What it does
LimeSurvey creates questionnaires with question groups, branching, multilingual options and result exports. Researchers can choose a hosted Cloud account or install the open-source Community Edition on their own server. Cloud has a free package and paid response allowances; self-hosting requires someone to run and maintain the software.
Hosted collection or your own installation
LimeSurvey organizes a questionnaire into groups and questions. A customer study could separate the service interaction from later follow-up questions, making a longer questionnaire easier to manage. Quotas, survey permissions and additional languages provide more control over a study.
Community Edition is licensed under GPL version 2 or later and runs on your own server. Cloud handles hosting and lets you choose a server location when creating an instance. LimeSurvey says Cloud data stays in the selected country.
| Cloud plan | Published response allowance |
|---|---|
| Free | Free package available through account sign-up |
| Basic | 1,000/month |
| Expert | 10,000/year |
| Business | 50,000/year |
| Corporate | Custom |
Basic is billed monthly; Expert and Business are annual packages. The checkout currency is EUR even when the site displays another currency for reference. Reports can be exported to formats including CSV, Excel, SPSS and R. Start with Sign up for free for Cloud, or the Community Edition installation guide for self-hosting.
Strengths
- Cloud and Community Edition offer different hosting arrangements
- Question groups, quotas and languages support structured studies
- Response exports include CSV, Excel, SPSS and R
Watch out for
- Self-hosting requires operating and updating the application
- Cloud response allowances differ between monthly and annual plans
Best for
- Research teams choosing where to run their surveys
Sources
- LimeSurvey — Free Online Survey Tool (Oct 25, 2026)
- LimeSurvey Cloud plans (Oct 27, 2026)
- LimeSurvey survey structure (Oct 27, 2026)
- LimeSurvey/LICENSE at master · LimeSurvey/LimeSurvey · GitHub (Oct 25, 2026)