Calendly, Cal.com and TidyCal all give you a link people click to book a call with you. The differences show up in what the free plan allows, whether you can take payment, how reminders work and what happens when you add a second coach. We checked each tool's official pricing pages in October 2026 so you can pick the right one for how you actually sell.
Choose Cal.com if you want the most generous free plan, with payments and email and SMS notifications included. Choose TidyCal if you are a solo coach who wants paid sessions and packages for very little money. Choose Calendly if you need routing forms, round robin and the widest set of integrations, and are happy to pay for them.
Who this is for: Coaches and consultants choosing a scheduling tool for discovery calls, paid sessions or a small team.
If you only remember one thing, make it this. Choose Cal.com if you want the strongest free plan: unlimited event types, Stripe and PayPal payments and email and SMS notifications for one person, at no cost. Choose TidyCal if you are a solo coach who sells paid sessions or packages and wants to spend as little as possible. Choose Calendly if you run a sales team, need routing forms that send each lead to the right person, or want the integration everyone else already supports.
All three do the basic job well. A lead clicks your link, sees your free times, picks one and gets a calendar invite. The real choice is about the extras: questions before the call, payment for paid sessions, reminders that stop no-shows and what happens when a second coach joins.
One honest note before we start. Each of these companies publishes comparison pages about the others. We have only used each vendor's own pages for its own prices and features, and we have kept to what those pages say.
A quick picture of each. Calendly is the best known of the three, so many leads have used it before and trust the page. Cal.com is a newer rival that gives away far more on its free plan and makes its money from teams. TidyCal is a low-cost tool from the AppSumo family, built for solo service businesses that want paid bookings and packages without a monthly bill.
Prices below are from each tool's official pricing page at the time of writing (October 2026). Calendly and Cal.com show their prices per seat on yearly billing; monthly billing costs a little more. TidyCal's lifetime plans are sold through AppSumo, as its own pricing page says.
| Feature | Calendly | Cal.com | TidyCal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 1 event type, 1 calendar | 1 user, unlimited event types and calendars | Unlimited booking types, 1 calendar |
| Paid price from | $10 a seat a month (Standard, yearly) | $12 a user a month (Teams, yearly) | $29 one time (Individual Lifetime) or $12 a month (Pro) |
| Booking questions | Invitee questions on all plans; lead screening on Teams | Editable booking questions | Custom intake questions on all plans |
| Reminders | Automated reminders from Standard; text reminders through Workflows | Email and SMS notifications on Free; customisable on Teams | Custom emails from Individual; SMS on Agency (10 a month) and Pro (unlimited), US and Canada |
| Paid calls | Stripe and PayPal from Standard | Stripe and PayPal on Free | Stripe and PayPal on all plans; 1% platform fee below Pro |
| Routing forms | Teams ($16 a seat a month, yearly) | Teams | Not listed |
| Round robin | Teams | Teams | Agency Lifetime and Pro |
| Integrations | HubSpot, Mailchimp and Zapier from Standard | 100+ apps on Free | Basic calendars on Free; Zoom, Teams and Zapier from Individual |
| Remove branding | Paid plans | Teams | Pro |
The short version: Calendly's free plan is the tightest, Cal.com's is the widest, and TidyCal's paid plans are the cheapest over a year or two. Calendly's Enterprise plan starts at $15,000 a year, but no small coaching business needs it.
Booking questions. All three let you ask questions on the booking form, such as what the person wants help with or what they have tried so far. TidyCal's help centre says custom intake questions work on every plan, including Free, and suggests keeping it to three to five. Calendly's help centre lists invitee questions on all plans, though screening leads with a form and sending them to different calendars is a Teams feature. Cal.com lets you change booking questions too. If you sell high-ticket coaching, two or three honest questions save you from calls with people who cannot afford you.
Reminders. This is where coaches lose the most money. Calendly's free plan has no automated reminders; you need Standard or above, and text reminders run through its Workflows feature. Cal.com includes email and SMS notifications on Free, with customisable ones on Teams. TidyCal's free plan has no custom emails or SMS; Individual adds custom emails, and SMS reminders (US and Canada) start on the Agency plan. Our guide on how to cut no-shows with automated reminders covers what to send and when.
Paid calls. If you charge for a strategy session or sell a block of sessions, payment at booking matters. Cal.com and TidyCal both take Stripe and PayPal on their free plans. TidyCal adds a 1% platform fee on Stripe payments until you move to Pro, on top of Stripe's own fees. TidyCal also handles package and recurring bookings on every plan, which suits coaches who sell six sessions at once. Calendly takes Stripe and PayPal from Standard.
Teams. Once you have a second coach or a setter, you need round robin (bookings shared out across people) and routing forms (different answers lead to different calendars). Calendly puts both on Teams at $16 a seat a month on yearly billing. Cal.com puts both on its Teams plan at $12 a user a month on yearly billing. TidyCal offers round robin, collective meetings and a team page on Agency Lifetime and Pro, but its pricing page does not list routing forms.
