As of 29 Oct 2026, the panel rates Jotform 2.5/5 and Typeform 3/5 in Forms & Surveys. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 0 of the 6 judges pick Jotform and 6 pick Typeform. Jotform scores higher on 1 of 6 criteria (Form & survey building). Typeform scores higher on 5 of 6 criteria (Consent, GDPR & respondent data, European sovereignty, Survey analysis & reporting, plus 2 more). Provenance — Jotform: Rest of world; Typeform: EU-Made. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
Jotform holds one lead: form building, 6.7 to Typeform's 6.0, with 4 judges leaning Jotform and 2 tied. Collection and workflows is the genuine split — means 6.3 and 6.7, with 1 judge leaning Jotform, 3 leaning Typeform and 2 tied. On the remaining five criteria the table favors Typeform: consent and data protection 6.3 to 2.7 (6 lean, 0 tie), analysis and reporting 5.2 to 4.0 (5 lean, 1 tie), hosting and administration 6.0 to 4.8 (5 lean, 1 tie), sovereignty 5.8 to 4.2 (5 lean, 1 tie) and pricing transparency 6.0 to 3.0 (6 lean, 0 tie), though a rubric note says pricing is not weighted in Jotform's verdict since it publishes no prices. Typeform's weighted total is higher for each of the six judges: 5.7–6.4 against Jotform's 4.2–5.5. The split is the answer: Jotform for building forms, Typeform for data protection, reporting and administration.
Choose Jotform if
You need a drag-and-drop builder with a deep ready-made library — form building is Jotform's one criterion lead (6.7 to 6.0, 4 judges lean Jotform, 2 tie), credited to 20,000+ templates, conditional logic, translations and conversational forms
You collect payments and signatures through forms — Jotform's collection and workflows evidence lists 40+ payment gateways, signatures and 150+ integrations
Your team gathers responses in the field — Jotform's collection evidence credits offline mobile collection plus links, embeds and QR codes
You want EU data residency on a standard plan — Jotform's data residency attribute reads EU optional, its captured pages state the German storage option keeps data exclusively on EU servers, and Typeform's EU data center choice is Enterprise-only per its verdict
Choose Typeform if
You need a published data processing agreement with Standard Contractual Clauses and a named Data Protection Officer — consent and data protection runs 6.3 to 2.7 with 6 judges leaning Typeform and 0 tie, and we found no public information on a data processing agreement in Jotform's captured pages
You run sensitive surveys — Typeform's surveys are anonymous by default and collect no IP addresses per its verdict, with AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.2 or higher in transit, while we found no public information on anonymous submissions from Jotform
Your team relies on everyday reporting — analysis and reporting runs 5.2 to 4.0 with 5 judges leaning Typeform and 1 tie, crediting AI topic and sentiment detection, though judges wanting research-grade output note no public information on cross-tabulation, weighting or SPSS and R exports
You need plan prices visible before a sales call — pricing transparency runs 6.0 to 3.0 with 6 judges leaning Typeform; Typeform's published prices exist while Jotform advertises a free sign-up with no plan prices published
You must contract with an EU-registered vendor — Typeform's legal entity jurisdiction attribute reads ES, while Jotform's reads unknown
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Academic Researcher
Runs questionnaire studies at a European university and has to satisfy the ethics board before the first respondent sees a question. Wants complex branching, randomisation and validated scales, an informed-consent page that is part of the instrument, exports to SPSS and R with labels intact, and a licence the faculty can host or at least keep in the EU.
Jotform
Typeform
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Form & survey building
Jotform
The drag-and-drop builder is confirmed with conditional show/hide logic, answer piping, hidden fields, pre-population, translations, custom CSS, a one-question-per-page conversational mode, 20,000+ templates and the customer's logo, fonts and colours. We found no public information on randomisation or on calculations and scoring — exactly what I would need for experimental designs — and no accessibility standard is named.
Typeform
The no-code drag-and-drop builder offers 28 question types, Logic Jump branching and a Workflow panel, piping via Recall Information, forms in multiple languages, video and signature questions, and a 3,000-plus template library with Brand Kit themes — enough for a competent questionnaire. For an ethics-board-grade instrument I also need item randomisation, hidden fields, calculations and scoring, and a named accessibility standard such as WCAG, and we found no public information on any of those, so it stays in the middle band.
Distribution, response collection & workflows
Jotform
Embedding without coding, QR codes, share links, email notifications and autoresponders, WhatsApp alerts and conditional emails are confirmed, alongside file upload, signatures, offline collection in the mobile app with automatic sync, and payments through 40+ gateways with no extra transaction fees. We found no public information on managed invitation lists with reminders and unique links, response quotas or a documented API; a captured page on approval workflows yielded no confirmed statements.
Typeform
Forms go out as links, email or website embeds, with file uploads, payments, partial responses, a 25,000-contact database with CSV import, automations triggered by contact changes or a scheduled date, follow-up emails and SMS, documented webhooks, a public API, and even built-in panel access for recruiting and screening study participants. We found no public information on reminder invitations with unique per-respondent links, response quotas with closing rules, or offline and kiosk collection, which is what would take it to the top band for panel studies.
