Cal.com vs Google Calendar

Cal has changed the meaning and expectations when it comes to the standalone scheduler app category as it's the most flexible, and modern scheduling software on the market.

While Calendly was the leader in the meeting scheduling space for the past decade, over the past few years Cal has given them a run for their money, and in our opinion, has overtaken them.

Cal is by far the best overall meeting scheduler for individuals, SMBs, startups, sales & customer support teams, and even enterprises because they are incredibly flexible. Schedule meetings & appointments (checking multiple team members calendars), set up recurring appointments, take payments with scheduling, and create custom workflows.

Where meeting schedulers have become more of a feature of a product, like that of Motion, amongst others in the best calendar apps space, Cal has doubled down on that fact by not only making their tool open source core, but by also giving a robust API, allowing you to use their scheduling infrastructure for your own product. This makes it ideal for our more technical friends, enterprises, educational institutions, or even doctors offices.

That said, if you only need a basic meeting scheduler for 1:1 meetings, Cal is likely more than you need. Many of the best daily planner apps, project management tools, and even the best email clients now have a scheduler built in, so it's worth trying what you already pay for before adding another tool.

Unlike other schedulers, Cal has something called weighted round robin scheduling, which lets you distribute meetings based on actual team availability instead of splitting them evenly.

For example, if one sales rep works fewer days than others, you can assign them a lower weight so they receive fewer bookings. You can also create more complex setups, like ensuring one sales rep is always on a call (customer support) while rotating different engineers into each meeting.

Cal is also awesome if you need routing forms. E.g. if your business offers multiple services like bathroom, kitchen, or outdoor remodeling. Based on what a customer selects via a form, they can be routed to the right specialist automatically.

Cal is also open source, which means everything is transparent, and if you want, you can even run it on your own servers. That gives you full control over your data, instead of being locked into a tool you can’t change. This is more relevant to enterprises or companies concerned with security though.

• Free: Best for individuals who need simple scheduling with no usage limits.
• Teams: $12/mo per user (billed yearly). Best for small teams and startups that need collaborative scheduling features.
• Organizations: $28/mo per user (billed yearly). Best for larger teams that need more control, security, and advanced routing.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing. Includes dedicated support, SLAs, advanced integrations, and enterprise-grade infrastructure.

Google Calendar is the official calendar app that comes with your Google account (along with Google Workspace and Gmail). You can schedule events, set task reminders, and share your calendar with others, all the stuff you'd expect from a calendar.

For most people, Google Calendar is more than enough. But the truth of the matter is, it’s built for the masses, which means the interface is cluttered and it's less thoughtfully designed than newer purpose built calendar apps. It has looked the same for the past 6+ years, but it's because they are building the web app, Android app, and iOS app for billions of users. With that, they can't be that innovative without upsetting tons of their users. Move one button and the whole world is up in arms.

Its biggest strength is being the universal backbone of some of the best calendar apps and best daily planner apps on the market.

• Works on desktop, iOS, and Android
• Deep integration with Gmail and Google Workspace
• Allows multiple calendars in one place
• Serves as the backbone for most third-party calendar apps
• Excellent mobile app experience

• UI feels built for the masses (can feel cluttered)

Many calendar apps on this list rely on Google Calendar as a foundation for syncing, permissions, and event management. If you upgrade to another calendar app later, you'll still be using Google Calendar underneath.

While Google Calendar is a great foundation, it's not the nicest-looking calendar app out there.

Google Calendar is the most feature-rich calendar you can get, and they've done a great job of integrating natively with Gmail, Google Meet, and Google Workspace. So that means it's easy to create events directly from emails, gaining it some productivity points. You can also attach Meet links automatically and share calendars across teams, essentially locking you into their ecosystem.

Google Calendar’s mobile app is one of the best free calendars. It almost seems like they put more care and effort into the mobile app because the UI is very clean and responsive compared to desktop or web.

• Free: For those who have created a Google account
• Included in Google Workspace plans (Business Starter, Standard, Plus, Enterprise — pricing varies by tier)