Integrations. Calendly is the one almost every CRM, email tool and course platform connects to first. Its Standard plan connects HubSpot, Mailchimp and Zapier, and Teams adds Marketo and Pardot. Cal.com's free plan says it integrates with 100+ apps and includes two-way Salesforce and HubSpot sync. TidyCal's free plan covers Google, Office 365 and Apple calendars only; Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Zapier come with the paid plans.
Branding. If you want your booking page to look like yours and not like the tool's, check this before you pick. Calendly removes its branding on paid plans, Cal.com on Teams, and TidyCal fully on Pro (its lifetime plans show a smaller logo).
Solo coach, free. Pick Cal.com. You get unlimited event types, notifications and payments without paying anything, so you can run a free discovery call and a paid session from day one. Calendly Free only gives you one event type, which is fine for a single discovery call and nothing more.
Coach taking paid sessions. Pick TidyCal or Cal.com. TidyCal's package and recurring bookings fit someone selling blocks of sessions, and the $29 one-time Individual plan adds custom emails and Zoom links. If you do a lot of paid bookings, Pro at $99 a year removes the 1% platform fee, which pays for itself quickly.
Small team with round robin. Pick Calendly Teams or Cal.com Teams. Calendly is the safer choice if your CRM and ads tools already connect to it. Cal.com costs less per person and includes routing forms on the same plan. For a team of three on yearly billing, that is $48 a month on Calendly Teams against $36 on Cal.com Teams. TidyCal Agency Lifetime is the budget route if you only need round robin and not routing.
High-ticket coach with a qualifying form. Pick Calendly Teams or Cal.com Teams for routing forms, so serious applicants go to your sales calendar and everyone else goes to a free resource. Pair it with a proper call structure; our guide to running a discovery call that closes shows what to do once they turn up.
We see this often. A coach switches tools, expecting more calls, and nothing changes. The booking tool only works once someone has already decided to talk to you. It cannot bring them to the page, and it cannot chase the ones who look at your times and leave.
Three things around the link matter more than the tool itself. First, how fast you reply when a lead comes in; our piece on speed to lead explains why the first minutes count. Second, reminders before the call, so booked people actually show up. Third, follow-up for people who do not book or do not buy, which is what an automated lead follow-up system handles.
So if you are happy with your current tool, do not switch just to switch. Moving from Calendly Free to Cal.com Free for the reminders is a sensible step. Moving between paid plans to save a few dollars a month rarely changes your results.
A simple test before you blame the tool: look at last month's numbers. How many people visited your booking page, how many booked, and how many turned up? If lots visit and few book, the problem is the page or the offer. If lots book and few show, it is reminders. If few visit at all, it is the marketing that sends people there. Our free funnel leak calculator shows which of those steps costs you the most.
Setting up any of these three takes an afternoon. Connect your calendar, create a discovery call and a paid session, add two or three questions, turn on reminders and put the link on your site. That is enough for most coaches starting out.
Keep it simple. Two event types are plenty at the start: a free 20 to 30 minute discovery call and a paid session. Set a buffer of 10 to 15 minutes between calls, limit how many calls a day people can book, and add a minimum notice so nobody books you an hour from now. Send a reminder the day before and another an hour before. Then check your show rate each month and change one thing at a time.
Where it gets harder is joining the booking tool to everything else: the lead form, the CRM, the reminder texts, the follow-up emails for people who did not book and the report that shows which posts bring in calls. If your calendar is empty even though people are visiting, or your show rate is poor, a done-for-you studio fits better than another tool. That is the work we do at Unbury. We start with a free audit to find where bookings are leaking, then build and run the fix with you.
Yes. Cal.com's pricing page lists a free plan for one user with unlimited event types and calendars, email and SMS notifications, 100+ app integrations and Stripe and PayPal payments. Team features such as round robin, routing forms and removing Cal.com branding are on the paid Teams plan.
For most solo coaches it is Cal.com, because its free plan includes payments and notifications that Calendly Free does not. TidyCal is the other strong free option, especially if you sell packages, though it charges a 1% platform fee on Stripe payments until you upgrade to Pro.
Yes, with all three. Cal.com and TidyCal accept Stripe and PayPal on their free plans, and Calendly does from its Standard plan. The payment providers charge their own processing fees on top.
Cal.com includes SMS notifications on its free plan. TidyCal includes 10 SMS reminders a month on Agency Lifetime and unlimited on Pro, for US and Canada numbers. Calendly sends text reminders through Workflows on its paid plans.
Switch if you are on Calendly Free and need more event types, payments or reminders without paying. If you are already on a paid Calendly plan that works and connects to your other tools, switching rarely changes how many calls you book. Cal.com also offers a one-click import of Calendly events.
Send us your setup and we will tell you honestly where it is leaking customers and what to fix first. Free, no pitch.