Google Forms vs Microsoft Forms: quizzes compared

Last updated September 2026 · ~10 minute read

Short verdict: both have a real quiz mode, and the question is not which is better but where the manual work lands. Google Forms marks six question types and gives you one switch for when grades go out, so a multiple-choice paper can be set, sat and returned without you reading a thing. Microsoft Forms documents fewer auto-marked types but wraps them in a grading workflow Google has no published equivalent for.

Most comparisons of these two quiz modes list features from memory. This one quotes each vendor’s own pages, dates every figure to the day we read it, and puts anything the documentation does not state into a gaps list.

How we checked

Every claim below comes from a page published by Google or by Microsoft, all read on 14 September 2026. Microsoft reorganises its Forms documentation often, so treat each Microsoft figure as dated rather than permanent.

• Google side: Create & grade quizzes, the Forms API reference, its grading guide, and Create a quiz assignment in the Classroom help centre.
• Microsoft side: Create a quiz, quiz settings, check and share quiz results, display answers and points, assign quizzes through Teams, the screen-reader quiz guide, and the limits table.

What each product will mark for you

Google is specific, and the specificity is the useful part. Its quiz page says “You can make an answer key on certain question types” and lists exactly six: Short answer, Multiple choice, Checkboxes, Dropdown, Multiple choice grid and Checkbox grid. Paragraph and Rating are not on that list, nor are Date, Time, File upload or Linear scale. A few lines later the same page adds: “You can assign points and add feedback on all question types.” Those two sentences are the whole shape of Google quiz mode — the set you can comment on is much larger than the set Google will mark.

Microsoft names fewer types, and spreads them across three pages. The quiz walkthrough puts the answer key inside the Choice question: “Select the Correct Answer check mark next to the correct answer or answers”, with a Points box beside it. The screen-reader guide names the second type: “For the Text question, you can add one or more correct answers.” And the Teams assignments page states the marking behaviour outright — “Forms automatically calculates points earned for multiple-choice questions” — while describing written work as yours to handle: “Review short-answer and essay responses and add points.”

One honest wrinkle: Microsoft’s own pages disagree here. The accessibility guide says a Text question takes correct answers; the Teams grading page describes short answer as work you score yourself. Both are Microsoft’s words, and so that cell reads Not verified rather than a confident tick.

Google publishes the matching rule and Microsoft does not: the API grading guide states that “the answer must match the answer key exactly”, though several accepted spellings can be listed. Whether the match is case sensitive is published by neither vendor.

Feedback: three slots against one message per option

Google’s help centre describes a single control: “To add a written or YouTube video explanation to an answer, click Add answer feedback.” One button, one block of text. The split exists only in the API, which stores three slots on a question’s grading object: whenRight, “The feedback displayed for correct responses. This feedback can only be set for multiple choice questions that have correct answers provided”; whenWrong, carrying the identical restriction; and generalFeedback, which “cannot be set for automatically graded multiple choice questions.” A question gets the pair, or the single block, never both.

Microsoft splits feedback by option, not by correctness. “Select the Message icon next to any answer if you want to customize a message for it. Respondents will see the message when they’ve selected that answer.” That is the more surgical design for teaching: a correction attached to the one wrong option that reveals the misconception, where Google’s whenWrong writes a single message for every wrong answer at once. What Google has instead is a YouTube explanation on an answer, which Microsoft’s quiz pages do not describe.

Microsoft also documents feedback written after submission, in more detail than Google’s help centre does. On the Responses tab, “Select Review Answers to provide points and feedback”: a per-person view, and a per-question view where you “provide bulk feedback to all students who selected that answer.” Marking one question at a time, with one comment covering everyone who fell for the same distractor, is a better workflow than Google publishes.

Releasing grades

Google’s control is one radio pair under Release grades: “Immediately after each submission” or “Later, after manual review”. The defaults are stated plainly — “Grades will release immediately” and “Email addresses won’t be collected” — and “If you collect email addresses, you can assign points and leave feedback on individual responses.”

Microsoft reaches the same place with two controls doing different jobs. In Settings, Show results automatically is the default: with it on, “Responders see green check marks next to each correct answer for the quiz questions and red message text displayed next to incorrect answers.” Clearing it stops the paper marking itself in front of the student. Separately, on the Responses tab, Post scores is the deliberate release — for one student or all of them — after which “Students can view their scores and feedback by opening the quiz.”

Microsoft documents a third mode Google has no equivalent for: Practice mode, where “respondents can practice at their own pace and see correct answers for each question before submitting.”

If you need a gradebook

Neither Forms product is a gradebook. Each vendor documents a route into its own classroom product, and both carry conditions worth reading first.

Google’s route is Classroom, scoped on its own page to “teachers with a Google Workspace for Education account.” Three conditions govern importing quiz grades — the quiz “must be the only attachment on the assignment”, “Students are limited to one response and must be in the same domain as the teacher”, and “The form must collect student email addresses” — with a trap right after: “If you attach a form as a link in Classroom, you can’t import student grades.” The import is all or nothing and “overrides any current grades for the assignment”.

