WPForms vs Gravity Forms: 14-Point Comparison
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Choose WPForms if you want to start without paying anything and pick a form from a huge template library: WPForms Lite is free on WordPress.org, runs on 5+ million sites, and the paid plugin advertises 2,100+ pre-built templates. Choose Gravity Forms if you want the cheaper licence to live with year after year and more room to build on: Basic is $59 a year against WPForms Basic’s $99 list price, and Gravity Forms exposes 500+ hooks for developers. Both now ship a template library, so that is no longer the thing that separates them. Also read: – 20 Best WordPress Contact Form Plugins (Free & Paid) – How to Create a Contact Page on WordPress Below is the long version: fourteen points, feature by feature, so you can see where the two actually differ rather than where their marketing pages differ.WPForms vs Gravity Forms Comparison
Start with the quick chart. Both plugins now cover all ten of these, which is the honest starting position: the choice comes down to price, free tier and how far you intend to extend the thing. Total no of features: 10| Features | WPForms | Gravity Forms |
| Form templates | Yes | Yes |
| Easy to use | Yes | Yes |
| Drag-and-drop builder | Yes | Yes |
| File uploads | Yes | Yes |
| Conditional logic | Yes | Yes |
| Payment gateways | Yes | Yes |
| Email marketing integrations | Yes | Yes |
| Spam protection | Yes | Yes |
| Campaign Monitor | Yes | Yes |
| Surveys and polls | Yes | Yes |
| Total | 10/10 | 10/10 |
#1. Introduction
WPForms launched in 2016 and became the most-installed form plugin on WordPress. WPForms Lite, the free version, now runs on 5+ million sites, sits at version 2.0.1.1, is tested against WordPress 7.0.4 and rates 4.8 out of 5 from 14,371 reviews. That free tier is a real part of the offer, not a teaser: plenty of sites never upgrade. Gravity Forms takes the other approach. It has no free version at all — its pricing page lists three paid licences and nothing else — and it has spent that time building depth rather than reach. Its own features page counts 30+ form fields and 500+ hooks for developers.#2. Form templates
Both plugins ship ready-made forms, so if you have been told that only one of them does, start here. WPForms comes with pre-built form templates, and a lot of them: the plugin advertises “2100+ pre-built form templates”, covering contact, marketing, quote requests, donations, payments, registrations, surveys and quizzes. You pick one during form creation and adjust it.
Gravity Forms has a Form Template Library too. It arrived in Gravity Forms 2.7 on 16 February 2023, and its own documentation describes the flow: “When you click the ‘New Form’ link or the ‘Add New’ button, you will be offered the Template Library to choose from”, then “find the template closest to your requirements, hover over that template, and select ‘Use Template’.” The library page on gravityforms.com currently shows 22 templates, among them Contact, Advanced Contact, Request a Quote, Employment Application, User Registration, Survey, Donation, Event Registration, Webinar Registration, Membership and separate Stripe and PayPal ecommerce forms.
On top of the templates, Gravity Forms offers 30+ form fields you can assemble by hand. You can browse them in the Gravity Forms field documentation.
Verdict: WPForms wins on volume by a wide margin. Gravity Forms covers the common cases.
#3. Ease of use
WPForms is the friendlier of the two for a first-timer. Create the fields, set the options, pick a template, publish with a block or shortcode. Gravity Forms is not hard, but it assumes a little more. You create the fields, choose the form type, configure and publish; the steps are well organised and a newcomer will get there, just with more settings in view along the way.#4. Drag-and-drop form builder
Both plugins build forms by dragging fields into place. Neither is a page builder, and neither needs one: forms are inserted into whatever page or post you like.
You drag the elements you want, drop them where you want them, and no development knowledge is needed on either plugin.
Where they differ is what sits behind the canvas. Gravity Forms puts 30+ fields and 500+ hooks within reach, which is why agencies tend to standardise on it. WPForms keeps fewer things on screen, which is why beginners tend to finish faster.
