bwt
// compare · forms

Contact Form 7 vs Gravity Forms

Opposite ends of the WordPress forms spectrum. Contact Form 7 is the free, featherweight veteran — GPL, tiny, and configured in a markup-style editor, running on a huge share of the web. Gravity Forms is the paid developer powerhouse — no free tier, but the deepest conditional logic, entry management, and add-on ecosystem in WordPress. This isn't a close feature race; it's a decision about how complex your forms are and whether you'll pay for depth.

// at a glance
Product PriceLighthouseWP.orgOpen CVEsInstalls
Contact Form 7 Free964.0 ★010,000,000+
Gravity Forms $5992—01,000,000+

Lighthouse: reproducible median of 5 mobile runs · CVEs: open advisories, Patchstack + Wordfence · Ratings: WordPress.org

// the picks
Best free & lightest
Contact Form 7

Free under GPL, the smallest runtime footprint, and the top Lighthouse score. If you need a reliable contact form and are comfortable configuring it in markup, nothing beats it on cost or page weight.

Best for complex & developer forms
Gravity Forms

Paid-only, but the richest feature set for multi-page forms, advanced conditional logic, entry management, and a mature hooks-and-add-on ecosystem. The pick when the form is really an application.

// head to head

Contact Form 7

Forms · Free · Since 2007
Full review

Contact Form 7 is the original WordPress contact form plugin, launched in 2007 by Takayuki Miyoshi and maintained solo ever since. One of the most-installed WordPress plugins of all time. Famously minimal feature stance: ship the form plugin that does the form plugin job, nothing more. Free, GPL, no paid tier.

Pros

  • Genuinely free, no paid tier, no upsell flow
  • Tiny footprint compared to WPForms or Gravity Forms
  • Solo developer with nearly two decades of consistent maintainership
  • Vast ecosystem of complementary plugins (Flamingo, Conditional Fields, etc.) for the features CF7 itself does not ship

Cons

  • No drag-and-drop builder; forms are configured via shortcode-style markup
  • Submission storage requires the companion Flamingo plugin
  • Spam protection requires CAPTCHA or Akismet integration (not built-in)

Gravity Forms

Forms · From $59 · Since 2008
Full review

Gravity Forms is the longest-running premium WordPress form plugin, launched in 2008 by Rocketgenius. Premium-only model (no free version, no WordPress.org listing). Defined many of the features that became table-stakes in WP forms: conditional logic, partial entries, multi-page forms, integration with Salesforce and Mailchimp and Zapier. Still considered the gold standard for complex forms in agency builds.

Pros

  • Most mature conditional logic engine of any WP form plugin
  • Largest catalog of first-party add-ons (Stripe, PayPal, Mailchimp, Salesforce, Zapier, etc.)
  • Rocketgenius has been shipping consistently for 17+ years (no vendor risk)
  • Excellent for complex business forms with payment integrations

Cons

  • No free tier, premium-only ($59/year minimum)
  • Admin UI shows its age compared to newer entrants like WPForms
  • Renewal pricing is required for ongoing add-on access
The verdict

If you just need a contact or feedback form and don't mind a little markup setup, Contact Form 7 is free, light, and more than enough. If your forms are workflows — multi-page logic, entry management, payments, deep integrations — Gravity Forms earns its license fee and there's no free tier to bridge the gap. There's a lot of empty middle between them: for a visual builder with a free starting point that sits between these two, WPForms is the natural third option.

// see also

Best WordPress Form Plugins

The full ranked roundup, with the best pick for each use case.
// faq

Frequently asked questions

Is Contact Form 7 or Gravity Forms better?
They serve different needs. Contact Form 7 is free, extremely light, and ideal for simple forms, but configures through a markup-style editor and lacks a visual builder. Gravity Forms is a paid, feature-deep builder for complex, logic-driven forms and developer workflows. Choose CF7 for simple and free; choose Gravity Forms when the form is closer to an application.
Does Gravity Forms have a free version?
No — Gravity Forms is paid-only, with no free tier. Contact Form 7 is completely free under the GPL. If you want a free starting point but need more than CF7's markup-based approach, WPForms Lite is a free visual-builder alternative that sits between the two.
Is Contact Form 7 good enough for a business site?
For standard contact, feedback, and simple lead forms, yes — it's reliable and battle-tested across millions of sites. Where it falls short is complex logic, entry storage and management, payments, and polished no-code building. If a business needs those, Gravity Forms (or WPForms for an easier builder) is the better fit.
// methodology

Every figure in the comparison table is pulled from the same reproducible pipeline behind each plugin's detail page — Lighthouse scores are the median of five mobile runs on identical hosting, and open-CVE counts come from Patchstack and Wordfence Intelligence on every build. The editorial call is ours; the numbers are measured, not vendor-supplied.