Microsoft’s route is Teams Assignments, tighter because the quiz is the assignment rather than an import into one: “Students can take quizzes—and you can grade them—without leaving Teams.” In the grading view, “Forms will already have calculated points, but you can edit the score to award partial or extra credit”, then post scores to return the work.

The fair summary: Google marks more of the paper, Microsoft moves the marked paper further without a separate import. Google never uses the word “gradebook” on either page.

The one quiz ceiling Microsoft publishes

Google publishes no quiz-specific limits at all. Microsoft’s limits table names one that is purely about quizzes: above 50,000 responses on a form, “Manual grading/commenting/posting scores for quizzes” is listed among features “not currently supported”. For a class of thirty that is irrelevant; for a public certification test it decides the question. The same table publishes up to 200 questions per quiz.

What we could not verify

• Whether a Microsoft Text question is marked automatically. The accessibility page documents adding correct answers to it; the Teams page describes short answer as scored by hand. The two do not reconcile on published pages.
• Case sensitivity of a short-answer key. Google says the answer must match exactly and never says whether case counts. Neither does Microsoft, for its Text answers.
• Whether Google’s correct/incorrect feedback reaches grid questions. The API restricts the pair to multiple choice and enumerates that as Checkbox, Radio and Dropdown; neither API page mentions the grid types the help centre calls answer-key-capable.
• Whether “Later, after manual review” requires collecting email addresses. Google names email collection as a precondition for grading individual responses and emailing results — adjacent claims, not that one.
• A maximum points value per question. Neither vendor publishes one.
• Whether a Forms quiz score fills the Teams Grades tab. Microsoft documents grading and posting a score inside the assignment, and the Grades tab generally, but never joins the two.
• Microsoft answer explanations without Copilot. The Show answer explanations setting is described as one where “Copilot automatically generates the explanations”; whether it exists without a Copilot licence is not stated.
• Microsoft quiz mode on a personal account. Every Microsoft quiz page we read is written around school or work accounts.

Which one to pick

Google Forms if the quiz is mostly objective and should mark itself: six auto-marked types against Microsoft’s documented two, grids included, a video explanation on an answer, one switch that holds every grade back, and no tenant, licence or school account required.

Microsoft Forms if a person must read the answers anyway, or the quiz is maths. Review answers, per-option messages, bulk feedback, the Math keyboard, Practice mode and Take a Test are documented, and Google publishes no equivalent for any of them.

If your quiz lives in Google Forms and you work from a phone

Google publishes no Google Forms app for iPhone or iPad, so the Google route on a phone is the Forms website in a mobile browser. Forms+ is a native iPhone and iPad client that signs in to your own Google account and edits the real forms already in your Drive, through the official Google Forms API. Its form settings carry the same Make this a quiz switch, with an Advanced quiz settings screen behind it. Two of its quiz tools are PRO: Gradebook & Scoreboard and Quiz Timer & Proctoring. The second of those needs a caveat, because the name promises more than the build delivers: its countdown, its app-switch tracking and its front-camera checks all run inside the app's own branded fill screen, and that screen is opened from a single Preview branded form… row in the editor's Share & Brand menu which the current build switches off. The filter that hides the row matches its translated title against an English list, so the row is still drawn on a device set to one of the app's 21 other languages; on an English-language device it is not drawn, and the settings screen behind Quiz Timer & Proctoring saves to that device with nothing left to read it. Gradebook & Scoreboard is unaffected — it reads the responses already on your form. Forms+ is a Google Forms client only — it does not open or edit Microsoft Forms quizzes.

Frequently asked questions

Which question types does Microsoft Forms mark automatically?

Microsoft states it for one family only. The Teams assignments page says Forms automatically calculates points earned for multiple-choice questions, and tells teachers to review short-answer and essay responses and add points themselves. Correct answers can also be attached to a Text question, but no Microsoft page we read says one is scored automatically. Google names six auto-marked types on one page.

Can Google Forms mark a paragraph answer?

No. Google lists six question types that can take an answer key and Paragraph is not among them. The same page adds that you can assign points and add feedback on all question types, so a paragraph can carry a model answer and a point value you award by hand — but Google will never score it.

Can I show different feedback for a right answer and a wrong one?

In Google Forms, only through the API. The help centre describes a single Add answer feedback control, while the API stores whenRight and whenWrong separately, restricting both to multiple choice questions with correct answers provided. Microsoft does not split by correctness: it lets you write one message per answer option, shown to whoever picks it.

How do I stop respondents seeing their score immediately?

In Google Forms, set Release grades to Later, after manual review. Microsoft takes two settings: clear Show results automatically so the quiz does not mark itself in front of the respondent, then use Post scores on the Responses tab when you are ready to release.

Do Google Forms or Microsoft Forms quiz scores reach a gradebook?

Only through each vendor’s classroom product, under stated conditions. Google Classroom can import Forms quiz grades if the quiz is the only attachment, students are limited to one response and in the same domain as the teacher, and the form collects student email addresses; attaching the form as a link breaks the import. Microsoft Teams for Education takes the quiz as the assignment itself, so it is graded and posted inside Teams with no import step. Both need an education account.