Review Summary
Review SummaryNot recommended for professional use
Fantastical is more of a personal/family calendar app. But even for personal use, we'd probably skip on Fantastical as there are more modern calendar apps that we'd recommend checking out first, like Morgen Calendar, Routine, and Amie.
For professionals or teams looking for a better calendar, check out Motion (Our Top Pick 🌟), Sunsama, or Akiflow. These tools are much more powerful calendars and will help you manage your time, meetings, tasks and, workload
Best Calendar Apps
Best Calendar AppsFantastical Alternatives
Fantastical AlternativesNot sure if Fantastical is the right fit for you? Check out these alternatives:
Superhuman MailRecommendedBest calendar for those already using Superhuman Mail
Best calendar for those already using Superhuman Mail
SunsamaBest pen and paper alternative
Best pen and paper alternative
MotionRecommendedBest AI calendar that schedules tasks around meetings
Best AI calendar that schedules tasks around meetings
What is Fantastical?
What is Fantastical?Fantastical is a calendar app for MacOS and iOS users that has been around since 2012 (Android users, skip this review and check out Vimcal, Morgen, Sunsama, Akiflow or our favorite: Motion instead).
The main reason people love Fantastical is that it is a better Apple Calendar, with more thoughtful features that make the calendar app experience, well, better.
For example, Fantastical allows you to add events in natural language, so you can easily type in "Dentist appointment May 29 at 2 p.m." and it will create the event. This makes adding events to your calendar much faster and more enjoyable. Fantastical also has thoughtful features like the fact that you can see the day weather, right within the calendar app so you can plan accordingly ☔⛅️.
A few years ago, the new Fantastical added the ability to add tasks to your calendar with a to-do app integrated, like Apple Reminders, or Todoist. That said, tasks in Fantastical are super barebones.
Who is Fantastical For?
Who is Fantastical For?Personal, Not Business
Personal, Not BusinessThink of Fantastical as more of a prosumer app —think of a busy family managing multiple calendars rather than a business calendar app.
If you're considering Fantastical for business, know that there are SO many awesome calendar apps out there today that are so much more powerful for managing your time, appointments, meetings, tasks and even projects. Take Motion, for example. It is a calendar at the core, but you can manage projects and tasks within your calendar, and using its AI scheduler it will even automatically schedule tasks for when they need to get done. Motion is what we use here at Efficient App, and we couldn't imagine using something as basic as Fantastical for the day-to-day.
Key Features
Key FeaturesWe found the onboarding experience on Fantastical to be one of the most old-school and kludgy experiences compared to the newer calendar apps on the market. It felt like traveling back in time a decade or so if we're being totally honest 😅
Once you're inside the app, the interface very much looks, well—like a slightly better version of Apple Calendar. It's not the most modern calendar app.
Speaking of Fantastical vs Apple Calendar, some features that Fantastical offers that Apple Calendar doesn't, includes: natural language input, task and event templates, calendar sets, time zones, task management, and meeting proposal features.
So yeah, even though it's a bit more old school that other calendar apps, it is much better than just using the basic Apple Calendar.
Natural Language
Natural LanguageFantastical's natural language input worked perfectly when it came to events. Simply type in your event name, the day and time, and it schedules it on your calendar 👌
When it comes to using natural language for tasks, the experience is a bit more kludgy. First of all, natural language doesn't work if you are just adding a task to your general Fantastical "My Tasks". If you add a task to Fantastical directly, it will just put it on your calendar at the top of the day as an all day reminder, not at a specific time, even if you tell it to schedule it on your calendar at a specific time.
Fantastical natural language doesn't work for tasks added to Fantastical (without third-party task software).
To get the most out of Fantastical tasks, you need to integrate either Apple Reminders or Todoist (or any other third party task manager apps they integrate with).
Then, go to your settings and set the task list from your third-party app as the default task list, and only then will natural language work with your tasks. To get the most out of this feature, Fantastical basically decided that you must use a third party tool for tasks, while with other calendars on the market, you don't need a task management software AND a calendar.
Fantastical natural language works only if you connect Apple Reminders, Todoist, or something similar.
This experience had a lot more friction than what we'd like. For personal tasks, using something like Apple Reminders is fine, but for professional use this is far too basic.
Event & Task Templates
Event & Task TemplatesYou can create task or calendar templates, which is quite cool if you typically have a certain event format that you generally use (e.g. you invite your spouse to a large number of your events). Using a template auto-invites them, which is saves time. We love this feature!
Calendar Sets
Calendar SetsFantastical allows you to categorize calendar activities, such as "professional events" and "personal events," and switch between views. This is a feature many users love, as it helps reduce visual clutter on your screen.
Calendar sets more so come in handy if you often have calendar events you're invited to that you don't need to actually attend (like your children's calendar 😬). Again, this is more of a personal-use case category rather than professional.
Views
ViewsLike with most calendar apps, you have various calendar views to choose from: daily view, week view, month view, and even a quarterly and yearly view.
Openings & Meeting Proposal
Openings & Meeting ProposalOpenings in the new Fantastical is similar to any meeting scheduler feature that allows others to request a time on your calendar based on your available time slots.
Meeting proposals allow you to send over calendar invites with multiple proposed times rather than just one.
How Fantastical Compares
How Fantastical ComparesFantastical has been a great Apple Calendar alternative for Apple users for a long time, but in the recent years there are just too many incredibly beautiful calendar apps that are giving them a run for their money.
As one Reddit user stated "All features that once made Fantastical unique and recommendable have been commoditized.
Pricing
Pricing- No free tier
- $4.75 per month billed annually (for individuals or teams)
- $6.99 per month billed monthly
Final Verdict
Final VerdictFantastical is not worth it if you are a professional trying to use it for business or team work.
If you're a professional, skip Fantastical and check out Motion first as it's the most powerful calendar with a full task and project management tool—you don't need a calendar and a task tool separately. It also uses AI to schedule tasks on your calendar automatically, so it's much more like having an assistant rather than you needing to manually move and schedule tasks daily, which gets tedious fast. Motion is the calendar and task tool what we use here at Efficient App.
Or our secondary recommendations for professionals that are already using a project management tool like Asana or Monday would be Sunsama and Akiflow as they have have a ton of integrations with third party tools.
For personal use, is Fantastical worth it? It's a tough one because there are so many modern calendar apps on the market with incredible UI/UX, and many of them have a free tier. While it's a good household calendar app and is better than Apple Calendar, we'd recommend reading about the best calendar apps first before committing to Fantastical.
Categories
CategoriesFantastical fits into multiple categories based on what it actually helps you do. Each category highlights a different strength and the efficiency points it earned, helping you compare tools not just by features, but by how well they actually perform.
Keep exploring the best software across categories, or explore Fantastical alternatives
