Forms & Surveys

LimeSurvey

EU-Made Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by LimeSurvey GmbH · www.limesurvey.org

An AI-assisted analysis of public evidence — not a hands-on test.

Every score, rationale and verdict on this page is AI-generated. Every claim cites the source it was read from. Nothing here is a human star review — and no score can be bought. How scores are made →

Method and versions

The Market Researcher v1.0 · The Operations Manager v1.0 · The HR Lead v1.0 · The Academic Researcher v1.0 · The Data Protection Officer v1.0 · The Skeptic v1.0 · rubric v1 · evaluated 29 Oct 2026

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Link to this page

HTML

<a href="https://whats-best.ai/software/forms-and-surveys/limesurvey"><img src="https://whats-best.ai/badge/forms-and-surveys/limesurvey.svg" alt="LimeSurvey: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai" height="66"></a>

Markdown

[![LimeSurvey: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai](https://whats-best.ai/badge/forms-and-surveys/limesurvey.svg)](https://whats-best.ai/software/forms-and-surveys/limesurvey)

Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

LimeSurvey at a glance

Vendor: LimeSurvey GmbH
Headquarters: Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026
Data hosting: Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026
Free plan: Yes, per the vendor’s own page source, captured 28 Oct 2026
Panel verdict: The AI panel rates LimeSurvey 3/5, the mean of 6 judges. LimeSurvey is an open-source survey platform from LimeSurvey GmbH of Hamburg, offered as a cloud service and as a free self-hosted Community Edition under GPLv2. how scores are made
As of: Vendor pages captured 28 Oct 2026 to 1 Nov 2026; evaluated by the panel 29 Oct 2026. all sources

LimeSurvey alternatives, European ones first →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Academic Researcher

Weighted verdict

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.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Academic Researcher

Panel median The Academic Researcher This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.

Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion	Panel median	The Academic Researcher
Form & survey building	4.5 of 5	4.5 of 5
Distribution, response collection & workflows	3.5 of 5	3.5 of 5
Survey analysis & reporting	3 of 5	3 of 5
Consent, GDPR & respondent data	3.5 of 5	3 of 5
Hosting choice, teams & portability	3.5 of 5	3.5 of 5
European sovereignty	3.5 of 5	3.5 of 5
Pricing transparency	3 of 5	3 of 5

Form & survey building

How this is scored

What can be built without code: question and field types, conditional logic and branching, piping and hidden fields, calculations, multi-page forms and progress, templates, design and branding, multiple languages, and accessible output for respondents.

0 — Not a form or survey builder; questions cannot be authored in the product.

3 — A builder with the common question types and a few templates; logic, branding or languages are basic or not described.

5 — A drag-and-drop builder with a wide range of question types, conditional logic that shows, hides or skips questions, multi-page forms, a template library, and the customer's logo, colours and fonts.

8 — Advanced logic with piping, hidden fields, calculations and scoring, randomisation, surveys translated into several languages from one master, reusable question libraries, custom CSS or themes, and accessible forms with a named standard (WCAG 2.1 AA or BITV) stated.

10 — Best-in-class authoring: complex research designs (loops, quotas in logic, conjoint or MaxDiff), versioned forms with change history, a published accessibility conformance report, and every element of a form available through the API.

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The Academic Researcher

The authoring evidence reaches research level: randomisation of questions and groups, relevance equations, piping and micro-tailoring, 28+ question types including matrix variants and semantic differential, quota setting, reusable questionnaire labels, custom HTML/CSS/JavaScript, surveys in 80+ languages, and WCAG 2.2 AA stated by name, with conjoint/CBC and MaxDiff methods listed for research designs. We found no public information on versioned forms with change history or a published accessibility conformance report, which keeps it just short of the top. 1 2 3 4

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Distribution, response collection & workflows

How this is scored

How forms reach people and what happens to an answer: share links, embedding, QR codes, email invitations with reminders, contact lists and panels, offline or kiosk collection, file uploads, payments and signatures inside the form, notifications, approval or assignment of submissions, and automations that pass a response on to other tools.

0 — No way to collect responses from other people; the product only analyses data collected elsewhere.

3 — A share link and an embed code, with responses visible in the product; invitations, notifications and onward workflows are basic or not described.

5 — Links, embedding and QR codes, email notifications on submission, file uploads, a few native integrations (spreadsheets, CRM, chat) plus a connector service such as Zapier or Make, and either email invitations with reminders or payments inside the form.

8 — Invitations to managed contact lists with reminders and unique links, response quotas and closing rules, offline or kiosk collection, submissions routed for approval or assignment, conditional notifications, documented webhooks and a REST API to read and write responses.

10 — Collection at research and process scale: panel or sample sourcing, multi-channel distribution (email, SMS, web, app intercept) with deduplication, workflows with branching and audit trail, and every response event exposed to the customer's systems in real time with a stated delivery guarantee.

