Survey123 alternative: form or map, the real question

Two families of collection tools

Mobile collection tools fall into two families. Form tools start from a questionnaire: a sequence of questions, possibly with one GPS point per response. Map tools start from a map: the surveyor sees existing features, draws new ones (points, lines, polygons) and fills in a form attached to each.

Facts checked on 11/09/2026 on esri.com (Survey123 overview), getodk.org and the KoboToolbox documentation. Free plan quotas change: check them on each project's website.

This distinction is not just about the interface. It determines the shape of the data you end up with. A form tool produces a table: one row per response, possibly with coordinate columns, which you then export to a spreadsheet or statistics software. A map tool produces a geographic layer: features with a geometry and attributes, directly usable in a GIS, overlaid on other layers and updated campaign after campaign. Asking what shape of data you want at the end is often the fastest way to know which family of tools to choose, even before comparing products with each other.

Survey123, KoboToolbox and ODK: the strengths of forms

All three share a common base: the XLSForm format, which describes a questionnaire in a spreadsheet. Survey123 offers it alongside its web designer; KoboToolbox and ODK use it natively. The same form can often move from one to another with little rework.

• Long questionnaires and skip logic. Conditional questions, repeat groups, calculations, consistency checks: that is their home ground.
• Large surveys. Households, health, humanitarian monitoring, project evaluations: thousands of questionnaires, little geometry.
• Offline. All three let you fill in forms without a network and submit the responses later.
• Survey123 inside ArcGIS. If you use ArcGIS, responses feed Esri maps and dashboards directly.
• KoboToolbox for nonprofits. Built for difficult settings and humanitarian crises, free for the vast majority of nonprofit organizations.

One limit to know: the ODK Collect app is available on Android; on iPhone, ODK relies on web forms in the browser.

Then there is hosting. Survey123 lives in an ArcGIS organization. KoboToolbox offers public servers and can be installed on your own. ODK Central can be self-hosted for free, but someone then has to install the server, apply updates and run backups; ODK Cloud is the paid hosted version. This administration work is a real cost, to plan for as soon as you choose the tool.

XLSForm in practice

XLSForm is what Survey123, KoboToolbox and ODK have in common, and why moving from one to another is easy. An XLSForm form is a spreadsheet workbook with three sheets.

• survey: one row per question, with at least a type (text, integer, single choice, date, GPS point, photo), a technical name and a displayed label.
• choices: the lists of possible answers, each identified by a list name that can be reused across several questions.
• settings: the form title, its ID and its version.

type                 name          label
select_one condition condition     Structure condition
integer              depth         Depth (m)
geopoint             location      Location
image                photo         Photo

Extra columns add display conditions, constraints, calculations and required fields. The format is powerful for long questionnaires, but it describes answers, not geographic features: geometry is usually limited to a point, line or area captured as one answer among others, with no context layers to edit.

That is the key difference with QField, where the form is attached to a layer of the QGIS project and you work on features you can see, find again and edit from one campaign to the next.

QField: when collection is a map first

QField starts from a different place. The surveyor opens a full QGIS project: basemap, existing layers, symbology. They see what has already been surveyed, edit a feature's geometry, trace a pipe or a parcel boundary, then fill in the layer's form, built in QGIS with value lists, constraints and photos.

• Asset inventories (street lighting, street furniture, water networks), where existing features must be found and updated.
• Line or area surveys: tracks, parcels, flooded zones, construction footprints.
• Updating an existing GIS database rather than creating new responses.
• Teams that already prepare their data in QGIS.

QField runs on Android and iOS. With LizPack Field, which relies on the same sync technology as QFieldCloud, data comes back automatically, and with the Pro plan it is written into your PostGIS layers. The step-by-step is in the QField field data collection guide.

That does not make QField forms basic. Since they come from QGIS, they benefit from its features: fields shown based on a condition, constraints with an error message, values computed by expression, tabs and groups, and relations between tables. A relation lets you, for example, attach several visits to the same asset: the surveyor opens the streetlight and adds today's visit, without duplicating the feature.

Which Survey123 alternative should you choose?

