Formspree's free plan allows 50 submissions per month, keeps 30 days of submission history, and includes no file upload storage. The paid plans, as listed on the Formspree plans page on October 8, 2026, are Personal at $15 a month (200 submissions), Professional at $30 (2,000 submissions) and Business at $90 (20,000 submissions) when billed monthly, or $10, $20 and $60 a month when billed yearly. Every plan, free included, allows unlimited forms.
That answers the price question. The more useful question is whether 50 a month is the cap that will actually bite, and how it compares with the other free options people consider alongside Formspree. This article lays out the Formspree numbers in full, what happens when the limit is reached, and the free caps of six other services, all checked on their own pages on the same date.
Formspree plans and limits in 2026
| Plan | Monthly billing | Yearly billing | Submissions a month | File uploads | Team |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 50 | None | 2 linked emails |
| Personal | $15 | $10 a month | 200 | 1 GB | None extra |
| Professional | $30 | $20 a month | 2,000 | 5 GB | +1 member |
| Business | $90 | $60 a month | 20,000 | 10 GB | Team members |
| Custom | Quote | Quote | Custom | Custom | Custom |
A few details sit underneath the headline numbers.
History. The plans page lists a 30 day submission archive on the free plan. The help center article on account limits repeats this, and says paid plans offer longer data retention. On the free tier, a submission that is not saved somewhere else within a month is gone from the dashboard.
Linked emails. The free plan can link up to two email addresses for notifications. Paid plans offer unlimited linked emails.
Autoresponses and API. Confirmation emails to the person who submitted, and API access to fetch submissions, start at Professional. The Personal plan adds basic plugins, a custom thank you page and spam filtering, but not autoresponses.
Rules engine. Routing submissions to different addresses based on their content is a Business feature.
What happens at the 50th submission
This is where Formspree differs from many services, and it is documented in detail in the help center article "Over limit submissions" (updated September 30, 2026).
When an account reaches its monthly limit, the forms keep working for visitors. Formspree stops processing new submissions: it saves them to the account without sending notification emails or running plugins, and emails the account owner when this starts. Those submissions sit in an Over Limit folder, which appears next to Inbox and Spam in the form's Submissions tab.
The folder shows previews only. Each field shows its first few characters, email addresses show the first letter and the domain, and uploads stay hidden. Search and export do not work there. To read one in full, it has to be reprocessed:
- Make room in the monthly limit, usually by upgrading.
- Open the Over Limit folder and select the submissions to reprocess.
- Click Reprocess.
Each reprocessed submission counts against the current month and triggers the normal notification emails and plugins. If more are selected than the remaining allowance, nothing is reprocessed and a dialog shows how many are left and when the limit resets.
Formspree also sends warnings before the limit: the account limits article says notifications go out at 50, 75 and 90 percent of the monthly limit, and again when it is exceeded.
The practical consequence: on the free plan, a busy month does not lose submissions outright, but the person who should have been notified is not told. If the form is a sales enquiry or a job application, a week in the Over Limit folder can be the same as losing it.
The system limits that apply to every plan
Separate from plan limits, the help center's "System limits" article lists three caps that apply to every account:
- A rate limit of 20 posts per minute per form.
- A maximum upload size of 25 MB per file.
- A maximum of 10 files per submission.
HTML forms that hit the rate limit are redirected to an error page. Forms that submit with JavaScript receive a 429 status code, and the article recommends showing that error to the visitor and disabling the submit button while waiting for a response, to prevent duplicate submissions from double clicks.
Free form backends compared
Formspree belongs to a group of form backends: services that receive submissions from a form written in HTML on a site, rather than hosting the form themselves. Here is how the free tiers of the common alternatives looked on their own pages on October 8, 2026.
| Service | Free submissions | Free forms | Notes from the vendor's page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Formspree | 50 a month | Unlimited | 30 day archive, no upload storage |
| Web3Forms | 250 a month | Unlimited | File uploads and autoresponders start on Pro |
| FormSubmit | Not stated as a cap | No account needed | Point the form action at an email address and confirm it once |
| Netlify Forms | Free and unlimited on credit-based plans | Per site | Legacy plans are metered per site |
| Basin | 50 a month | 1 form endpoint | 30 day data retention; Starter is $12.50 a month billed yearly for 250 submissions |
The differences are in philosophy as much as numbers. FormSubmit asks for no registration at all: the form's action points to its address with the destination email, and the first submission triggers a confirmation. That is the quickest possible setup, with the least control. Web3Forms offers five times Formspree's free volume but holds back file uploads and auto replies for paid plans. Basin's free plan matches Formspree's 50 a month and 30 day retention, but limits the account to one form endpoint. Netlify Forms only makes sense for a site already hosted on Netlify.
Free visual form builders compared
Many people searching for Formspree's free tier do not need a backend. They need a form, and a hosted form builder may suit them better. The caps here are on a different scale.
| Builder | Free forms | Free responses | Notes from the vendor's page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tally | Unlimited | Unlimited | Within fair usage guidelines; file uploads up to 10 MB per file |
| Fillout | Unlimited | 1,000 a month | Unlimited seats |
| Jotform | 5 | 100 a month, 500 stored in total | One user, branding shown |
Hosted builders trade control of the markup for features: conditional logic, payments, file uploads and integrations come built in, and no code is needed. Backends keep the form inside the site's own HTML and design, which is why developers tend to prefer them for marketing sites.
