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 Market Researcher
Runs customer and brand studies for a mid-sized consumer-goods company, three waves a year in four languages. Wants logic and quotas that keep the sample clean, invitations with reminders, cross-tabs and NPS without exporting to a spreadsheet first, and open answers grouped into themes before the board meeting.
Jotform
Typeform
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Form & survey building
Jotform
The drag-and-drop builder, 20,000+ templates, conditional show/hide logic, answer piping, hidden fields, custom CSS, form translations and my own logo, fonts and colours cover most of what a four-language wave needs. Calculations and scoring, randomisation, reusable question libraries and a named accessibility standard are not described, and I found no public information on quota rules inside logic, which is exactly what keeps my samples clean.
Typeform
A no-code drag-and-drop builder with 28 question types, conditional logic and branching, piping via the recall feature, multilingual forms, a 3,000-plus template gallery and full branding control cover most of what my three waves a year need. For the research end, we found no public information on calculations or scoring, randomisation, quotas inside logic, reusable question libraries or a stated accessibility standard, which holds it below the advanced authoring tier.
Distribution, response collection & workflows
Jotform
Share links, embedding, QR codes, email notifications and autoresponders, file uploads, offline collection through the mobile app, approval workflows and 150+ integrations into CRM, email marketing and project tools are all described, with payments through 40+ gateways built in. I found no public information on email invitations to managed contact lists with reminders and unique links, response quotas and closing rules, or a documented API and webhooks — precisely the sample-management layer a research operation runs on.
Typeform
Distribution covers share links, embeds, email and social, Zapier and a documented webhooks and public API layer, with a 25,000-contact database, CSV import, automations from contact lists and scheduled dates, payments, file uploads, email and SMS follow-ups, and built-in panel recruitment in the research flow. What I cannot see is invitations with reminders and unique links, form-level response quotas with closing rules, or offline collection — exactly the machinery that keeps a quota-controlled sample clean.
Survey analysis & reporting
Jotform
The report builder turns submissions into bar graphs, pie charts and submission grids, data exports to CSV, Excel and PDF, and the captured pages include a sentiment-analysis feature page with no detail quoted from it. Cross-tabulation, NPS and other standard scores, filters, weighting and trend reporting across waves are not described, so I would be back in a spreadsheet before every board meeting.
Typeform
Live results give completion rates, drop-off and answer patterns, filters, auto-generated shareable reports, automatic NPS scoring, and AI topic and sentiment detection that groups open answers — most of what I want before a board meeting. But we found no public information on cross-tabulation, significance testing, weighting, or SPSS and R exports, so my cross-tabs would still begin in a spreadsheet.
Consent, GDPR & respondent data
Jotform
The footer carries privacy, terms and security pages, a GDPR-compliance feature page appears among the captured pages with no detail quoted, and PCI compliance is stated for payments only. I found no public information on anonymous modes that drop IP addresses, retention periods with automatic deletion, a data processing agreement, or consent records kept with each response — all central when collecting consumer data.
Typeform
A published data processing agreement with SCCs, a named data protection officer, technical and organisational measures, and encryption in transit and at rest; surveys are anonymous by default with no IP collection, and a cookie consent widget exists. Retention with automatic deletion is shown mainly for inactive free accounts, respondent requests are handled by forwarding them to me rather than with in-product tools, and the cookie widget requires a separate vendor account on a higher plan.
Hosting choice, teams & portability
Jotform
European data residency is offered with data kept exclusively on the company's own EU servers in Germany, submissions export to CSV, Excel and PDF with forms as HTML and uploads in a zip, and Enterprise, single sign-on and white-labelling pages exist. Team roles and permissions per workspace, audit logs and a documented import format for moving to another tool are not described.
Typeform
An EU data center, SSO and custom domains sit behind the Enterprise plan, while team collaboration with assigned roles, shared workspaces whose admins can access activity logs, a custom subdomain, branding removal and response download through the API are documented on standard plans. We found no public information on SAML-based user provisioning, self-hosting, per-form permissions, or an export of the forms themselves.
European sovereignty
Jotform
The vendor is Jotform Inc. of San Francisco, and the captured pages state European user data can be kept exclusively on the company's EU servers in Germany, with PCI compliance claimed for payments. The subprocessor chain for hosting, email delivery, payments, analytics and any AI features is not listed, and no data processing agreement, ISO 27001 or SOC 2 statement is described, so the chain beyond the database stays unproven.
Typeform
The contracting entity is Typeform SL in Barcelona with a Spanish registry entry, a published DPA under Spanish law with SCCs, ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certifications, and processing stated to happen primarily in the EEA, with a US or EU data center choice on Enterprise. The chain still runs through a US affiliate for engineering and support and hosting on AWS, the full subprocessor list sits behind an external help-centre link, and ownership is not stated on the captured pages.
Pricing transparency
Jotform
A free sign-up is promoted and several payment methods are quoted with no additional transaction fees, but no paid plan prices, submission limits, per-seat costs, plan comparison or billing terms appear. I could not begin to compute a year of fieldwork costs from the public pages alone.
Typeform
Four plans are priced publicly — Basic at 25 EUR a month, Plus at 49, Business at 84 and Growth Flow at 242 after a 14-day trial — each with user counts, included responses and a maximum monthly response limit, plus priced action add-ons, a 30 percent yearly saving and a free tier, and terms stating responses beyond the limit are simply not collected. Enterprise, the only plan with SSO, EU hosting and custom domains, is contact sales, and we found no public information on VAT treatment, so I cannot compute a 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.