Google Forms vs Paperform: Which Should You Use?
Quick answer: Google Forms is a free, standalone survey tool tied to your Google account and Sheets. Paperform is a paid, document-like form builder aimed at freelancers and small businesses that want native payment collection and full branding control. Use Google Forms for free, no-frills data collection. Use Paperform when you're selling something through the form itself or need it to look like a polished, on-brand page.
Google Forms and Paperform solve overlapping problems — collecting structured answers from people — but they're built for different jobs. Forms is a general-purpose, free utility. Paperform is a purpose-built tool for forms that need to look and function like a real page on your website, often with money changing hands. Here's how they actually compare.
What each tool actually is
Google Forms is Google's free, standalone survey and quiz tool. Any Google account gets full access with no paid tier — forms live in your Drive, and responses can flow straight into a connected Google Sheet. It's built for speed: open a blank form, add questions, send the link.
Paperform is a form builder that treats each form as a full page rather than a plain question list — long-scrolling layout, custom fonts and colors throughout, and content blocks mixed in alongside questions. It's aimed squarely at freelancers, coaches, and small businesses that want a form (or product order page, or booking page) that looks like it belongs on their own site.
Price
Google Forms is free, full stop, for anyone with a Google account — personal or Workspace. There's no premium tier gating features.
Paperform works differently: it offers a free trial to test the product, but there's no permanent free plan. Once the trial ends, continued use requires a paid subscription. We won't quote specific numbers here since pricing changes — check Paperform's own pricing page for current rates — but budget for an ongoing cost if you go this route, versus zero cost with Forms.
Native payment collection
This is Paperform's headline differentiator. It has native payment integrations built directly into the form editor — add a payment field, connect Stripe or PayPal, and respondents can pay as part of submitting the form. This makes it a natural fit for order forms, paid bookings, and workshop sign-ups with a deposit.
Google Forms has no equivalent native field. If you need to collect payment through a Google Form, you're working around the limitation rather than using a built-in feature — see our guide on building an order form in Google Forms for how people commonly handle this with a linked payment page or manual invoicing step.
Design and branding control
Google Forms' theming is intentionally limited — a header image, one accent color, and a font style. It's fast to apply but caps out quickly; every Google Form is still recognizably a Google Form.
Paperform gives you far more room: custom fonts throughout, full color control, embedded images and video, and a layout that reads more like a landing page than a form. If a form needs to feel like part of your brand rather than a generic survey, this is where Paperform pulls ahead.
Question types
Google Forms covers the essentials well — short answer, paragraph, multiple choice, checkboxes, dropdown, file upload, linear scale, grids, date, and time. That's enough for the large majority of surveys, quizzes, and sign-ups.
Paperform generally offers a broader set of field types geared toward its use cases — including payment fields, calculators, and richer layout blocks mixed with questions — reflecting its focus on forms that double as sales or booking pages rather than pure data collection.
Mobile experience
Neither tool ships an official, dedicated mobile app in the way you'd expect from a big-name productivity suite — both are primarily browser-based experiences for building forms, whether on desktop or mobile web. If you specifically use Google Forms and want a proper native mobile app for creating and managing your forms rather than the cramped mobile browser editor, that's the specific gap FormMaker fills — it's an iOS app (Android coming) built to create and manage real Google Forms from your phone, with a touch-first editor, shareable links and QR codes, and response viewing on the go.
Comparison table
| Google Forms | Paperform | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, unlimited | Free trial, then paid plans only |
| Native payments | No | Yes |
| Design/branding control | Basic (header image, color, font) | Extensive, page-like layouts |
| Question types | Core set covering most surveys | Broader set including payment and calculator fields |
| Data destination | Google Sheets | Paperform dashboard / integrations |
| Dedicated mobile app | No (FormMaker fills this gap) | No |
Verdict by use case
- Free internal survey or quick RSVP: Google Forms — no reason to pay for what Forms already does well.
- Paid workshop, product order, or booking with a deposit: Paperform — native payments save you the workaround.
- Form that needs to look like it belongs on your own branded site: Paperform.
- Classroom quiz or event sign-up with no payment involved: Google Forms.
- Want to keep using Google Forms but build/manage from your phone: Google Forms plus FormMaker, rather than switching platforms entirely.
FAQ
Is Paperform free?
No. Paperform offers a free trial but no permanent free tier — you need a paid plan to keep using it long-term. Google Forms is free and unlimited for anyone with a Google account.
Can Google Forms accept payments like Paperform?
Not natively. Google Forms has no built-in checkout field. You can work around this with a linked payment link or third-party add-on, but Paperform includes native payment collection as a core feature.
Does Paperform have a mobile app?
Paperform doesn't ship a dedicated mobile app for building forms, similar to Google Forms. If you specifically want a native mobile app for building and managing Google Forms, FormMaker fills that particular gap.
Which is better for a simple internal survey, Google Forms or Paperform?
Google Forms, in most cases. It's free, fast to set up, and integrates directly with Sheets. Paperform's strengths — payments and polished branding — are usually overkill for a quick internal survey.