Tally alternative
Tally is a genuinely lovely no-code form builder - free, unlimited, and Notion-style to build in. Developers move to Formpaste when they want the form itself to be markup they own on their own domain, styled with their own CSS, instead of a page hosted on tally.so or an embedded iframe.
Formpaste vs Tally
| Feature | Formpaste | Tally |
|---|---|---|
| Where the form lives | Your own HTML, on your domain | tally.so page or an embedded iframe |
| No backend or server required | Yes - POST to /submit | Yes (fully hosted) |
| Framework components | 5 (HTML, Astro, React, TS, JS + CSS, Tailwind) | 0 - embed code only |
| Styling | Your own CSS, matches your site exactly | Theme options inside their editor |
| Automatic spam handling | Yes - heuristics + quarantine | Basic built-in protection; reCAPTCHA optional |
| Quarantine folder you review | Yes | No |
| AI agent setup (MCP) | Yes | No |
| Remove third-party branding | Yes, always | Pro plan only |
| Webhooks | Yes, on every plan | Free plan (fair-usage limits apply) |
| File uploads | Yes | Yes, 10MB per file on free; unlimited on Pro |
| Custom domain | N/A - it's already your domain | Pro plan, points a subdomain at a still tally.so-hosted form |
| Free plan submissions / month | 250 | Unlimited |
| Free plan | 250 / month | Unlimited / month |
| Paid plans (from) | $9.99 / month | $24 / month |
Tally pricing verified July 2026. Check their pricing page for current numbers.
How it works
Three steps from sign-up to form submissions landing in your inbox.
Create Your Form
Sign up for an account. Verify your email and create an access key in your dashboard.
Create Contact Form
Add the code snippet using your favourite language to create the form.
<form action="https://api.formpaste.com/submit" method="POST">
<input type="hidden" name="access_key" value="YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_HERE">
<input type="email" name="email" placeholder="Your email" required>
<textarea name="message" placeholder="Your message" required></textarea>
<button type="submit">Send</button>
</form>Add Access Key
Replace with your access key to start receiving email submissions.
<input type="hidden" name="access_key" value="YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_HERE">Why switch from Tally?
Your markup, your domain
The form is HTML you write and host, not a tally.so page or an embed - it renders as part of your site, not a widget inside it.
Quarantine, not a black box
Borderline submissions land in a folder you review and release yourself, instead of a spam toggle you can't inspect.
Built for the codebase, not the dashboard
Copy-paste components for HTML, React, TypeScript, JavaScript, and Astro, plus an MCP server so your AI coding agent can wire the form up without opening a builder UI.
Common Tally issues Formpaste solves
The form doesn't look like the rest of your site
Formpaste forms are markup you write and style yourself - same CSS, same components, no editor theme to fight.
Visitors leave your page for tally.so or drop into an iframe
The form renders inline as part of your own page. There's no redirect and no embed boundary.
You can't tell why a submission was marked spam
Anything borderline goes to a quarantine folder you review and release yourself, so nothing is silently dropped or waved through.
Removing 'Powered by Tally' requires a $24/mo upgrade
There's no third-party branding to remove in the first place - it's your HTML.
You're hand-building the same form UI every project
Copy-paste components for HTML, React, TypeScript, JavaScript, and Astro come pre-wired, or your AI coding agent builds it over MCP.
Why people leave Tally
Tally is a well-built, free, no-code form builder, and for most non-developers building a standalone form, it’s a great choice. The reason developers move to Formpaste isn’t price or volume - Tally’s free plan is unlimited, and Formpaste doesn’t try to compete there. It’s ownership. A Tally form lives on tally.so or inside an embedded iframe (or, on the Pro plan, behind a custom subdomain that still points at a tally.so-hosted page). It’s built and styled inside their editor, not in your codebase. If you want the form to be markup that lives in your own repository, renders inline as part of your page, and is styled with your own CSS, that’s a different shape of tool - which is what Formpaste is.
Moving from Tally to a form you own
There’s no endpoint to repoint here, because a Tally form isn’t markup you
control - it’s a page or embed rendered from their editor. The honest migration
path is to rebuild the form as real HTML: recreate your fields using one of
Formpaste’s copy-paste components (HTML, React, TypeScript, JavaScript, or
Astro), point the form’s action at https://api.formpaste.com/submit, and add
a hidden access_key input with your key from the dashboard. For a typical
contact or signup form this is quick work with a component to start from. If
your Tally form leans on conditional logic, multi-step branching, or payment
collection, budget more time - those behaviors live in Tally’s editor and need
to be rebuilt by hand in your own markup and JavaScript.
Who should switch - and who shouldn’t
Switch if the form needs to be part of your own site’s markup - matching your design exactly, with no iframe boundary, no tally.so page, and no “Powered by Tally” badge to pay to remove - or if you want an AI coding agent to build and wire the form for you over MCP. Don’t switch if you want to build a form visually with no code, need Tally’s conditional logic or multi-step builder, or are happy with a form hosted on tally.so or embedded on your page - Tally does that well, and its free plan is hard to beat on volume.
Tally alternative FAQ
Paste a form. Get submissions.
Instantly without setting up any backend, servers or databases. 250 submissions/mo free - no credit card.
What you get with Formpaste
No server, no DNS
Point your form at Formpaste - no backend, no DNS, no email server to run.
Spam filtered automatically
Heuristics + a quarantine folder you control. Real messages always get through.
Quarantine you control
Suspicious submissions land in a folder you review - nothing silently dropped.
Built for AI agents
An MCP server your coding agent calls to create a form and wire it up.
Copy-paste components
Accessible, copy-paste form code for HTML, React, TypeScript, JavaScript, and Astro.
Simple dashboard
Manage forms, inbox, quarantine, and delivery from one place.