Survey logic — show, hide, and skip

Survey logic lets a question or a page react to what a respondent has already answered. There are two kinds, and they share the same rule builder:

• Element Logic shows or hides a single question.
• Page Logic decides whether a respondent lands on a page at all.

Together these are what people usually mean by “branching”.

Survey logic is available on the Solo plan and above.

Check Yes/No rules built before 10 September 2026

A defect in the rule builder meant conditions on a Yes/No question could be saved without a value. Rules in that state behave as though every respondent answered the same way, regardless of what they actually chose.

The builder was fixed on 10 September 2026, so new rules are unaffected — but existing rules were not migrated, and nothing stops a survey containing one from being published.

What to do: open any Yes/No logic rule created before that date. If the value shows “Select…” rather than Yes or No, that rule is affected — choose the correct value and save.

This affects display logic, Page Logic, thank-you routing, quota cells, and choice-scoped display logic. Skip Logic is not affected, because it uses a different per-choice control.

Building a rule

1. Open your survey and go to Design.
2. Select the question or page you want to control, and open its settings panel on the right.
3. For a single question, find the Element Logic section. For a whole page, find Page Logic instead.
4. Add a rule. Each rule has three parts:
   • Source — what the rule checks: a previous question’s answer, an embedded data variable passed in the survey URL, or a calculated field.
   • Operator — how it is checked. Operators are grouped by what they apply to: answered / not answered for any question; selected, not selected, is any of, is all of, is none of for choice questions; equals, contains, starts with, ends with, matches a pattern for text; greater than, less than, between for numbers; before and after for dates.
   • Value — what the source is compared against.
5. If you need more than one condition, add further rules and group them with AND (every condition must be true) or OR (any one is enough). Groups can be nested for more complex logic.
6. Save, then use the logic simulator to click through different answer paths before publishing. This is the fastest way to catch a rule that is not doing what you intended.
7. Publish. Logic only takes effect for real respondents — the editing preview deliberately shows every question regardless of logic, so you can keep working on hidden ones.

Example

A post-support survey asks, as Question 2, “How would you rate your support experience?” on a 1–5 scale. Question 3, “What could we have done better?”, should appear only when Question 2 is 3 or lower — there is no reason to ask a 5-star respondent what went wrong.

Open Question 3’s settings, find Element Logic, and add a rule with source = Question 2, operator = less than or equal, value = 3. Respondents who rate 4 or 5 skip straight past Question 3.

Troubleshooting

The question I hid still shows while I’m editing. That is expected. The editing preview shows all questions regardless of logic so you can keep working on them. Use the logic simulator, or open a real test link, to see what a respondent sees.

A rule on a multi-select question doesn’t match how I expect. “Equals” checks for an exact match and behaves unpredictably against a question where someone can pick several answers. Use is any of, is all of, or is none of instead.

Logic silently stopped working after I edited the survey. Rules reference a specific question, embedded data variable, or calculated field. Deleting or replacing the thing a rule points at breaks that rule without a visible warning, so re-check logic after removing or restructuring questions.

I built an AND group but a response matches when it shouldn’t. Check whether the group is set to AND or OR. An OR group needs only one condition to pass, which is a common cause of “the logic fired too early”.

A Yes/No rule behaves the same for everyone. See the note at the top of this page — rules built before 10 September 2026 may have been saved without a value.

I can’t find Element Logic or Page Logic. Survey logic is not included on the Free plan.