The Herschel survey of the Galactic plane (Hi-GAL) provides a unique opportunity to study star formation over large areas of the sky and different environments in the Milky Way. We use the best-studied Hi-GAL fields to date, two 2{deg}x2{deg} tiles centered on (l,b)=(30{deg}, 0{deg}) and (l,b)=(59{deg},0{deg}), to study the star formation activity in these regions of the sky using a large sample of well-selected young stellar objects (YSOs). We used the science demonstration phase Hi-GAL fields, where a tremendous effort has been made to identify the newly formed stars and to derive their properties as accurately as possible, e.g. distance, bolometric luminosity, envelope mass, and stage of evolution. We estimated the star formation rate (SFR) for these fields using the number of candidate YSOs and their average time scale to reach the zero age main sequence, and compared it with the rate estimated using their integrated luminosity at 70um, combined with an extragalactic star formation indicator.