Free Card Sort vs Google Forms: Why Spreadsheets Aren't Card Sorting

Google Forms is free, flexible, and everyone already has it. So researchers regularly attempt card sorting with it — using checkbox grids, dropdown menus, or just asking participants to list which items belong in which category.

It works. It's also significantly more painful than it needs to be, for both you and your participants. Here's what the comparison actually looks like.

Quick Summary

Free Card Sort is purpose-built for card sorting with a drag-and-drop participant interface, real-time analysis, and IA-specific outputs like similarity matrices and dendrograms.

Google Forms is a general-purpose survey tool. Card sorting requires significant workarounds and produces raw data that needs manual processing before it's usable.

Pricing Comparison

Both tools are free for core use.

The Participant Experience Problem

The biggest issue with Google Forms card sorting isn't analysis — it's the experience for participants.

In Google Forms, participants typically see a list of items and either:

• Check boxes for each item under each category (a checkbox grid)
• Select one category per item from a dropdown
• Type category names manually

None of these feel natural. Participants have to hold all the cards and categories in their head simultaneously while working through a form. It's cognitively demanding and produces lower-quality responses because participants rush or give up.

In Free Card Sort, participants drag cards into groups with a visual interface designed specifically for this task. The interaction mirrors how people physically sort objects. Completion rates are higher and the data is more thoughtful.

Card Sorting Features

Analysis: What Happens After the Data Comes In

Google Forms: Your data arrives as a spreadsheet. Each row is a participant response; each column is an item. To produce a similarity matrix, you need to:

1. Normalize category names (participants call "Payments" "Payment", "Billing", "Pay", etc.)
2. Build a co-occurrence matrix from scratch
3. Calculate similarity scores
4. Visualise them in some way

For a 20-participant, 30-card study, this is 4–8 hours of spreadsheet work even if you know what you're doing.

Free Card Sort: When participants finish, your dashboard immediately shows category breakdowns, card placement frequencies, and (on Pro) a fully rendered similarity matrix and dendrogram. Analysis time: 30 minutes.

When Google Forms Is the Right Choice

One legitimate use case: If you're running a very simple closed card sort as part of a larger survey — where card sorting is one question among many — embedding a sorting task in Google Forms is reasonable.

But if card sorting is the point of the research, Google Forms is a workaround that costs more time than it saves money.

The "It's Free" Argument

Google Forms is free, so is Free Card Sort (for core card sorting). The cost comparison is researcher time:

• Google Forms card sort setup: 1–2 hours

• Google Forms analysis: 4–8 hours

• Total: 5–10 hours per study

• Free Card Sort setup: 5 minutes

• Free Card Sort analysis: 30 minutes

• Total: ~35 minutes per study

At any reasonable hourly rate, the time saved by using the right tool pays for a Pro subscription many times over.

Verdict

Google Forms is a fine survey tool. It's not a card sorting tool.

If you're choosing between them because you think a dedicated card sorting tool costs money — it doesn't. Free Card Sort's free plan covers unlimited studies and unlimited participants.

Choose Free Card Sort for: Any actual card sort research where participant experience and analysis quality matter.

Choose Google Forms for: Quick informal input gathering where drag-and-drop doesn't matter and you don't need IA-specific analysis.

Run your first card sort free — no credit card required →