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19th Apr, 2024
Looking to save some money on calendar apps? Look no further, we've shortlisted the best calendar apps with good free pricing plans allowing you to get started organizing yourself for no cost. Enjoy our recommendations.
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The best calendar apps are ones that help us manage our time.
But who doesn't like something that is free. These calendar apps are all free and go beyond the norm of the basics like Google Calendar, Outlook & Apple Cal. Some of these even have abilities for planning ahead, saving time with AI abilities.
Let's get you a free calendar application to start saving money & saving meetings.
Let's make sure we know the criteria to review all of the recommended free calendar apps below and narrow the options down a little further for you.
Here are the elements we look out for with good free calendar apps:
Good Free Calendar Apps | Bad Free Calendar Apps |
---|---|
Reliable and easy to use | Unstable and patchy experience |
Offers a range of calendar accounts | Specific use cases |
Has limits but doesn't ruin core use | Locks everything under premium |
There are tons of calendar applications popping up now that cost money, but what about all these free apps some of us already know and use? Here are more free calendar apps.
Here are our top recommendations for you for freemium calendar apps:
These are our most recommended free calendar apps to consider in 2024:
Morgen Calendar is a really good free calendar app because it comes on a range of devices. A lot of people like the fact that it's available on all desktop and iOS Android devices, which is good news. It is probably one of the best around because it provides a wide variety of calendar sets.
For example, you can import the likes of Google Calendar, Exchange, Outlook, Office 365, Apple Calendar, and more. It also has a specific calendar set like DAVCal (we had to Google this), which is very unique on the market. Most importantly, it does offer a free experience for managing your tasks and your calendar, but there are some limitations naturally that do require an upgrade. For example, you are only allowed to import one calendar, but this is the case for probably the majority of calendar applications that we do mention in this that are free, and that's one of the natural limitations.
It does also provide some good task management, which means you can start to utilize time booking as part of the free plan, which is really something a lot of people take full advantage of.
There are many other abilities inside of Morgen, like the fact that you can create a booking link to share with people externally, which is really helpful. For a lot of people, this replaces paying for applications like Calendly, which cost quite a lot per month to be able to maintain. And whilst you will have limited access to some of the booking links, this is definitely better and more concise to bring it all under one roof.
So, if you want Morgen to be able to utilize your tasks and calendar in one location for an all-around experience. We typically recommend Morgen for those who are looking for a less focused experience in terms of doing a certain type of thing, and more of an all-around generalized experience.
This is just for the sake that Morgen provides a house of calendar and management that is simple to use without any complex features. Although, if you did want to upgrade to some of the more advanced features past the free plan, then there are some abilities with artificial intelligence and systems and processes that a lot of people are taking advantage of to re-organize our schedules for the day ahead.
Fantastical is one of the best looking of this list and offers a solid, all-round layout that many people will know how to use from day one. We typically recommend Fantastical 3 to those who are looking for a reliable, Apple-device focused calendar app.
The free plan on Fantastical 3 is decent offering as many calendar accounts as you like, as many tasks as you like, 3-day weather report (which for some people is enough). For some people, it will be a shame not to use features like scheduling that allow you to organize meetings with others, but typically these are chargeable services in tools like Calendly.
For all intensive purposes, Fantastical is the perfect free calendar for iOS, macOS users. We'd recommend having a look at this if you're Apple-centric with your devices.
A calendar app that combines tasks, email & calendar in one
Amie is one of the most interesting calendar apps more recently launched.
Amie presents itself as a task, calendar and email app in one. For free access it works very well and offers the calendar features with Google Calendar from day one and up to 3 integrations as total. They also offer free to-do list as part of this.
Amie Calendar is a decent option, the free access is good for those getting started and the task consolidation expands for those who want to go deeper. If you're someone that needs a superb free mobile calendar app, Amie is one of the best on the market.
Notion Calendar, formerly called Cron Calendar, is now available to everyone and can be used on mobile and desktop to organize your calendar.
More recently, Notion has redesigned it to become a lot closer and work better with the likes of Notion, including pages for faster access (works great for meetings), connecting to databases, and a general team experience for managing all of those tasks that have dates. For many people, this is a really nice all-around experience because it comes on a wide variety of devices, and if you're already using Notion, this is a huge bonus because it integrates seamlessly and connects really closely to it.
Notion Calendar works beautifully if you have a Notion account and actively use Notion databases to organize some of your work.
However, if you're looking at it from the perspective of a non-Notion user, then it is going to be good for you, but it won't be fully optimized and work to the best of its abilities unless you already use, or want to use Notion in the future. It's sort of like using an Xbox and not playing the best Xbox games that are key for the platform, as a fitting metaphor that we'd like to include.
The desktop edition you see above, don't get too excited about it because as a free calendar app you can only get the iOS app for free with unlimited use.
To be honest, the iOS app from Vimcal is a really well built mobile edition, on par with the likes of Notion Calendar. With the free iOS Vimcal app you do get access to the likes of drag drop to move events and meetings around, dark mode, multi-zone conversions and the ability to merge duplicated events, so the basics, but enough to get you going.
