As of 29 Oct 2026, the panel rates LimeSurvey 3/5 and SurveyMonkey 3/5 in Forms & Surveys. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 5 of the 6 judges pick LimeSurvey and 1 picks SurveyMonkey. LimeSurvey scores higher on 1 of 7 criteria (Form & survey building). SurveyMonkey scores higher on 5 of 7 criteria (Survey analysis & reporting, Pricing transparency, Hosting choice, teams & portability, plus 2 more). Provenance — LimeSurvey: EU-Made; SurveyMonkey: Rest of world. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
LimeSurvey and SurveyMonkey split by criterion, with no overall call. Form building goes to LimeSurvey — mean 7.5 against 6.8, five judges lean LimeSurvey, one SurveyMonkey — on 28+ question types, conjoint and maxDiff methods, relevance equations and 80+ languages. Analysis and reporting goes to SurveyMonkey — 7.0 against 4.8, six lean SurveyMonkey, zero LimeSurvey — on crosstabs, significance testing and AI text analysis; we found no public information on LimeSurvey cross-tabulation or weighting. Collection and workflows splits: means favor SurveyMonkey 6.3 to 5.8, yet three judges lean LimeSurvey on invitations, quotas and access codes. Pricing transparency leans SurveyMonkey, 6.2 versus 5.2. Sovereignty means tie at 5.7 with five judges leaning LimeSurvey, whose data residency is EU-optional versus US default. Weighted totals favor LimeSurvey across five judges — operations manager 7.3 to 6.5, HR lead 6.8 to 6.0 — while the data protection officer's 6.4 to 0 is a split the verdict flags as anomalous.
Choose LimeSurvey if
You need research-grade form building — conjoint/CBC, maxDiff, relevance equations and 80+ languages — where the mean stands 7.5 to 6.8 with five judges leaning LimeSurvey against one, and five of six judges gave it 9.
Your team sends mass invitations with bounce handling, quotas and unique access codes per respondent; three judges lean LimeSurvey here, and we found no public information on SurveyMonkey quotas, reminders or unique links.
You need the option of EU data residency: LimeSurvey's data residency attribute is EU-optional, SurveyMonkey's is US default, and five judges lean LimeSurvey on sovereignty with means tied at 5.7.
You want to run the software yourself — the verdict documents a free self-hosted Community Edition under GPLv2, and three judges lean LimeSurvey on hosting and administration.
Your procurement excludes US Cloud Act subprocessor exposure, which is SurveyMonkey's listed attribute; LimeSurvey's subprocessor exposure is listed as unknown.
Choose SurveyMonkey if
You need crosstabs with statistical significance, password-protected or SSO-enforced dashboards, and an SPSS export — six judges lean SurveyMonkey on analysis and reporting, 7.0 versus 4.8.
Your team analyzes open-ended responses — SurveyMonkey documents AI sentiment and thematic analysis, while we found no public information on LimeSurvey open-text analysis.
You want published team pricing: Team Advantage €30 per user per month and Team Premier €75 per user per month, from 3 users billed annually; pricing transparency leans SurveyMonkey 6.2 to 5.2.
You need a European contracting entity — SurveyMonkey's legal entity jurisdiction is Ireland, and the verdict credits a published subprocessor list and an online DPA with standard contractual clauses.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Data Protection Officer
Signs off every form tool a department wants to use and has found health data in a feedback form before. Wants a data processing agreement and a subprocessor list on the vendor's own pages, consent fields and an anonymous mode that drops IP addresses, retention periods that delete on their own, EU hosting the customer can choose, and roles that keep responses away from people who do not need them.
LimeSurvey
SurveyMonkey
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Form & survey building
LimeSurvey
Authoring is documented at research level: 28+ question types including conjoint/CBC and MaxDiff, quotas, relevance equations, piping and micro-tailoring, randomisation of questions and groups, 800+ templates with a template builder, 80+ languages, custom HTML/CSS/JS and reusable questionnaire labels, and accessibility stated against WCAG 2.2 AA. We found no public information on versioned forms with change history or a published accessibility conformance report, which is what separates the top level.
SurveyMonkey
Branching, dynamic and advanced logic with skip, hide, show and randomise actions, question and answer piping, A/B testing, block randomisation and multilingual surveys go well past basic authoring, and a team library plus white-label branding serve teams. We found no public information on calculations or scoring, and no accessibility standard is named on the captured pages.
Distribution, response collection & workflows
LimeSurvey
Distribution and follow-up are well documented: QR codes, embedding, password-protected links, closed-access surveys with unique access codes per respondent, mass mailing of invitations and reminders with bounce handling, quotas, scheduled start and end times, panel integration with predefined end URLs and external parameters, plus a RemoteControl API. We found no public information on approval or assignment of submissions, conditional notifications, webhooks, or offline and kiosk collection.
SurveyMonkey
An address book feeds survey invitations, file upload and payments are plan features, and webhooks push each response into tools like Tableau, Power BI, Slack and HubSpot, with Zapier triggers and actions on top. We found no public information on reminders with unique links, response quotas, offline collection or approval routing, and the API licence documented on the captured pages is the one for Wufoo.
