Bottom line: Tally is a form builder with the most generous free plan in its category: unlimited forms and unlimited submissions at $0, with conditional logic, calculations, Stripe payments, signatures and file uploads all included free. The catches are specific and findable: your forms carry Tally branding on a tally.so address, file uploads cap at 10 MB per file, team collaboration is paid, and “unlimited” sits under a fair use policy that starts a conversation at roughly 50,000 submissions a month. For most individuals and small teams, the free plan is the whole product.
What does Tally actually do?
Tally builds online forms — contact forms, surveys, quizzes, order forms, registrations, intake forms — in an editor that works like a text document: you type questions onto a page and insert input blocks where answers go. It also offers AI form generation, where you describe the form you need and Tally drafts the questions for you, and Tally counts AI creation among the features available on the free plan. Finished forms are shared as a link, embedded on a page, or sent to respondents directly.
Forms are everyday infrastructure, which is why the free-plan math matters. If your forms feed other tools, Tally connects free to Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable, Zapier and Make, plus webhooks. If you run projects as well as forms, Taskade is the free workspace we have covered for the work that happens after the responses land, and Scribe is our pick for turning the process around a form into a free step-by-step guide.
What is actually free, and what costs money?
| Feature | Free plan | Paid plans |
|---|---|---|
| Forms and submissions | Unlimited, under the fair use policy | Still unlimited — paid plans do not raise a response cap, because there is not one |
| Logic, calculations, answer piping | Included free | — |
| Payments, signatures, file uploads | Included free; uploads up to 10 MB per file; Stripe’s own processing fees still apply to payments | Pro removes the 10 MB per-file limit |
| Branding and domain | Tally branding shown; forms live on a tally.so address | Pro removes branding and adds custom domains |
| Team collaboration | Not included | Pro adds shared workspaces with unlimited team members |
| Partial submissions, drop-off analytics, custom CSS | Not included | Pro |
| Data retention controls and respondent email verification | Not included | Business |
| Price | $0 | Pro $24/month billed yearly; Business $74/month billed yearly |
Checked on Tally’s official pricing page and fair use policy, November 8, 2026.
For scale: rival form builders meter this hard. Typeform’s free plan, by its own team’s published figure, stops at 10 responses a month. Tally free has no response number at all — the limit is a policy, not a counter.
What the pricing page doesn’t make obvious
“Unlimited” has a number, and it is in the fair use policy, not on the pricing page. Tally’s fair use page lists examples of extensive usage: consistently collecting around 50,000 submissions a month, 100 GB of file uploads a month or 500 GB of total storage, and 50,000 email notifications a month. Occasional spikes are fine — Tally says the pattern that triggers contact is high volume for 3–4 months in a row, at which point it offers a custom plan, billed quarterly, on top of your existing subscription. Almost nobody reading this review will get near those numbers, but “unlimited” is really “unmetered until you are a infrastructure problem,” and it is better to know where the line is drawn. Two smaller print items: Tally is a Belgium-based company that stores form data in Europe under GDPR, which matters if your respondents are in the EU; and free forms cannot be team-edited, so a two-person business that needs to co-own forms is a Pro customer even at low volume.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Unlimited forms and unlimited submissions for $0, with no response counter ticking
- Features rivals paywall are free: conditional logic, calculations, Stripe payments, signatures, password protection, duplicate prevention
- Free integrations to Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable, Zapier, Make and webhooks
- 45+ languages, GDPR-compliant, data stored in Europe, encrypted in transit and at rest
Cons
- Tally branding and a tally.so address on every free form
- File uploads capped at 10 MB per file on free
- No team collaboration, partial submissions or drop-off analytics without Pro
- “Unlimited” is bounded by the fair use policy (about 50,000 submissions a month, sustained)
Who is Tally best for?
Individuals, creators, small businesses, teachers, event organizers and early-stage teams who need real forms — with logic, payments and uploads — and do not want a response cap deciding when a form stops working. It is a poor fit if you need your own domain and zero vendor branding from day one, or if several teammates must co-edit forms: both of those start at Pro.
Frequently asked questions
Is Tally really free?
Yes. The free plan costs $0 with unlimited forms and submissions under the fair use policy, and it includes logic, payments, signatures and file uploads. No credit card is needed to start.
What is the catch with Tally’s unlimited submissions?
The fair use policy. Sustained volumes around 50,000 submissions a month, 100 GB of uploads a month or 50,000 email notifications a month count as extensive usage, and Tally will contact you about a custom plan. Occasional spikes are explicitly fine.
Can Tally collect payments for free?
Yes. Payment collection is in the free plan with no Tally platform fee. Stripe’s standard card processing fees still apply, because the money moves through Stripe.
What does Tally Pro actually add?
The things a growing business feels first: no Tally branding, a custom domain, team workspaces with unlimited members, partial submissions, custom CSS, unlimited upload size, and drop-off analytics. Pro is $24 a month billed yearly; Business at $74 adds data-retention controls and email verification.
Verdict: Tally free is not a trial wearing a free costume — it is the full form builder with branding on it. Start free, and let branding, team editing or upload size — not a response cap — be the reason you ever pay.