Using Google Sheets as a Form Backend: The Complete Guide (2026)

Author imagePublished on Feb 17, 2026 by

Levi

Google Sheets might seem like an unusual choice for a form backend, but it's one of the most practical options for many use cases. It's free, your team already knows how to use it, and it comes with built-in collaboration, formulas, charts, and sharing.

The question isn't whether Google Sheets can work as a form backend — it can. The question is which approach to use. In this guide, we'll cover three approaches, their trade-offs, and when each one makes sense.

Why Developers Use Google Sheets as a Backend

Before we get into the how, here's why Google Sheets keeps coming up as a backend:

It's free

No database hosting costs. No server bills. Google Sheets is free for personal use and included in Google Workspace for businesses.

It's familiar

Everyone on your team knows how to use a spreadsheet. There's no learning curve for viewing, filtering, or analyzing data. Try saying that about PostgreSQL.

It's collaborative

Share the sheet with teammates, clients, or stakeholders. They can see real-time data, add comments, and create their own views — without needing access to your app or database.

Built-in analysis

Google Sheets gives you formulas (COUNTIF, QUERY, VLOOKUP), conditional formatting, pivot tables, and charts. For many use cases, this replaces a separate analytics tool.

No infrastructure

No database to set up, no server to maintain, no migrations to run, no backups to configure. Google handles all of it.

Approach 1: Write-Only (Form Submissions Only)

Best for: Contact forms, signups, surveys, lead capture, order forms, feedback.

This is the most common use case: you have a form on your website, and you want submissions to appear in a Google Sheet. You don't need to read data back from the sheet through your form — you just need to write to it.

Sheet Monkey

Sheet Monkey is a service built specifically for this. You get a form endpoint URL, set it as your form's action, and submissions go directly to your Google Sheet.

<form action="https://api.sheetmonkey.io/form/YOUR_ID" method="POST">
  <input type="text" name="Name" required />
  <input type="email" name="Email" required />
  <button type="submit">Send</button>
</form>

Why write-only matters:

Sheet Monkey's endpoints can only write to your spreadsheet. They cannot read, modify, or delete data. This is a fundamental security advantage:

Compare this to full CRUD APIs (below) where the API endpoint can read everything in your sheet.

Features included:

Pricing: Free for 100 submissions/month. Unlimited plans from $5/month.

Approach 2: Full CRUD API

Best for: Apps that need to read AND write data, dynamic content from a spreadsheet, prototype backends.

Services like SheetDB and Sheet.best turn your Google Sheet into a full REST API. You can GET rows, POST new rows, PUT updates, and DELETE rows — just like a traditional database API.

How it works

  1. Sign up for SheetDB or Sheet.best.
  2. Connect your Google Sheet.
  3. Get an API URL.
  4. Make HTTP requests:
// Read all rows
const data = await fetch('https://sheetdb.io/api/v1/YOUR_ID').then(r => r.json());

// Add a row
await fetch('https://sheetdb.io/api/v1/YOUR_ID', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify({ Name: 'John', Email: 'john@example.com' }),
});

Use cases

The security trade-off

Full CRUD APIs expose your sheet data via the API endpoint. Anyone with the API URL can read every row in your sheet. For internal tools or prototypes this might be fine. For public-facing forms, it's a problem — you're exposing all submitted data (names, emails, messages) to anyone who looks at your source code and finds the API URL.

This is why write-only endpoints (like Sheet Monkey) are better for form submissions. Your form endpoint URL is visible in your HTML, so it should only allow writing, not reading.

Pricing: SheetDB starts at $7/month. Sheet.best has a free tier with limits.

Approach 3: Google Apps Script

Best for: Developers who want full control and don't mind maintaining the code.

Google Apps Script lets you write JavaScript that runs inside Google's infrastructure. You can create a web app endpoint that does whatever you want with your Google Sheet.

Basic form handler

function doPost(e) {
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getActiveSheet();
  var headers = sheet.getRange(1, 1, 1, sheet.getLastColumn()).getValues()[0];
  var row = [];

  for (var i = 0; i < headers.length; i++) {
    if (headers[i] === 'Timestamp') {
      row.push(new Date());
    } else {
      row.push(e.parameter[headers[i]] || '');
    }
  }

  sheet.appendRow(row);

  return ContentService
    .createTextOutput(JSON.stringify({ result: 'success' }))
    .setMimeType(ContentService.MimeType.JSON);
}

Deploy this as a web app and use the URL as your form action.

The trade-offs

Full control: You can add validation, send emails, write to multiple sheets, or trigger other actions.

Full responsibility: You maintain the code. Google periodically updates the Apps Script runtime and can break your script. Debugging is done through the Apps Script execution log, not your browser's dev tools. CORS issues prevent fetch-based submissions without workarounds.

Security Considerations

Write-only vs. read-write endpoints

This is the most important security decision when using Google Sheets as a backend:

Credential storage

Rate limiting

For public-facing forms, rate limiting is important to prevent spam and abuse. If you're using Apps Script, you'll need to implement this yourself.

When Google Sheets Is the Right Backend

Great for

Not great for

Getting Started

The fastest way to use Google Sheets as a form backend:

  1. Create a free Sheet Monkey account.
  2. Connect your Google Sheet.
  3. Set the endpoint URL as your form's action.
  4. Done — form submissions go to your sheet.

No backend code, no server, no maintenance. Try Sheet Monkey free — use Google Sheets as your form backend.

It only takes minutes to create your first form on Sheet Monkey and build powerful HTML forms with Google Sheets

Get Started for Free