Free Calendly alternatives

What Calendly’s free plan leaves out

Calendly Free gives you a single event type and a single connected calendar, and it only books one-on-one meetings. Reminders, payments and extra meeting types start on Standard, which is $10 per seat monthly on annual billing, or $12 paid month to month. My Calendly pricing guide covers every plan. These five tools go further for free, or come with something you may already pay for.

1. Cal.com

Cal.com (affiliate link) works the most like Calendly, and its plan for one person is free forever with no usage limits. It includes:

• unlimited event types and connected calendars
• email and SMS notifications
• Stripe and PayPal payments for paid bookings
• two-way Salesforce and HubSpot sync, plus 100+ app integrations
• a one-click import of your Calendly events

The Teams plan adds shared availability, round robin, routing forms and no Cal.com branding. It’s $12 per user monthly on an annual plan, or $16 paid month to month, after a 14-day free trial.

2. Google Calendar appointment schedules

If you already use Google Calendar, a booking page is built in. A personal Google Account can create one appointment schedule with its own booking page, which you share as a link or embed on your website. Anyone with the link can book; they don’t need a Google account.

The free version is basic: one booking page, no automatic reminder emails, and no checking your other calendars for conflicts. Those come with Google One Premium or a Google AI plan, and payments and email verification need an eligible Google Workspace plan. You also have to set it up on a computer, not in the phone app. My guide to making a booking page in Google Calendar walks through every setting.

3. Zoho Bookings

Zoho Bookings has a forever-free plan for one user. It covers online meetings, notification emails and reminders, and two-way sync with Zoho, Google and Microsoft 365 or Outlook.com calendars. Paid plans start at $6 a user a month billed yearly, or $8 monthly.

4. HubSpot meeting scheduler

HubSpot’s meeting scheduler is free with a HubSpot account, and no credit card is needed. It connects to a Google or Office 365 calendar, gives you a booking link to share or embed, and shows each visitor your open times in their own time zone. It’s part of HubSpot’s CRM, so it suits people who already use HubSpot for sales, and it’s more setup than you need if you don’t.

5. Microsoft Bookings

If your business pays for Microsoft 365, you may already have Microsoft Bookings at no extra cost. It comes with Business Basic, Business Standard and Business Premium, among other business and school plans, and it works inside Outlook and Teams. You get a personal booking page for your own meetings, shared booking pages for a team, and email and text notifications. Microsoft’s list of plans that include it doesn’t have Microsoft 365 Personal or Family.

Which one to pick

• You want Calendly without the free-plan limits: Cal.com.
• You live in Google Calendar and need one booking page: Google Calendar appointment schedules.
• Your company runs on Microsoft 365: Microsoft Bookings.
• You run sales in HubSpot: HubSpot’s meeting scheduler.
• You want a simple free plan with email reminders: Zoho Bookings.

Cal.com vs. Calendly

For one person on a free plan, Cal.com allows unlimited event types and calendars and takes payments, while Calendly Free stops at one of each and takes no payments. For a team, Cal.com Teams comes to $12 per user each month on yearly billing, against $16 per seat for Calendly Teams. Calendly’s paid plans have extras of their own, so list the features you actually use before switching.

Is there an open-source Calendly?

Yes. Cal.com’s open-source community edition, called Cal.diy, is MIT-licensed and free to run on your own server. Cal.com recommends it for personal, non-production use, and it leaves out Teams, Organizations, Workflows and the other paid features. Running it means looking after a server and a database yourself, so most people are better off on the hosted free plan.