The Core Difference
While both tools let you build contact forms, they approach WordPress fundamentally differently. WPForms focuses on making sure your grandmother can build a form. Gravity Forms focuses on making sure a senior PHP developer can hook into the exact moment an entry is saved to execute a custom script.
Pricing and The "Lite" Trap
WPForms is technically free via the plugin repository. However, the free "Lite" version does not save entries to your WordPress database; it only sends an email notification. If your WordPress site has SMTP issues, you will silently lose leads without knowing it. To unlock entry storage, Mailchimp, or Stripe, you must upgrade to a premium tier ($79 to $399+/year).
Gravity Forms does not offer a free version. Licenses range from $59 to $259/year. However, the $259 Elite license includes literally everything—every add-on, unlimited sites, and premium support. If you are building multiple client sites, Gravity Forms Elite is vastly superior value to WPForms Elite.
When to Choose Which?
Choose WPForms if: You are a non-technical user rapidly building a simple business website, and you just want a contact form that looks good without reading documentation.
Choose Gravity Forms if: You need to register WordPress users, create custom post types from frontend submissions, build multi-page applications, or do anything requiring complex conditional logic.