Formbricks: Open Source Surveys, In-App Feedback and Full Data Ownership

Every SaaS product eventually needs to ask users questions. How satisfied are you? Why are you cancelling? What feature would you pay for? The answers are worth a lot — but the tools to collect them are surprisingly expensive, privacy-questionable, and often overkill for what you actually need.

Typeform charges per response at scale. SurveyMonkey is enterprise-priced and closed-source. Hotjar bundles surveys into a broader analytics platform you might not want. And all of them store your user feedback on their servers.

Formbricks is the open source answer: a full survey and experience management platform that combines Typeform-style link surveys, website feedback widgets, and in-app micro-surveys in one self-hostable product. Unlimited responses, your data, your server.

What Formbricks is

Formbricks is an open-source survey and experience management platform. It lets you create and deploy surveys across multiple channels from a single dashboard:

• Link surveys — a dedicated URL you share via email, social, or embed anywhere. Works like Typeform.
• Website surveys — popup or inline surveys that appear on specific pages. Works like Hotjar Ask.
• In-app surveys — targeted micro-surveys triggered by user behavior inside your web application. The most powerful and differentiated capability.
• Email surveys — embed survey questions directly into emails, no redirect required.

The project is AGPLv3 licensed with 12,000+ GitHub stars, trusted by teams including Siemens, Cal.com, and the Ethereum Foundation. Version 4.7 ships attribute data types, SOC 2 Type II certification, advanced CSS customization, improved self-hosting tooling, and a long list of quality-of-life improvements.

The in-app survey engine

This is what separates Formbricks from simple form builders. The in-app survey SDK lets you trigger surveys based on user behavior — not just "show this to everyone" but "show this to users who have been on the pricing page for more than 30 seconds" or "show this when a user completes their third export."

The event-based triggering system works by installing a lightweight JavaScript SDK in your application:

import { formbricks } from "@formbricks/js";

formbricks.init({
  environmentId: "your-environment-id",
  apiHost: "https://formbricks.example.com",
});

// Trigger a survey on a custom event
formbricks.track("export_completed");

// Or set user attributes for targeting
formbricks.setAttributes({
  plan: "pro",
  company_size: "50-200",
  days_since_signup: 14,
});

In the Formbricks dashboard you then define survey triggers: "show the churn survey when a user clicks the cancel button" or "show the feature discovery survey to Pro users who haven't used the export feature after 7 days." No code changes required after the initial SDK integration — the survey logic lives in the dashboard.

This is the capability that makes Formbricks genuinely powerful for product teams. You can run targeted NPS surveys to users on specific plans, show onboarding surveys to new signups, trigger cancellation surveys at the exact moment someone tries to leave, and collect feature feedback from users who have actually used that feature.

Survey types and question formats

Formbricks supports the full range of question types you'd expect:

• Rating scales (NPS, star rating, numerical)
• Multiple choice (single and multi-select)
• Open text (short and long form)
• Picture choice
• Date picker
• File upload
• Matrix questions
• Ranking
• Address fields
• Contact info

Survey logic lets you branch based on previous answers — show different follow-up questions depending on NPS score, skip sections for specific user segments, and end the survey early for users who aren't relevant targets. Multi-language surveys are now free for everyone.

The template library covers the most common survey use cases out of the box: NPS, CSAT, PMF (Product-Market Fit), churn surveys, feature discovery, onboarding feedback, and more. Starting from a template rather than blank is the right call for standard feedback collection.

Analytics and response handling

Formbricks now tracks impressions, starts, completions, and drop-offs in one view. You can also trigger surveys based on page dwell time. The response dashboard shows individual responses and aggregate data with filtering by user attributes, date ranges, and survey variants.

For more sophisticated analysis, Formbricks integrates with the tools you're already using: Slack (post new responses to a channel), Notion (create database entries), Airtable, Google Sheets, HubSpot, Zapier, Make.com, and n8n. The webhook integration covers custom destinations.

