In this paper, conventional modal wavefront reconstruction is compared with compressed wavefront sensing to reconstruct freeform surface profiles using the Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor. The modal wavefront reconstruction represents the phase or the wavefront in the Zernike domain. The compressed wavefront sensing method based on the sparse Zernike representation (SPARZER) represents the phase slopes in the Zernike domain. The effectiveness of compressed wavefront sensing in freeform surface profile measurements is investigated.