#5. File uploads
File uploads matter the moment you ask anyone to send you a document: a guest post, a CV, a signed form. WPForms has a file upload field you switch on per form. Gravity Forms has the same, and it is one of its 30+ fields. Either plugin will take images, documents and PDFs through a form.#6. Conditional logic
Conditional logic shows and hides fields based on what the visitor has already answered, which is how a long form stops feeling long. WPForms applies it to fields, notifications and confirmations. More than that, each form sends you a notification on submission, so a completed form lands in your inbox without you checking the dashboard.
Gravity Forms has conditional logic as well, wired into fields, pages, notifications and confirmations. The two implementations are not identical in the interface, but there is no capability gap here worth choosing on.
#7. Payment gateways
If you want a form to take a donation or a payment, both plugins will do it, and both need an add-on to do it. WPForms integrates with both PayPal and Stripe, and you can let the visitor choose which. Combine that with conditional logic and you can show a payment field only when it applies.
Same story on the other side. Gravity Forms supports PayPal and Stripe through payment add-ons, and Stripe and Square sit in its Pro tier. Its ready-made Stripe and PayPal ecommerce templates are in the template library, which shortens the set-up considerably.
#8. Email marketing
A form that feeds your mailing list is worth more than a form that feeds your inbox. WPForms integrates with the major email tools, including MailerLite, AWeber and Mailchimp, via add-ons on the paid tiers.
Gravity Forms covers the same ground, and its own pricing page names HubSpot, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign and Campaign Monitor as add-ons included from the Basic licence upwards. That is a genuine point in its favour: on Gravity Forms the email integrations start at the cheapest tier.
#9. Spam protection
Nobody wants a database full of junk submissions. Your forms need spam protection, and both plugins provide it. WPForms offers CAPTCHA options and a honeypot field, which between them stop the bulk of automated submissions without making a human prove anything.
Gravity Forms lists anti-spam among its core security features and supports captcha and third-party spam filtering through its add-ons.
#10. Surveys and polls
Surveys collect opinions rather than enquiries, and they need a different set of fields and a results view.
Both plugins do it through add-ons, and both ship a Survey template in their libraries. WPForms includes survey and quiz templates in its 2,100-plus library; Gravity Forms lists a Survey form among the 22 templates on its library page.
#11. Performance
WPForms has the tidier interface of the two and its add-ons behave with any WordPress theme.
Gravity Forms inherits the theme’s styling more readily, which is often what you want on a design-led site: the form looks like it belongs rather than like a plugin.
#12. Documentation
WPForms is well documented, with articles grouped by getting started, functionality, styling, extending, add-ons and account management, plus video tutorials from the team.
Gravity Forms documentation is deeper and more technical, which follows from those 500+ hooks: there is a documented filter for most things you might want to change, which is exactly what a developer needs and rather more than a beginner wants.
#13. Support
WPForms offers ticket support on paid plans, and the free Lite users have the WordPress.org support forum, where the 4.8 rating from 14,371 reviews gives you some sense of how that goes.
Gravity Forms includes standard support on Basic and Pro, and priority support on Elite. You can raise a question on the Gravity Forms support page. Since there is no free tier, everyone using Gravity Forms is a paying customer with a support entitlement, which is a real difference in practice.
#14. Pricing
This is where the two genuinely part company, and where the promotional prices can mislead you. WPForms has four tiers. List prices are Basic $99 a year for one site, Plus $199 for three, Pro $399 for five and Elite $599 for unlimited sites. First-year promotional prices are currently much lower — Basic at $39.60, Plus at $79.60, Pro at $159.60 and Elite at $239.60 — but the discount is on the first year.
Gravity Forms has three tiers and no discount to unwind: Basic $59 a year for one site, Pro $159 for three sites, and Elite $259 for unlimited sites with multisite support, priority support and every add-on included.
So the answer depends on which year you are looking at. In year one, WPForms Basic at $39.60 undercuts Gravity Forms Basic at $59. From year two onwards, WPForms Basic renews at $99 while Gravity Forms Basic stays at $59, and Gravity Forms Elite at $259 for unlimited sites costs less than half of WPForms Elite at $599.
Prices checked September 2026.
