Google Forms has a file upload question type: add it to a form, share the link, responses land in a folder in your Google Drive. For collecting files inside a Google Workspace org it's genuinely fine. The pain starts when the people uploading are outside your org - clients, parents, applicants, event guests - and it comes from limits that aren't obvious until someone hits them.
The limits, with their actual numbers
Sign-in is mandatory. The moment a form contains a file upload question, respondents must be signed in to a Google account - Google enforces this on every such form, and there is no setting to turn it off. For external audiences this is the dealbreaker limit: whoever doesn't have (or won't use) a Google account is locked out at the door.
10 files per question, maximum. A file upload question accepts 1, 5, or 10 files per response - 10 is the hard ceiling. Fifteen event photos or a full onboarding document set means multiple submissions and duplicate rows in your response sheet.
Per-file size is configurable, but starts small. The default cap is 10 MB per file; you can raise it (the setting goes up to 10 GB). If a respondent's video "won't attach", the form owner almost always just hasn't raised this.
The whole form has a storage budget - 1 GB by default. All responses share one cap. It's raisable in settings (up to 1 TB), but when it fills, the form silently stops accepting uploads until you notice. This is the limit that quietly kills photo and video collection mid-run.
Everything lands in YOUR Drive quota. Uploaded files count against the form owner's Google Drive storage. A free account's 15 GB - shared with Gmail and Photos - absorbs a class worth of video projects poorly.
No resume, no real upload UI. A dropped connection restarts the upload from zero; there's no drag-and-drop, no per-file progress, no thumbnails. It's a survey widget carrying files, and it feels like one.
Quick self-check before fighting these limits: is a form what you actually need? If you're asking real survey questions and files ride along - Forms is the right tool, raise the caps and move on. If the files ARE the point and the "form" is just a place to put the upload button, everything below the sign-in wall is friction you chose voluntarily.
When Forms is the right call anyway
- Everyone uploading is inside your Google Workspace org (sign-in is free, and admins keep everything in Drive).
- You genuinely need structured answers - names, choices, consent checkboxes - with a file or two attached.
- The files are small and few: forms + 10 MB PDFs coexist happily.
Alternatives for when files are the point
A dedicated upload link. Create a page at getfiles.app, share the link, done - no account needed on either side, drag-and-drop with per-file progress, chunked resumable uploads for big files, everything downloadable as one ZIP. If you're collecting a specific document set, a checklist on the page ("Passport", "Contract", "Photo") shows each person what's expected and shows you what's still missing. Numbers, for symmetry with the list above: up to 500 files per page, 200 MB per file, pages live 7 days by default and are extendable. Teachers collecting student work get the same win doubled - the students without Google accounts stop being a special case (more on the education setup in our guide to receiving student files).
Cloud-storage file requests. Dropbox File Requests and OneDrive's equivalent skip the sign-in wall too and drop files straight into your cloud folder. The trade-offs move elsewhere: uploads consume your storage quota, and features like deadlines sit behind paid plans - see our Dropbox File Request comparison for the details.
The bottom line
Google Forms is a survey tool that happens to accept files, and inside a Google org that's a perfectly good deal. Outside it, the mandatory sign-in plus the 1 GB default budget make it a poor file collector - not because the tool is bad, but because file collection is not what it's for. Match the tool to which half of "form with files" you actually need.