These tools are not mutually exclusive. Many organizations use KoboToolbox for household surveys and QField for infrastructure inventories, then bring both together in QGIS. If you come from the Esri ecosystem and your question is about the map, also read QField vs ArcGIS Field Maps.

Also consider how long the project will last. A one-off survey of a few weeks is well served by a tool that is quick to learn, even if its data then needs some work. An inventory you will update every year better justifies the effort of building a real GIS project, because that work will be reused at every campaign and the data will grow richer instead of starting from scratch each time. In other words, the longer the data will live, the more a map-based approach pays off.

The criteria grid for choosing

To decide between tools for your own need, rate each one against these criteria. A Survey123 alternative is only good if it meets the criteria that truly matter to you.

Few projects are decided by a single criterion. But in practice, the first two rows of the table are often enough: if the data is a questionnaire, choose a form tool; if it is a map to keep up to date, choose QField.

Three concrete examples

General categories help, but real cases settle the question. Here are three common situations and the tool that best fits each, including when it is not QField.

• A survey of 2,000 households. An NGO must interview families about access to water: 80 questions, conditional skips, one GPS point per household. It is a questionnaire before it is a map. KoboToolbox or ODK are the right choices here, and mapping is done afterwards in QGIS from the exported coordinates.
• A street lighting inventory for a town. Surveyors must find every existing streetlight, correct its position, record its condition and add new ones. They need to see the map and the features already known: QField fits, with a PostGIS layer updated directly by the sync.
• Surveying farm parcels. You need to draw boundaries, calculate areas and link each parcel to a farmer. Classic form tools handle precise polygon drawing poorly; QField lets you draw, edit and check geometry on the basemap.

In all three cases, the question is not which tool is better in absolute terms, but what kind of data you are collecting. A table of answers with coordinates calls for a form tool; a geographic layer to maintain calls for a map tool.

One last criterion often matters: who prepares the collection. If the team knows spreadsheets and the XLSForm format but not QGIS, a form tool will be up and running faster. If it already works in QGIS, QField reuses its projects, styles and data with no extra learning curve.

If your organization is still undecided, test both approaches on a small area for one day: an XLSForm in a survey tool on one side, a QGIS project in QField on the other. Compare preparation time, surveyor comfort and how easily the data can be used afterwards. The right choice usually becomes clear very quickly, often before the end of that first day in the field.

Combining forms and maps in the same GIS

Many organizations do not have to choose: they use a form tool for surveys and QField for inventories, then bring everything together in the same GIS. The method is simple.

1. Export the responses from the form tool as CSV or a spreadsheet, with latitude and longitude columns.
2. Load the file in QGIS as a point layer, or import it into a table in your PostGIS database.
3. Have the map features collected with QField and LizPack Field; on the Pro plan, they land directly in the project's PostGIS layers.
4. Combine both datasets in QGIS: for example, link each surveyed household to the nearest water point.
5. Publish the result on a web map with LizPack Map, which hosts Lizmap and QGIS Server.

Keep shared identifiers between the two tools (village, neighborhood or structure code): that is what lets you link responses to features without ambiguity later.

Common mistakes when choosing a tool

• Choosing on the demo. A tool that shines in a demo may disappoint on your case. Test with your real form and two surveyors in the field.
• Forcing a questionnaire into QField. QField handles rich forms, but an 80-question questionnaire with no geometry will be less comfortable there than in a tool built for it.
• Forcing an inventory into a form tool. Conversely, updating thousands of existing features without seeing them on a map produces duplicates and approximate positions.
• Forgetting what comes after collection. Plan from the start where the data will go, who will check it and how it will be published.
• Ignoring the actual devices. Check which phones your surveyors have before choosing a tool available on only one platform.

A good Survey123 alternative is the one your teams use effortlessly and whose data actually gets used afterwards, not the one that ticks the most boxes in a comparison.

And after collection?

Collection is only useful if the data is put to work. With QField and LizPack Field on the Pro plan, data lands in PostGIS and a Lizmap map that displays those layers updates at each sync: see sync QField with PostGIS and Lizmap. LizPack is an open source geospatial infrastructure, not the publisher of this software: it hosts and connects it, as explained in what LizPack does.

Frequently asked questions