Scheduling

Cal.com vs Calendly

Cal.com, Calendly side by side: price, free tier, who each one fits and when to skip it.

Item	Cal.com	Calendly
What it does	Scheduling with booking pages, calendar sync, payments and an embed or API to put booking inside your own app.	Booking links that check your calendar and let people pick a time, with an embed for your site.
Best for	A SaaS for clinics, coaches or consultants that needs booking built into the product, under its own brand, through the API or embed.	A founder selling a B2B SaaS who wants a demo booking link on the landing page in five minutes.
Skip it if	You just want a link for sales calls and won't touch code: Calendly is quicker to set up and more familiar to your leads.	Booking is part of what your product sells to customers: there's no self-hosting and the free plan allows only one event type.
Setup	No code. 15 minutes for a booking link; a few days if you build booking into your app through the API.	No code. About 5 minutes for a working booking link.
Price	Teams at $12/user/month on yearly billing, with a 14-day trial.	Standard from $10/seat/month on yearly billing.
What it costs in practice	A solo founder with a booking link and paid sessions: $0/month, plus Stripe fees per payment. A 3-person sales team on Teams: 3 × $12 = $36/month on yearly billing ($432/year). Rough estimate.	Two founders selling demos with reminders and a paid onboarding session: 2 seats × $10 = $20/month on yearly billing ($240/year), plus Stripe or PayPal fees. Monthly billing costs more. Rough estimate.
Free plan	Free forever for 1 user, with unlimited event types and calendars.	Free forever with 1 event type and 1 connected calendar.
Free tier	1 user, unlimited event types	1 event type, 1 calendar
First paid plan	$12/user/month (yearly)	$10/seat/month (yearly)
Self-host or embed	Embed and API; self-hosting only via enterprise sales	Embed only; no self-hosting
Open source	No: no	No: no
Before you build	Cal.com moved its code to a private repository in April 2026. The open fork, Cal.diy, is meant for personal, non-production use and drops Teams, Workflows and Routing Forms. Running Cal.com on your own servers for a business now goes through enterprise sales, not a free download. The free plan shows Cal.com branding; removing it is listed under Teams at $12 per user/month on yearly billing.	The free plan allows only 1 event type and 1 connected calendar; a free intro call plus a paid session already needs Standard. Collecting payment and automatic meeting reminders aren't on the free plan; they start on Standard. PayPal payments require a PayPal Business account, and Calendly doesn't calculate or collect taxes for you. Every host who connects a calendar needs a paid seat, so the bill grows with each salesperson.
Price checked	Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing	Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing

Prices are read from each official pricing page on the date shown and can change. Always confirm before signing up.

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