Survey analysis & reporting
LimeSurvey
The documented analysis covers filtering, graphs and charts, a real-time response summary, quick statistics with graphical evaluation, backend data entry, a data integrity check, a Net Promoter Score question type, and exports to SPSS, R, Stata, CSV, Excel and PDF. We found no public information on cross-tabulation with significance testing, weighting, open-text or sentiment analysis, trend reports across waves, or audience-specific dashboards with permissions.
SurveyMonkey
Crosstabs with statistical significance, AI sentiment and thematic analysis, shareable dashboards with password protection or SSO, and an SPSS export alongside CSV, PDF, PPT and XLS make the analysis layer serious. Weighting and trend reports across survey waves are not described on the captured pages.
Consent, GDPR & respondent data
LimeSurvey
The contractual layer is solid: a data processing agreement stored in the customer account, a named data protection officer, anonymous surveys, 2048-bit SSL in transit, configurable encryption at rest for selected question responses and participant fields, third-country transfers only on standard contractual clauses or an adequacy decision, and a documented position that session cookies are strictly necessary. We found no public information on a dedicated consent or privacy-notice field, whether the anonymous mode drops IP addresses, retention periods with automatic deletion of responses, or per-respondent access and erasure tooling, and encryption at rest is not the default.
SurveyMonkey
A self-serve online data processing agreement with standard contractual clauses built in, documented consent statements whose skip logic disqualifies anyone who declines, and AES 256 at rest with RSA in transit are what I want before signing anything. But the privacy notice describes respondents' IP addresses being used for inferred location and duplicate-response prevention, retention is left to the creator rather than automatic deletion periods, and we found no public information on an anonymous mode, cookie controls on the forms, or a named data protection officer.
Hosting choice, teams & portability
LimeSurvey
Control over operation is unusually good: a self-hosted Community Edition under GPLv2, a choice of hosting regions with EU and German hosting, SSO with SAML and LDAP on the Corporate plan, white-label and custom domains, import and export of questions and surveys, documented export formats and a RemoteControl API. We found no public information on granular roles per form or folder, user provisioning, or an audit log, and the 99% availability is offered as reasonable efforts without a guarantee.
SurveyMonkey
US, Canada and EU data centres are offered, with three team roles, documented SCIM provisioning, SSO on the Enterprise plan, white-labelling, and exports across CSV, XLS, PDF, PPT and SPSS. The EU data centre is reserved for Enterprise customers and data cannot be migrated if you downgrade, and we found no public information on an audit log or a self-hosted edition.
European sovereignty
LimeSurvey
The core chain is European and named: LimeSurvey GmbH registered in Hamburg, data stored within Germany on hardware hosted by Hetzner Online GmbH of Gunzenhausen with a statement that Hetzner has no direct access, a data processing agreement available, a named data protection officer, and the Zoho subprocessor disclosed with EU standard contractual clauses. The rest of the chain is not listed with locations, we found no public information on ownership, and ISO 27001 is stated as in progress rather than achieved.
SurveyMonkey
The Irish entity SurveyMonkey Europe UC contracts customers outside the US and Brazil, subprocessors are published with locations and purposes, and the online agreement carries the transfer mechanisms with a transfer impact assessment. Against that, storage defaults to US data centres, the EU centre is Enterprise-only with AI prompts processed by a US vendor and de-identified EU responses still transferred to the US, while email, SMS, AI and support all run through US subprocessors; we found no published ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certification on the captured pages.
Pricing transparency
LimeSurvey
Most of the annual cost is computable from public pages: Basic at 34€*/ month billed monthly, Expert at 29€*/ month billed annually, Business at 75€*/ month billed annually, all prices including VAT (19%), with plan limits such as 1 000 responses/month and 250 MB upload on Basic and 10 000 responses/year on Expert, online termination at two weeks' notice, and quarterly price adjustments with advance notice. The Corporate plan is Contact sales with custom pricing, we found no public information on overage or extra-response prices, and plugin installation and updates carry extra fees that are not priced.
SurveyMonkey
Team plans are public at €30 and €75 per user per month with 50,000 and 100,000 responses a year, €0.10 per additional response, and tax treatment, renewal and cancellation terms all stated. The Enterprise tier that carries SSO and the EU data centre is contact-sales only, and the individual plan's price and the free tier's response limit are not on the captured pages.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
LimeSurvey
SurveyMonkey
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 both 3/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 5 of the 6 judges pick LimeSurvey and 1 picks SurveyMonkey. 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 LimeSurvey or SurveyMonkey European?
LimeSurvey is European (EU-Made). SurveyMonkey is not European by provenance (Rest of world). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Do LimeSurvey and SurveyMonkey have a free plan?
As of 29 Oct 2026, LimeSurvey’s own pages state a free plan; SurveyMonkey’s pages as captured do not. Each product page links the pricing page it was read from.