Morgen Calendar vs Notion Calendar

Morgen Calendar falls into two categories. First and foremost, it's a calendar with a much more beautiful interface than Google Calendar, Outlook, or Apple Mail. If you're considering Morgen as a calendar for personal use, you can't go wrong as it will give you a much more elevated experience. The second category Morgen toes the line with is being a daily planning tool. But when considering it as a daily planner tool, it's quite barebones compared to other daily planners on the market.

For example, if you're considering Morgen Calendar for personal use and basic task management and you don't have a ton of things to manage within the app, then it's worth giving a shot. But if you're considering it for professional use, we recommend checking out tools like Motion (which offers AI auto-scheduling of tasks, and is a full-blown project manager—also is what we use here at Efficient App), Akiflow, or Sunsama. Even thought Morgen has started to build more professional features, it doesn't compare to the other tools we mentioned in terms of powering up your workflow.

When evaluating Morgen, we thought the user experience was quite swift, the the desktop app is intuitive and there was a minimal learning curve. The app works precisely as you'd expect.

We're naming Morgen as the best daily planner for those who are unsure if daily planning is for them because it's perfect if you want to dabble into the world of daily planning, perhaps don't have a ton of tasks to manage, and just want to tinker rather than invest into a full-blown daily planner setup.

In general, we'd love to see Morgen become more differentiated with time, but for now, it's a relatively inexpensive calendar + barebones daily planner tool that will give you just enough features to keep you a bit more organized.  That said, heavy users might find themselves outgrowing the tool fairly quickly, and yearning for more robust features.

Morgen Calendar has a desktop app (available on Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android). You get all the functionality you'd expect from your normal calendar, but in a much more beautiful interface with a better user experience.

When it comes to daily planning, Morgen Calendar allows you to add super basic tasks (e.g. task name + deadline) and drag tasks onto your calendar. It will show you tasks that are upcoming or overdue, although it doesn't do anything to necessarily help you get more work done. Think of it as just being able to add static tasks onto your calendar. If you don't get them done, or if you want to categorize tasks with labels like you'd need for a bigger project, you can't do that in Morgen Calendar.

If you're already using a project management tool like Linear, ClickUp, or Notion, you can integrate your tasks with Morgen (heads up that integrations with Morgen Calendar are still very limited at this time, so check to see if your project management tool integrates before diving in!).

• On the paid tier, Morgen comes in at $15/mo (annual) or $30/mo (monthly).

Notion acquired a company called Cron and then re-named it Notion Calendar. We loved Cron and when the acquisition happened, we had some mixed emotions...

It was very much a 5 stages of grief situation, it was a great calendar, obviously built by people who obsess over UX, so it was hard to think that Notion was going to make a ton of changes. We actually ended up deleting it for well over a year.

But over a year later, we were pleased to see that Notion kept most of it the same. They did start to plug their own products within the calendar, adding in subtle pushes to integrate your calendar with Notion and Notion Mail, which we're not huge fans of. But that aside, the calendar itself is arguably the most thoughtfully designed calendar app on the market.

It's not really that the Notion Calendar does anything revolutionary, it's not going to suddenly make you more productive or help you manage your time. It just has… excellent design.

It’s fast. It’s minimal. It feels like someone was picky about the details. For most people, Google Calendar is more than enough. But if you're just looking for a free, user-friendly calendar to replace Google Calendar, it's an easy recommendation!

• The most thoughtfully designed calendar UI available
• Extremely fast and responsive
• Excellent keyboard shortcuts
• Smooth multi-timezone support
• Smart natural language event creation

• Constant subtle push toward Notion ecosystem
• No natural language event creation

Every interaction feels intentional. You could be dragging events, resizing blocks, or even switching views and still experience the same visually polished interface.

The design team definitely obsessed over micro-interactions. With most calendars prioritizing functionality, it's really refreshing to see one that also values design!

Something calendars don't always get right is the level of customization. Too much customization and it starts to feel overwhelming. Too little and it feels restrictive. Notion calendar found that Goldilocks zone, and it's easy to see with things like the multi-day view.

It's as easy as pressing a number on your keyboard (1–9), and it instantly customizes how many days you see, with one press.

You can horizontally scroll through time, which makes it feel like you’re navigating an ongoing timeline, so really it's the little things that change how the app feels.

Like every third-party calendar built on Google, it inherits API constraints.

For example:
If someone else owns an event, you often can’t directly modify it, even if they’ve granted permission.

Most calendar apps just stop there and say, "Not our problem."

But Notion Calendar dug deeper. They created a clever workaround that allows you to temporarily hide your own calendar and directly adjust the shared calendar instead. It’s not perfect, but it’s a thoughtful layer most competitors either didn't think to implement or just didn't feel like adding.

They’re pushing the API as far as it can go, and to us, that speaks volumes.

For power users, this is where the app really shines.

Press C to create an event.
Press T to jump back to today.
Use natural language like “8 weeks” and jump directly to that date.

It makes for a seriously straightforward, fast experience that helps you to just get it done.

• Free: Best for individuals & students wanting a clean, usable calendar.
• Paid: Best for Notion users who want to unlock advanced database features and team functionality.