Choosing by what the cap actually limits
The cap that matters depends on what happens after a submission arrives.
For a portfolio or personal site with a handful of messages a month, any free tier on the list works. Formspree's 50 is enough, and the 30 day archive is only a concern if emails get deleted.
For a small business contact form, volume tends to be modest but every message matters. The risk on Formspree's free tier is the silent month: submissions held in Over Limit with nobody told. A free plan with a higher ceiling, or Formspree Personal at $10 a month billed yearly, removes that risk.
For anything with attachments, such as job applications or support requests with screenshots, the free Formspree plan does not store uploads, and Web3Forms reserves uploads for Pro. Tally's free plan accepts uploads up to 10 MB per file.
For anything several people answer, the submission count is the wrong number to optimise. Formspree's free plan sends to up to two linked emails, and extra team members start on Professional. Most backends are designed to deliver a submission to an inbox, and stop there. Who answers it, whether it was answered, and what was said, live in someone's mailbox.
What a year on each plan costs, per submission
Monthly prices hide how different the plans are once volume is taken into account. Using the October 8, 2026 prices and assuming every allowance is fully used:
| Plan | Cost for 12 months, billed yearly | Cost for 12 months, billed monthly | Submissions allowed in 12 months | Cost per 1,000 submissions, yearly billing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal | $120 | $180 | 2,400 | $50 |
| Professional | $240 | $360 | 24,000 | $10 |
| Business | $720 | $1,080 | 240,000 | $3 |
Two things follow from this. First, yearly billing saves a third on every tier, so a form that will run all year is cheaper to commit to annually. Second, the jump from Personal to Professional is ten times the volume for twice the price. A site that regularly sees 150 to 200 submissions a month sits uncomfortably close to the Personal ceiling, and one heavy month pushes submissions into the Over Limit folder. For that site, Professional is often the cheaper decision once the cost of a missed enquiry is counted, and it also brings autoresponses and API access.
Few forms use their full allowance, so these are floor prices per submission rather than averages. The point of the table is the shape, not the exact figure.
Moving off a free tier without losing anything
Whichever direction the decision goes, the switch itself has a few steps worth doing in order.
- Export what is there. Formspree's help center has an "Exporting Submissions" article under form and project settings. On the free plan, the archive covers 30 days, so export before anything ages out.
- Clear the Over Limit folder first. Submissions held there cannot be searched or exported until they are reprocessed, so they are easy to leave behind.
- Run old and new side by side for a day. Point a test copy of the form at the new service, submit a few entries, and confirm notifications arrive before changing the live form.
- Tell whoever answers the submissions. A new service usually means a new sender address for notifications. Filters and forwarding rules that matched the old one will miss the new one.
The work after the submission
Every service in these tables solves the same first step: getting the answer from the form to a person. None of their free tiers are built around the second step, which is replying and keeping track of the reply.
That is fine for a single person answering their own enquiries. It starts to cost time when a shared inbox fills with notification emails, when two people reply to the same enquiry, or when nobody is sure whether the one from last Tuesday was answered. At that point the decision is less about which free cap is highest and more about whether submissions need an owner and a status. The use cases page lists the kinds of intake, such as enquiries, hiring and support, where that second step tends to be the heavier one, and the features page shows what tracking a response through to the reply looks like.
What to change first
Estimate monthly volume honestly, including the busiest month of the year, and choose a free tier whose cap sits well above it, or pay for Formspree Personal before the Over Limit folder starts filling. If the strain is in replying rather than receiving, compare tools that keep owner and reply history on each response; Halict, for example, does not cap forms or responses on any plan, including the free one.
Q1. How many submissions does Formspree allow for free?
As of October 8, 2026, the Formspree free plan allows 50 submissions per month, with unlimited forms and a 30 day submission archive. It is described on the plans page as intended for testing and development.
Q2. What does Formspree cost per month in 2026?
Billed monthly, Personal is $15, Professional $30 and Business $90. Billed yearly, they work out to $10, $20 and $60 a month. They allow 200, 2,000 and 20,000 submissions a month respectively. Custom plans are quoted by sales.
Q3. Does Formspree delete submissions over the limit?
No. According to the help center, submissions received over the monthly limit are saved to an Over Limit folder without notification emails or plugins running. After making room in the limit, they can be reprocessed, which counts them against the current month and sends the usual notifications.
Q4. Which free form backend allows the most submissions?
Among the services checked on October 8, 2026, Web3Forms lists 250 submissions a month on its free plan, and Netlify Forms is free and unlimited on Netlify's credit-based plans. Among hosted builders, Tally lists unlimited submissions within fair usage guidelines, and Fillout lists 1,000 a month.
Q5. Can Formspree accept file uploads on the free plan?
The plans page lists file upload storage only on paid plans, starting at 1 GB on Personal. System-wide limits allow up to 25 MB per file and 10 files per submission on plans where uploads are available.