Papias vs Google Forms
Papias as a Google Forms alternative
Google Forms is free, fast and everybody has it. It is the right tool for a quick poll or a class survey. People look for an alternative when the form has to look like their organisation rather than like Google, when it needs signatures, file uploads from people without a Google account, prices per option, a close date or a response cap, or when “where do the answers live” is a question somebody will ask. Papias is built for those forms.
Stay with Google Forms if
- You want results in a Google Sheet for free and you live in Workspace. Papias writes each response to a Sheet on Pro, and exports Excel and CSV on every plan.
- You need several people editing the form together at the same time.
- You need a free tool with no plan at all, and the Google look does not matter.
Side by side
Google Forms’s figures are as published on its own site, read on 27 October 2026; check them there before you decide. Papias’s are its pricing page. Prices before VAT where it applies.
| Google Forms | Papias | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free with a Google account; organisations through Google Workspace plans. | Free: unlimited forms and responses, never counted. One person, 10 AI credits a month, 100 MB of uploaded files, a small “Made with Papias” badge on the form. Pro €19 a month (€15 a month paid yearly): 200 AI credits a month, 5 people, 10 GB, no badge, your own domain. Business €49 (€39 yearly). Prices before VAT. |
| Draft a form from a description | With Gemini, on the Workspace plans that include it. | Yes, on every plan: describe the form, get the draft, then change it in words. |
| Look and feel | Google’s layout, with your colours, images and fonts inside it. | Classic or one question at a time, per form. Your colours, cover, logo, fonts and a full-page background. |
| Question types | The standard set. File upload needs respondents to sign in to a Google account. | Text, email, phone with a country picker, number, amount, date, time, choice, checkboxes, dropdown, picture choice, rating, scale, NPS, ranking, grid, file upload, signature, address, consent, hidden fields, repeating groups, calculations, headings and pictures between questions. File upload and signatures need no account. |
| Logic | Branching by section, quizzes. | Show a question only if earlier answers call for it (one condition, or several with and/or), calculations, prices per option with a live total, answers piped into later text, repeating groups, a different ending per answer, redirect after sending. |
| Close and limits | Stop accepting responses by hand; add-ons for limits. | A close date and time, a response cap, a password, spam protection without a CAPTCHA. |
| Responses | Charts and a Sheets export. | Summary charts, a table with filters, star and done marks, notes, correcting an answer, a print view, where people stop, Excel and CSV. |
| Integrations | Sheets, Workspace, add-ons. | Each response to Slack, Microsoft Teams or Discord, to Zapier, Make or n8n, to your own system as signed JSON, or by email; a row in a Google Sheet on Pro. |
| Embed and pre-fill | Yes. | Yes: on the page, as a popup or a slide-in panel, with answers pre-filled from the link. |
| Company and hosting | Google; data location per Google’s terms and your Workspace settings. | GestureLoop Limited, Ireland. Servers and backups in the EU (Finland), on every plan. |
| Trackers on your form | Google’s own scripts, as on any Google page. | None from Papias: no analytics, no pixel, fonts served from our own server. On Pro an organiser can add their own Google Analytics or Meta Pixel tag, which is told the form was opened and sent, never the answers. |
| AI and your data | Per Google’s terms. | Drafting sends your description and the form’s questions to an AI model (Anthropic’s Claude, through Yohanun). Respondents’ answers go to it only on a form its organiser sets to a conversation, and they’re told first; nothing is used to train models. |
Where Papias is different
- It looks like you.
Colours, a cover picture, your logo and fonts on every form, a full-page background if you like, and one question at a time when the form is long.
- Grown-up questions.
Signatures, file uploads from anyone, consent lines, prices per option with a total, address and phone kinds that know the country, and repeating groups for “add another child”.
- A clear answer to “where is the data”.
Servers and backups in the EU, an Irish company as the controller, no third-party scripts on the form, and answers never used to train AI.
Switching
Download the responses from Google Forms to a Sheet and keep the sheet. Paste the questions into “Draft with AI”. Share the new link or embed; Google Forms cannot redirect, so post the new link where the old one lived.
Twenty-four templates are there to start from, each one a real form you can try first.
Questions
Is Papias free?
Yes: unlimited forms and responses, one person, 10 AI credits a month, 100 MB of files and a small badge. Pro is €19 a month.
Can people upload files without a Google account?
Yes. Nobody needs an account to answer a Papias form.
Can I get the answers into a spreadsheet?
Excel and CSV at any time. On Pro, each response is added as a row to a Google Sheet in your own Drive as it arrives.
Also compared: Papias vs Tally · Papias vs Typeform · Papias vs Jotform.
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