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 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.
LimeSurvey
This judge's pick
SurveyMonkey
Criterion by criterion
Form & survey building
LimeSurvey
The authoring evidence is research-grade: conjoint/CBC and maxDiff methods, quotas, piping and micro-tailoring, relevance equations, randomisation of questions and groups, 28+ question types including NPS, 80+ languages with quick translation, 800+ templates, reusable questionnaire labels and custom HTML/CSS/JS, with WCAG 2.2 AA named. That covers nearly everything my four-language waves need; we found no public information on versioned forms with change history or a published accessibility conformance report, which holds it just short of the top.
SurveyMonkey
Branching, dynamic and advanced logic with skip-to-page, hide, show, disqualify and random-page actions are documented, and the pricing pages add question and answer piping, A/B testing, block randomisation, multilingual surveys and a shared team library. We found no public information on quotas inside logic, scoring or calculations, or a stated accessibility standard, so I cannot confirm the controls I use to keep a four-language sample clean.
Distribution, response collection & workflows
LimeSurvey
Closed-access surveys with a participants table and unique access codes, mass mailing of invitations and reminders with bounce handling, customisable email templates and the option to use our own mail server, quotas, scheduled start and end, and panel integration with end URLs and external parameters — this is exactly the invitation-and-reminder machinery my waves run on. Embedding, QR codes, password-protected links and an XML-RPC/JSON-RPC API round it out; we found no public information on offline or kiosk collection, approval routing or webhooks.
SurveyMonkey
Invitations go out through an address book and collectors with named email and SMS delivery vendors, SurveyMonkey Audience sells targeted completes by country, age and gender, and Zapier triggers plus conditional webhooks into Tableau, Power BI, Slack or Teams pass responses on automatically. We found no public information on invitation reminders, unique per-respondent links, or response quotas and automatic closing rules, which are the controls that keep my three waves a year clean.
Survey analysis & reporting
LimeSurvey
I see charts, filtering, a real-time response summary, quick statistics and exports to SPSS, R, Stata, CSV, Excel and PDF, with NPS available as a question type. But we found no public information on cross-tabulation with significance testing, weighting, or open-text coding and sentiment analysis — so before the board meeting I would still be exporting to SPSS and theming open answers by hand.
SurveyMonkey
Crosstabs with statistical significance, thematic analysis and AI sentiment on open text, multi-survey analysis, and shareable dashboards with password or SSO protection are all listed, with exports to SPSS as an SAV file as well as CSV, PDF, PPT and XLS. We found no public information on weighting or trend reporting across survey waves, so I could not confirm two pieces my board reporting depends on.
Consent, GDPR & respondent data
LimeSurvey
A named data protection officer, a data processing agreement in the customer account, anonymous survey mode, SSL-encrypted transport with configurable encryption of participant fields and of certain response types at rest, session-only cookies claimed exempt from consent, and third-country transfers only under standard contractual clauses or adequacy decisions. Free accounts are deleted after 24 months of non-use; we found no public information on tools for access and erasure requests per respondent.
SurveyMonkey
A self-serve data processing agreement with standard contractual clauses, AES 256 encryption at rest and RSA in transit, consent questions whose skip logic disqualifies anyone answering No, creator-controlled retention and a 30-day commitment on rights requests are documented. We found no public information on an anonymous mode that drops IP addresses — the privacy notice describes using IP addresses for duplicate prevention and inferred location — nor on automatic deletion after a retention period, tracking-cookie controls or a named data protection officer.
Hosting choice, teams & portability
LimeSurvey
A self-hosted Community Edition under GPLv2, hosting region choice including the EU with data stored in Germany at Hetzner, SAML/LDAP single sign-on on the Corporate plan, white-label and custom domains, and exports of questions, surveys and responses alongside an API give a research team real control. We found no public information on granular per-form roles or an audit log, and availability is described as reasonable efforts toward 99% per month with no guarantee.
SurveyMonkey
Three team roles with separate admin rights, single sign-on with SCIM provisioning through an identity provider, white-label branding and a custom subdomain are documented, and accounts can sit in US, Canadian or EU data centres — though the EU centre is Enterprise-only and data cannot be migrated back on downgrade. We found no public information on an audit log or a documented API for exporting SurveyMonkey forms and responses as such; the response exports cover CSV, PDF, PPT, XLS and SPSS.
European sovereignty
LimeSurvey
LimeSurvey GmbH of Hamburg is the contracting entity and data controller, responses are hosted on named German infrastructure (Hetzner Online GmbH, Gunzenhausen) where the hoster is stated to have no direct access, and Zoho is named as a subprocessor engaged under EU standard contractual clauses. ISO 27001 is stated as in progress, and we found no public information on ownership or a complete subprocessor list with their locations.
SurveyMonkey
The chain is disclosed in unusual detail: a subprocessor list with each provider's location, an Irish contracting entity for EEA, UK and Swiss customers, an online data processing agreement with transfer impact assessments, and named AWS infrastructure with an Ireland option. Storage defaults to the US, the EU data centre is Enterprise-only and covers specified data types, and the email, SMS and AI vendors are US-based with de-identified response data transferable to the US; we found no public information on ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certification.
Pricing transparency
LimeSurvey
Basic at 34€/month billed monthly, Expert at 29€/month billed annually and Business at 75€/month billed annually are published with their user, response and storage limits, VAT (19%) included, support levels per plan, and online cancellation on two weeks' notice. But single sign-on sits on the Corporate plan, which is contact sales, and we found no public information on overage or extra-response prices — a real question when a wave blows past 10,000 responses a year.
SurveyMonkey
Team Advantage at €30 per user per month and Team Premier at €75 per user per month are published with minimum users, annual billing, 50,000 and 100,000 responses per year, and €0.10 per additional response, plus tax treatment, auto-renewal, cancellation and refund rules and the free tier's deletion behaviour above its response limit. The Enterprise plan, where EU hosting and single sign-on sit, is contact-sales only, and Audience responses are sold separately without a published price.
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.