One of the things to note is that whilst for now the iOS app from Vimcal is free to use, this might change in the future, we will try and keep you most up-to-date with our Vimcal review but at the same time, it is fair game for subscription apps to do this.
To be honest, if you're considering Vimcal, you're going to have to focus primarily on iOS, as that is the only way you're going to access it for free. For many people, this is a limitation they're not willing to accept, especially with the likelihood of the platform changing its pricing and plans, which could disrupt how you've set things up and how you organize your calendar.
Therefore, I would recommend looking at Vimcal if you are interested in AI features and are more serious about the desktop version. While it offers a free account on mobile, it's important to note that it may not remain free forever. That's just something we want to mention.
Reclaim is an AI scheduling application that we checked out a few weeks ago, and to be honest, we were really impressed with how it works. It primarily functions as a pre-experience for use with Google Calendar.
While there are limitations, the limitations per feature aren't significantly restrictive if you're a solo user. For example, if you want to use Reclaim, you can utilize it in a variety of different ways. Most importantly, it's designed to help you set priorities and tasks and then be able to time block them into your calendar. This is ideal and probably better than some of the other experiences on this list because it re-organizes them based on the prioritization that you've set and some of the systems or events in your calendar that are already blocked out in time.
This is great because you can assign time for those tasks that need to be done and mark them as busy so that people don't book time with you, allowing you to go into deep focus states.
A lot of people are looking at applications like Reclaim as ways to enhance what they're already doing. It also offers, as part of the free plan, a way to add up to three habits. These three habits essentially allow you to add activities like lunch, meditation, and gym.
These habits are ones that you want to set as a routine system that you do maybe every single day or every single week, whatever you have set, and Reclaim will smartly re-organize them to be much better suited to your system.
Reclaim works with Google Calendar, so for many people, this is an instant switch-on and is accessible for free. Honestly, the limit won't really be hit if you're struggling to manage time and priorities and want to start time blocking.
This application is actually a great starting point. We've produced a pretty extensive deep dive over on our YouTube channel, which you can check out for an insight into whether the features match up best to your preferences in terms of saving time and keeping costs much lower.
Zoom Calendar combines your meetings provider with a free mail and calendar client in the free plan allowing you a way to plug in your calendar account provider and start getting your calendar events and meetings in one location.
The free plan is good allowing you to get started and rolling, but there's that awareness that Zoom are trying to keep you within their platform, a little like Google Workspace. Overall the calendar works great and there are no real limitations to the free calendar access meaning you can add what you need including the basics like Calendar.
If you do meetings reguarly with Zoom and open to adding your calendar this is a great option because meetings with open up faster within Zoom Calendar too.
Unless you're a team, Rise Calendar is a solid free calendar app for Mac users.
Offering up features that focus on your productivity, Rise offers a decent way to get adding your events, organizing your meetings and protecting your time with features in settings like FocusGuard designed to lock in time for you and block out time to focus. There's no iOS app yet, but the macOS app is one of the best free experiences.
This is one of the better free calendar apps if you're on macOS and you want to take more control of your calendar organization - eg. not overwhelming yourself and burning out.
Mainly used as the base for your calendar, Google Calendar is one of the best calendar apps and can be found on mobile. The iOS and Android apps are free and work very well for managing events, meetings and being able to plot things out.
One of the best mobile features is the schedule mode that gives a glamorous look to your calendar experience which makes it perfect for managing on the go. Google Workspace access allows for better time insights to how you spend your time and some more abilities when it comes to booking meetings and even where you are located for the day, perfect for hybrid workers, but largely this is a great, basic experience with free calendar access.
Yes, if you want simple, basic and easy to use calendar management.
Now we have covered the best free calendar application for calendar management and organisation, let's break down which calendars are best for different categories or uses.
Google Calendar will probably always be the best all-around free calendar app for general use and calendar management. It's easy to understand and get around, it also provides all the basics you will need to manage events.
Both Notion Calendar and Vimcal are great free calendar apps that can be used on the go, offering really solid mobile experiences. Therefore, they're both worth considering when looking for the best free mobile calendar app.
If any options are great on Mac, then it has to go to Rise Calendar. The design quality is fantastic, and although some of these other ones work well on Mac, I'd say this is probably one of the best free Mac calendar apps on the market right now, and I think it's coming to iOS too.
Finally, if you're looking for the best totally free calendar application on the market, it probably goes to the likes of Notion Calendar. There are no upgrades, no pricing plans, and Notion has not indicated any plans to introduce them in the future. So, for now, and at least for the near future, Notion Calendar is probably the best free calendar application with no upgrades needed.
So, if you wanted to go premium on a calendar application how much would that set you back? This ranges from the likes of $3 per month to $15 per month.
The pricing depends on the quality of the calendar provider. What do you get? Free calendar apps can only take you so far, premium experiences tend to give you some of the following features that many people like to have:
We'd recommend upgrading only if you use your calendar enough to warrant it.
With apps like Hey Calendar coming soon, many people are changing the way they think about calendar apps in 2024.
Used by over 100,000 teams worldwide — Try it now for free / No credit card needed
Run all your work on one platform with customizable products that scale with your needs.
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