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The Academic Researcher

Distribution is built for panels: mass mailing of invitations and reminders, a participants table with unique access codes per respondent, open and closed access modes, quota setting, scheduled start and end times, panel integration with end URLs and URL parameters, QR codes, embedding, and a RemoteControl API over XML-RPC/JSON-RPC. We found no public information on offline or kiosk collection, approval routing of submissions, conditional notifications, or webhooks, so I cannot place it higher. 1 2 4

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Survey analysis & reporting

How this is scored

What the product does with the answers: live results and charts, filters and segments, cross-tabulation, NPS, CSAT and other standard scores, open-text and sentiment analysis, shareable dashboards and reports, and exports to the formats analysts use (CSV, Excel, SPSS, R).

0 — No view of results inside the product; submissions can only be forwarded or downloaded one at a time.

3 — A table of responses with simple charts per question and a CSV export; filters, comparisons and report sharing are basic or not described.

5 — Charts per question, filters and segments, at least one comparison or cross-tab view, standard scores such as NPS, shareable or exportable reports (PDF, presentation), and exports to CSV and Excel.

8 — Cross-tabulation with significance testing, weighting, open-text coding or sentiment analysis, trend reports across survey waves, dashboards for different audiences with permissions, and SPSS or R exports with labels.

10 — A research-grade analysis environment: statistical models beyond cross-tabs (driver analysis, regression), benchmarks, text analytics with themes the customer can edit, and every analysis reproducible from documented exports or an analytics API.

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The Academic Researcher

Live response summaries, filtering, graphs and charts, quick statistics with graphical evaluation, and exports to SPSS, R, Stata, CSV, Excel and PDF cover the minimum my faculty needs, though the pages do not state whether variable and value labels survive the SPSS and R exports. We found no public information on cross-tabulation with significance testing, weighting, or open-text coding and sentiment analysis, which is what would lift this to research grade. 1 2 4

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Consent, GDPR & respondent data

How this is scored

What the product gives the customer to collect personal data lawfully: consent and privacy-notice fields, anonymous surveys that really drop IP addresses and identifiers, retention periods and automatic deletion, handling of access and erasure requests, encryption of responses, a data processing agreement, and controls over cookies and tracking on the form itself.

0 — The product collects no personal data from respondents, so there is nothing to protect; or it is a different kind of product.

3 — A privacy policy and a statement of GDPR compliance, with a checkbox field usable for consent; anonymity, retention and deletion are not described.

5 — A data processing agreement offered to customers, a consent or privacy-notice field, an anonymous mode that does not store IP addresses, responses deletable by the customer, and encryption in transit and at rest stated.

8 — Retention periods with automatic deletion, tools for access and erasure requests per respondent, field-level encryption or masking of sensitive answers, forms that set no tracking cookies by default, a published list of technical and organisational measures, and a named data protection officer.

10 — Data protection by design and evidenced: end-to-end or customer-key encryption of responses, documented data minimisation defaults, a DPA with audit rights and subprocessor change notice, records of consent kept with each response, and an independent audit of the privacy controls published.

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The Academic Researcher

The basics my ethics board asks about are documented: anonymous surveys, a data processing agreement stored in the customer account, a named data protection officer, 2048-bit SSL in transit, encryption at rest configurable for specific question types and participant fields, third-country transfers only under standard contractual clauses, and a statement that no profiles of survey participants are created; the vendor states its session cookies are strictly necessary and therefore exempt from consent. We found no public information on consent or privacy-notice fields as such, retention periods with automatic deletion of responses, or tools for access and erasure requests per respondent. 1 5 10 11

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Hosting choice, teams & portability

How this is scored

What the customer may choose about where and how the product runs and who uses it: a selectable data region or EU-only hosting, self-hosting or an on-premise edition, team workspaces with roles and permissions, single sign-on, an audit log, custom domains and white-labelling, and a complete export of forms and responses that another tool can import.

0 — A single-user tool with no export of forms or responses.

3 — Shared access for a team and a response export; data location, roles and single sign-on are not described.

5 — Hosting location stated with an EU option, team workspaces with at least two roles, single sign-on on a higher plan, a custom domain or removed vendor branding, and an export of all responses.

8 — EU-only hosting selectable per account or a self-hosted edition, granular roles per form or folder, SSO with SAML and user provisioning, an audit log, white-labelling, and forms and responses exportable in a documented format with an API.

10 — Full control over operation: an open-source or on-premise edition with feature parity, customer-chosen region per workspace, administrative APIs, a documented migration path in and out, and an uptime commitment with a published status history.

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The Academic Researcher

The Community Edition under GPLv2, downloadable for self-hosting, is exactly the licence my faculty can run itself, and the cloud offers a choice of hosting regions including the EU, with data stored in Germany on Hetzner infrastructure; SSO with SAML and LDAP sits on the Corporate plan, white-label domains and custom branding on Expert, and questions and surveys can be imported and exported. We found no public information on granular roles per form or folder, an audit log, or user provisioning, which is what separates a department-grade platform from a team one. 1 4 5 7

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Who the contracting entity and the parent company are, where forms and responses are hosted, and who the subprocessors are (hosting, email delivery, payment providers, analytics, AI features). Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; responses often carry personal and sometimes special-category data, so the whole chain counts, not only the database.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated, subprocessors unnamed, and no data processing agreement offered.