Survey analysis & reporting
Jotform
The Report Builder turns submissions into bar graphs, pie charts and submission grids, forms carry built-in analytics, and submissions export to CSV, Excel and PDF with reports shareable online. We found no public information on filters and cross-tabulation, significance testing, or SPSS and R exports with value labels — the exports my statistics workflow depends on; captured pages on sentiment analysis and flow reports yielded no confirmed statements.
Typeform
Live reporting covers completion rates, question drop-off analysis, performance over time, auto-calculated NPS, shareable auto-generated reports, and AI detection of topics and sentiment in open answers, with a plain response download. The export format is never named, and we found no public information on cross-tabulation with significance testing, weighting, or SPSS or R exports with value labels — the very thing my statistical colleagues ask for — so it sits below the research-grade band.
Consent, GDPR & respondent data
Jotform
The only confirmed items touching data protection are a footer link to a privacy policy and security pages, and PCI compliance for payments; we found no public information on consent or privacy-notice fields, an anonymous mode, retention and automatic deletion, a data processing agreement or a data protection officer. A captured GDPR-compliance page yielded no confirmed statements I could score.
Typeform
Unusually well documented for an ethics submission: a published DPA with Typeform as processor, a named Data Protection Officer, the Spanish Data Protection Authority as supervisory body, AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.2 or higher in transit, technical and organisational measures in the DPA annex, breach notification within GDPR deadlines, and surveys that are anonymous by default and collect no IP addresses so long as no identifying fields or URL tracking parameters are used. Cookie consent needs an Axeptio widget that requires a PRO+ account plus a separate Axeptio account, and we found no public information on field-level masking of sensitive answers, configurable per-survey retention with automatic deletion, or consent records stored with each response.
Hosting choice, teams & portability
Jotform
Residency on European servers in Germany, with data kept exclusively in the EU, is explicitly confirmed, all responses export to CSV, Excel and PDF with uploads in a zip, and an Enterprise edition is offered. We found no public information on team workspaces and roles, single sign-on, an audit log or white-labelling — the captured pages on single sign-on and white-labelling produced no confirmed statements — so I cannot tell what a faculty deployment would actually include.
Typeform
The privacy policy states information is processed from the European Economic Area, and an EU or US data centre can be chosen — but only on Enterprise, the same tier that gates SSO and a custom domain; shared workspaces with roles, real-time collaboration, branding removal on paid plans, custom subdomains and response download with a public API complete a solid mid-level picture. For faculty self-administration I would want a self-hosted edition, granular per-form permissions, SAML and provisioning detail, and a documented importable export format, and we found no public information on those.
European sovereignty
Jotform
The corporate entity is Jotform Inc. of San Francisco, the terms name a London entity for customers outside listed regions, and European hosting in Germany is explicitly confirmed. We found no public information on subprocessors and their locations, a published data processing agreement, or ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certifications, so beyond the database in Germany the chain my ethics board would audit stays opaque.
Typeform
The contracting entity is Typeform SL of Barcelona with a Spanish tax ID, the DPA is governed by Spanish law with the Spanish Data Protection Agency as authority, and SOC 2 Type II plus ISO/IEC 27001 and further certifications are published. However, the pricing pages locate customer data in AWS — a US-headquartered host — the EU data centre choice exists only on Enterprise, the full subprocessor list sits behind a help-centre link while named processors include a San Francisco affiliate, so an EU-resident chain end to end is not evidenced.
Pricing transparency
Jotform
A free tier is confirmed with 'Sign Up for Free', but we found no public information on plan prices, user or response limits, overage charges, or which features sit on a higher plan, so the annual cost of a faculty licence cannot be computed from the captured pages.
Typeform
Four plans carry public prices — 25 EUR / mo Basic, 49 EUR / mo Plus, 84 EUR / mo Business, and 242EUR/mo after 14 days for Growth Flow with a credit card required — alongside a comparison table of included and maximum responses, users, file-upload and video limits, yearly billing labelled Save 30%, priced automation add-ons, non-refundable fees and a documented hard stop when response limits are reached. Enterprise, which gates SSO, HIPAA and the EU data centre choice, is contact sales only, and we found no public information on VAT treatment or the price of additional responses, so a university buyer cannot compute the full annual cost from public pages alone.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Jotform
Typeform
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting location
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting options
Not determined
Not determined
Open source
Not determined
Not determined
Data processing agreement
Not determined
Not determined
Transfer impact assessment
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
As of 29 Oct 2026, the panel rates Typeform higher: 3/5 against 2.5/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 0 of the 6 judges pick Jotform and 6 pick Typeform. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is Jotform or Typeform European?
Jotform is not European by provenance (Rest of world). Typeform is European (EU-Made). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Do Jotform and Typeform have a free plan?
As of 29 Oct 2026, both vendors’ own pages state a free plan. Each product page links the pricing page it was read from.