LimeSurvey vs SurveyMonkey
LimeSurvey is a European alternative to SurveyMonkey: same surveys & forms use case, headquartered in Germany and governed by EU GDPR, while SurveyMonkey is based in the United States.
By the EU Alternatives team Last updated
Quickly create free, open-source online surveys and polls. Offers advanced features, 80+ languages, and easy design for insightful data collection.
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- Primary privacy law
- EU GDPR
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- Yes
- Free tier
- Yes
Survey software most people already know how to use, with a question bank and templates that make a decent questionnaire quick to assemble. The Basic plan is free but shows you only 25 responses per survey, and Team Advantage starts at 30 euros per user per month with a three-seat minimum. Now owned by US private equity firm STG and headquartered in San Mateo, California.
- Jurisdiction
- United States
- GDPR by default
- Requires DPA + TIA
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- Yes
LimeSurvey vs SurveyMonkey at a glance
| LimeSurvey | SurveyMonkey | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Germany | United States |
| Data jurisdiction | EU / EEA | United States |
| Primary privacy law | EU GDPR | Requires DPA + transfer assessment |
| US CLOUD Act exposure | No | Yes |
| Best for | Teams that need surveys & forms built for European data-protection requirements | Teams already invested in the SurveyMonkey ecosystem |
Choose LimeSurvey if…
- You want a provider governed by a European privacy regime
- GDPR or public-sector data-protection requirements apply to you
- You want to start free and scale up later
- Open-source code and self-hosting matter to you
- You'd rather back the European tech ecosystem
Stick with SurveyMonkey if…
- You depend on integrations only available in the SurveyMonkey ecosystem
- Your organisation has no EU data-residency constraints
- Migration costs outweigh the jurisdiction benefits for now
About LimeSurvey
LimeSurvey is an open-source online survey platform for designing professional questionnaires, polls, and forms with 30+ question types and 800+ ready-made templates. Teams build multilingual surveys with custom branding, logic branching, QR and social sharing, and publish them to any audience worldwide with full GDPR compliance.
The platform combines an intuitive drag-and-drop survey builder with built-in analytics, reporting, and anonymous response handling. Extensive customization (fonts, colors, custom domains) sits alongside API access, integrations, and accessibility features that meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA, making LimeSurvey suitable for academic research, HR, market studies, and enterprise feedback.
Key benefits:
- 30+ question types covering matrices, ranking, file uploads, and scoring logic
- 800+ templates ready to launch polls, NPS, and academic questionnaires in minutes
- 80+ languages supported for truly multilingual global survey distribution
- Logic and branching personalize flows based on previous respondent answers
- Advanced analytics export cleanly to SPSS, Excel, and statistical packages
- Custom branding with fonts, colors, logos, and custom domain URLs
LimeSurvey is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, and offers EU-based hosting with 2048-bit SSL encryption. The service is fully GDPR compliant, works in anonymous mode, and is pursuing ISO 27001 certification, giving European researchers and enterprises a sovereign alternative to US survey tools.
Trusted by 60,000+ organisations across 160+ countries, including BMW Group, Ubuntu, GNOME, OpenOffice, and 250+ universities worldwide.
Why choose LimeSurvey over SurveyMonkey?
The decisive argument is data jurisdiction. SurveyMonkey is headquartered in the United States, which means personal data processed through it can be subject to non-EU legal regimes: the US CLOUD Act, FISA 702, or similar laws depending on the provider. After the 2020 Schrems II ruling, EU organisations must carry out a transfer impact assessment for every such data flow.
LimeSurvey removes that overhead. As a Germany-based provider, it operates under EU GDPR, and data stays inside the EU/EEA by default. For regulated sectors such as health, public administration, and finance, that's not a nice-to-have but a requirement. For everyone else, it's concentration-risk insurance: you avoid depending on a single jurisdiction that can change the rules without warning.