3 — A privacy policy and a data processing agreement exist, but hosting location is unstated or non-EU and the subprocessors are not listed.

5 — EU hosting available and an EU contracting entity or EU representative, but parts of the chain (email, analytics, AI features, support) run through non-EU providers without a stated safeguard.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, subprocessors listed with their locations, a data processing agreement published, and security certifications (ISO 27001, SOC 2) stated.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: European ownership, entity, hosting and every subprocessor, data export and deletion documented, and certifications published with their scope rather than implied.

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The Academic Researcher

The chain I must document in the ethics file is largely proven: the contracting entity is LimeSurvey GmbH of Hamburg, data is stored in Germany on Hetzner Online GmbH infrastructure, a data processing agreement exists, transfers to third countries run only on standard contractual clauses, the named subprocessor Zoho is covered by such clauses, and the AI functions run on an open-source model in provider-controlled infrastructure. ISO 27001 is stated as in progress rather than achieved, and we found no public information on the company's ownership or a complete subprocessor list with locations, so I stop short of the higher level. 1 5 6 7

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the real annual cost from public pages alone: price per plan and per user, response or submission limits and what happens above them, which features (logic, branding removal, SSO, EU hosting, analysis modules) need a higher plan, add-ons, minimum term and the free tier's limits.

0 — No public prices at all; every customer is a sales call.

3 — A starting price or a free tier exists, but how cost scales with users, responses or features is unclear.

5 — Plans are public with prices and their main limits (users, responses, forms), but at least one commonly needed piece (SSO, EU hosting, extra responses, branding removal) is unpriced or "on request".

8 — Every plan priced publicly with its limits, overage or extra-response prices, feature differences per plan in a comparison table, billing period, VAT treatment and cancellation terms stated.

10 — Complete price computability: annual cost derivable for a given number of users, responses and features, with every add-on, enterprise option, support level and data-return term published.

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The Academic Researcher

Three plans are priced publicly with their limits — Expert at "29€*/ month billed annually", Basic at "34€*/ month billed monthly", Business at "75€*/ month billed annually", all stated as including VAT (19%), with limits such as 1 admin and 1,000 responses per month on Basic and 3 admins and 10,000 responses per year on Expert — and online cancellation with two weeks' notice is in the terms. The Corporate plan carrying SSO, LDAP/SAML and a dedicated server is contact sales only, and we found no public information on extra-response or overage prices or the free tier's usage limits. 4 7

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 6 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Legal entity	Not determined ⚠ unverified	—	uncited Report an error
Hosting location	Not determined ⚠ unverified	—	uncited Report an error
Hosting options	Not determined ⚠ unverified	—	uncited Report an error
Open source	Not determined ⚠ unverified	—	uncited Report an error
Data processing agreement	Not determined ⚠ unverified	—	uncited Report an error
Transfer impact assessment	Not determined	—	uncited Report an error

Questions about LimeSurvey

Is LimeSurvey European?

Yes. whats-best.ai classifies LimeSurvey as EU-Made.

Where does LimeSurvey store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026.

Does LimeSurvey have a free plan?

Yes. LimeSurvey has a free plan, per the vendor’s page captured 28 Oct 2026.

What are the best alternatives to LimeSurvey?

As of 3 Nov 2026, the panel rates Formbricks (4/5), easyfeedback (3.5/5) and Netigate (3.5/5) highest among the other 19 Forms & Surveys products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is Formbricks (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: LimeSurvey alternatives.

Where this could be wrong

Evidence ages. The oldest capture behind this page is from 28 Oct 2026. Vendors change pricing and policies without notice; every fact reflects its source as of the capture date shown in the registry.
Weak sourcing — Data processing agreement, Open source, Hosting location, Legal entity, Hosting options. Not confirmed on the vendor’s own pages as captured.
AI can misread a source. Extraction and judgement are automated; a citation guarantees traceability, not infallibility. If something here is wrong, say so — no account needed, every report is decided within 5 business days, and accepted corrections are published.

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

7 product facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
5 subprocessors facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
4 compliance facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
2 legal facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
2 pricing facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
5 sovereignty dimensions could not be confirmed on the vendor’s own pages and are shown as unknown. Know more? Tell us
6 of the readings below were written against an earlier fact sheet — a fact has been corrected, added or pulled since. Until the panel next runs on this product you are reading the older judgement. Know more? Tell us

Do you know more about LimeSurvey? Tell us Report an error on this page

Sources (12)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

1 Vendor homepage www.limesurvey.org Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
2 Features page (surveys) www.limesurvey.org Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
3 Features page (forms) www.limesurvey.org Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
4 Pricing page www.limesurvey.org Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
5 Privacy policy www.limesurvey.org Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
6 Legal notice www.limesurvey.org Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
7 Terms of service www.limesurvey.org Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
8 Form & survey building — found from sitemap www.limesurvey.org Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
9 Form & survey building — found from sitemap www.limesurvey.org Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
10 Consent, GDPR & respondent data — found from sitemap www.limesurvey.org Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
11 Consent, GDPR & respondent data — found from sitemap www.limesurvey.org Checked 28 Oct 2026 Details →
12 Code repository (open-source licence) — found from the homepage github.com Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →