviewers are cloud customers or self-hosters, so this sits at the middle.
Scored July 2026. How we calculate the free plan score.
The hardest limit of all: no free cloud tier, only a Docker build we have not stress-tested
Start with the limit that decides everything else: there is no permanent free HeyForm cloud plan (as of July 2026). The 7-day trial ends, and the forms you built during it need a $15 a month Basic subscription to stay live. Anyone telling you HeyForm has a free tier is describing the self-hosted build.
On that self-hosted route, the costs are the ones every self-hosted tool carries, and we are not skipping them:
- A server, and the bill for it. Small, but not nothing.
- Docker, kept current. Updates and security patches are yours to apply.
- Backups and uptime. When a client's form is down on a Friday night, you are the on-call engineer.
- We have not load-tested a self-hosted HeyForm at volume, so treat its high-traffic behaviour as untested by us rather than as proven.
On the product itself, HeyForm carries fewer integrations and fewer templates than Jotform or Typeform. That is a fair trade for owning the data, but it is still a trade.
The ladder starts at $15, because there is no rung below it
Every plan card below is a paid one, and that is the point worth carrying away. On the cloud there is no bottom step, so the comparison is not free against paid. It is $15 a month against a server you administer.
Basic at $15 covers 5,000 responses a month with 10 GB of storage and a 10 MB file upload limit. The upgrade almost everyone actually wants is Premium at $24, because that is where the custom domain, custom CSS and branding removal live, and a form on your own domain is usually the reason people leave a free builder in the first place. Read Premium's small print before committing: it takes a 1% commission on payments, which Business at $40 removes.
Judged as a ladder this is fairly priced for the volumes on offer, and $15 for 5,000 responses a month undercuts most hosted rivals here. Judged as an answer to "is HeyForm free", it is not one. The free answer is the repository.
Basic
$15/mo
Unlimited forms with reports and theme customization
5,000 responses/month, 10 GB storage, 10 MB file uploads
Premium
$24/mo
Adds custom domain, custom CSS, and branding removal; 1% payment commission
20,000 responses/month, 20 GB storage, 3 team members
Business
$40/mo
Priority support, no payment commission, no file size limits
150,000 responses/month, 50 GB storage, 10 team members
As of July 2026. Check current pricing on the HeyForm pricing page.
Is HeyForm really free? Only through Docker, and that is the catch
A real free plan with a ceiling you will meet. Fine until you grow into it.
Free with limits, and the limit is not a quota, it is a requirement. There is no free hosted plan for a ceiling to sit on. What exists instead is an AGPL-3.0 codebase you can run yourself with no response cap, no branding rules and no vendor holding your data, provided you are comfortable owning a Docker deployment.
So: a developer or a small technical team that wants conversational forms with full data ownership can genuinely pay nothing here, indefinitely. A marketer, a teacher or a small business with no technical help cannot. For that second group HeyForm is a $15 a month product with a week to try it, and it deserves to be judged on that basis rather than on a free plan it never claimed to have.
If that is you, free HeyForm alternatives lists the hosted tools that do give you a real free plan, and Tally's free plan is the closest thing to what HeyForm does without asking you to run anything.
Frequently asked questions about HeyForm
Does HeyForm have a free plan?
Not on the hosted cloud. HeyForm runs a 7-day trial and then charges from $15 a month, so we do not record it as having a free hosted plan (as of July 2026). The free route is self-hosting the AGPL-3.0 build, which carries no response cap.
Is HeyForm open source?
Yes. HeyForm is published under AGPL-3.0 with the full source on GitHub, and AGPL-3.0 is an OSI-approved open source license. That is a stronger position than source-available projects such as NocoDB, whose Sustainable Use License restricts reselling the software as a service.
What does the 7-day HeyForm trial include?
Our data records the cloud plans as starting with a 7-day free trial, and does not record which tier the trial gives you or whether it asks for a card. Basic at $15 a month is where you land afterwards, with 5,000 responses a month and 10 GB of storage (as of July 2026).
Where to go next
If this free plan does not stretch far enough, these are the tools we would look at instead.