LimeSurvey: The world’s #1 open-source survey platform

It's what we love and do best since 2006...

🌐 Website · 🔮 Demo · 📚 Documentation · ⚙️ Request a feature · 🐛 Report a bug · 🗨️ Forums · 🗨️ Discord

LimeSurvey is a free and open-source online survey platfrom used by businesses of all sizes, professionals, academic institutions, teachers, students, governments, financial institutes, and Anja from HR (who is hiring and looking for a DevOps and Technical Support Engineer/Developer – drop her a Lime…) in 80+ countries worldwide. It offers features like conditional logic, question branching, customizable templates, multilingual support, and GDPR compliance.

🌟 Why LimeSurvey?

LimeSurvey is perfect for you if you are...

• 📊 Gathering feedback from customers, employees, or stakeholders
• 🎓 Conducting academic research or field studies
• 🌍 Running multilingual surveys for global audiences
• 🔐 Prioritizing privacy and GDPR compliance in data collection
• 🛠 Needing customizable, flexible survey platform for various projects
• 🚀 Scaling surveys for startups, mid-sized businesses, or large organizations
• 🎯 Looking for an open-source solution with no vendor lock-in

🚀 Features

• ✅ Unlimited surveys
• ✅ Unlimited questions
• ✅ 30+ question types
• ✅ 900+ survey templates
• ✅ Easy LimeSurvey editor
• ✅ On-brand surveys (fonts, colors, logo, CSS, JavaScript)
• ✅ Multilingual surveys (80+ languages)
• ✅ Skip logic and question branching
• ✅ Easy survey sharing (via public link, QR code, socials)
• ✅ Closed access mode (via personal link, invite-only)
• ✅ Responses & statistics
• ✅ Advanced data analysis tools
• ✅ RemoteControl API (via XML-RPC / JSON-RPC)
• ✅ Google Analytics
• ✅ Data security & anonymization
• ✅ Two-factor authentication
• ✅ GDPR compliance and strong data security
• ✅ WCAG 2.0 compliance 🌐💚
• ✅ Plugins (questions themes, survey themes, audit log, ExportR, ExportSTATAxml, AuthCAS ...)
• ✅ Integrations (SAML, LDAP, SURFconext, Remote Control, REST API ...)
• ✅ And much more ...

Installation

⬇️ Stable Release: We recommend downloading the latest stable version for optimal reliability and performance.

⚠️ Repository: You can also access the development repository. Be aware that it may contain versions that are not fully tested.

Run locally with Podman

This setup runs the repository checkout with Apache, PHP and MariaDB. You need Podman and a Compose provider available to podman compose.

1. Copy .env.example to .env and replace both example passwords with distinct, strong values. Keep .env private.

2. Start the containers from the repository root.

   Command safety: State-changing

   podman compose up --build -d

3. Open http://localhost:8080 (or the port set by LIMESURVEY_PORT) and complete the LimeSurvey installer. Use db as the database host, 3306 as the port, limesurvey as the database name and username, and your LIMESURVEY_DB_PASSWORD value as the database password.

The container health check uses http://localhost:8080/health.php (adjust the port if you changed LIMESURVEY_PORT). A 200 OK response with OK in the body confirms that Apache serves PHP. It does not check the database or survey workflows.

Test emails locally

Mailpit captures email sent by the local Compose stack. In LimeSurvey's Global settings → Email settings, select SMTP, set the SMTP host to mailpit:1025, and leave the SMTP username, password and encryption unset. Save the settings, then use Send test email. Open http://localhost:8025 (or the port set by MAILPIT_PORT) to inspect the message. Mailpit does not deliver captured messages to their recipients.

The named volumes retain the database, generated configuration, uploads and temporary files across container restarts. To stop the containers while retaining the volumes:

Command safety: State-changing

podman compose down

The web port binds to localhost only. This configuration is intended for local use; a public deployment also needs HTTPS, a suitable secret-management process and a backup plan for the database and persistent volumes.

For a Linux server with systemd, use the Podman Quadlet units. They support a containerised MySQL database for the PoC and a MySQL service on the host for production.

Requirements

Minimal

• Apache ≥ 2.4, nginx ≥ 1.1, or any PHP-ready web server
• PHP ≥ 8.1.29 with mbstring and PDO drivers
• MySQL ≥ 8.0, PostgreSQL ≥ 14, MariaDB ≥ 10.3.38, or MSSQL ≥ 2019

Recommended

• Latest nginx version
• Latest PHP version with php-fpm, mbstring, gd2, imap, ldap, zip, zlib, and database drivers
• Latest MariaDB or MySQL version

☁️ You don’t want to host yourself? Let us do it for you!

Skip the technical setup and focus on creating and analyzing surveys. With our hosted SaaS, you get a fast, easy-to-use online survey platform that ensures security and complies with privacy regulations like GDPR. We take care of all the hosting and maintenance, so you don’t have to worry about it and can scale away: 👉 Create free online survey!

❤️ Join the community

• ⭐ Show your support and star this repo now
• 💬 Join the discussion in our forums
• 🐛 Submit bugs and feature requests
• 🔗 Follow us on LinkedIn
• 💬 Join our Discord
• 🦸 Make contributions or join the LimeSurvey project team

All Thanks to our contributors

License

LimeSurvey is licensed under GPL v2.0, with the option to use any later GPL version. Pictures and the LimeSurvey Logo are registered trademarks of LimeSurvey GmbH, based in Hamburg, Germany.

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