Self-hosting

Docker Compose is the standard self-hosting path. The stack requires Formbricks itself plus PostgreSQL:

services:
  postgres:
    image: postgres:15
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: formbricks
      POSTGRES_USER: formbricks
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
    volumes:
      - postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

  formbricks:
    image: ghcr.io/formbricks/formbricks:latest
    depends_on:
      - postgres
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      DATABASE_URL: postgresql://formbricks:${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}@postgres:5432/formbricks
      NEXTAUTH_SECRET: ${NEXTAUTH_SECRET}
      NEXTAUTH_URL: https://formbricks.example.com
      ENCRYPTION_KEY: ${ENCRYPTION_KEY}

volumes:
  postgres_data:

Put Traefik or Nginx in front for HTTPS and you have a production-ready Formbricks instance. The self-hosted version has no response limits — you pay for infrastructure, not per answer.

Formbricks offers flexible deployment: self-host via Docker for data sovereignty or use GDPR-compliant managed cloud. For EU teams with GDPR requirements, self-hosting removes any question about where survey response data lives.

Pricing

The free cloud tier includes 1,000 responses per month, unlimited surveys, and all integrations. The Startup plan at $49/month unlocks in-app surveys, advanced targeting, and removes response limits. Self-hosting is free beyond infrastructure costs with no feature gates on the core platform.

Compared to Typeform: Formbricks offers more features on the free plan, is roughly 30% cheaper on paid plans, and is the only open source Typeform alternative that lets you self-host for complete data ownership.

Formbricks vs the alternatives

vs Typeform — Typeform is more polished and has the brand recognition. Formbricks is open source, self-hostable, cheaper, and adds in-app survey capabilities Typeform doesn't have. Typeform doesn't support in-app micro-surveys, pop-up surveys, or targeted feedback widgets. Team collaboration is capped at 3 members even on paid plans.

vs Google Forms — Google Forms is free and everyone knows how to use it. For simple internal surveys it's hard to beat. For anything requiring custom branding, targeting, in-app deployment, or data privacy — Formbricks.

vs Hotjar Ask / Sprig / Refiner — these are in-app survey tools that charge per monthly tracked user, often $50-200+/month. Formbricks self-hosted covers the same in-app survey use case with no per-user pricing.

vs SurveyMonkey — SurveyMonkey is enterprise-priced and overkill for most product teams. SurveyMonkey lacks in-app survey deployment and self-hosting options.

vs Tally — Tally is great for standalone forms but does not offer in-app surveys or the targeting capabilities that make Formbricks powerful for product teams.

Who it's for

Good fit:

• SaaS product teams who need in-app micro-surveys with event-based targeting
• Teams with GDPR or data sovereignty requirements — self-host and your responses never leave your infrastructure
• Startups who need Typeform-quality surveys without Typeform pricing
• Developers who want to embed surveys in their application with a proper SDK
• Teams already running self-hosted infrastructure who want to consolidate tools

Not the right fit:

• Non-technical users who want the absolute simplest setup — Google Forms or Tally are easier
• Enterprise teams needing complex offline survey distribution or kiosk modes
• Teams that need only simple contact forms — a lightweight form handler is simpler

My take

Formbricks earns its standout status by solving a real problem — collecting contextual user feedback — with a transparent open source approach. The in-app survey capabilities are genuinely impressive for a free tool. Self-hosting with unlimited responses removes the cost anxiety that plagues most survey platforms.

For any team building a SaaS product, the in-app survey engine is the feature that matters most. Being able to ask the right user the right question at the right moment in their journey — triggered by actual behavior, not a random timer — is the difference between actionable product feedback and noise. Formbricks delivers this without requiring an enterprise contract.

The AGPLv3 license is worth noting: if you distribute a modified version of Formbricks, you need to open-source your changes. For internal use or self-hosting without distribution, this isn't a concern.