Scheduling and booking software · Comparison
Calendly vs Cal.com vs Acuity Scheduling: Cal.com 8.3, Calendly 6.9, Acuity 5.0; 3 hosts cost $27 to $48
We read the pricing, security, legal, help center and developer pages of three scheduling tools on the same day and scored them on the same six indicators. What 3 hosts cost, where routing, payments, SSO and HIPAA sit, and who should pick which.
On this page9 sections
On six indicators read from each vendor's public pages, Cal.com scores 8.3 out of 10, Calendly 6.9 and Acuity Scheduling 5.0. For our reference scenario, 3 hosts on the cheapest plan that spreads bookings across them, billed annually, Acuity Standard costs $27 a month for the account, Cal.com Teams $36 and Calendly Teams $48. Cal.com stands out for a free plan that takes payments, team routing at $12 per user and audits in its own name; Calendly for routing forms, CRM routing and integrations on Teams; Acuity for service businesses, with payments through four processors, packages and memberships, and a HIPAA BAA signed in the app on Premium.
Cal.com is in the Excellent band, Calendly in Good and Acuity in Fair. All three publish yearly and monthly prices and can be bought online. The scores measure what the public pages commit to, not how well each product works or how many invitees book, and we did not sign up for any of them.
At a glance
| Calendly | Cal.com | Acuity Scheduling | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | Round robin, routing forms and CRM routing for sales and recruiting teams | A free plan that takes payments, and team routing from $12 per user | Client booking with payments, packages and memberships for service businesses |
| Billing unit | Per seat | Per user | Per account, by number of calendars |
| Free option | Free plan (1 event type, 1 calendar); 14-day Teams Plus trial | Free plan for 1 user; 14-day trial of team plans | 7-day trial, no card |
| Reference scenario (3 hosts, annual) | $48 on Teams, computed | $36 on Teams, computed | $27 on Standard, computed |
| Routing forms | Teams | Teams | Not listed |
| Payments | Stripe and PayPal from Standard | Stripe and PayPal on every plan | Stripe, Square, PayPal and Venmo on every plan |
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 | Both | Both | Not stated |
| HIPAA BAA | Not offered | $300/mo below 15 Organizations users | Premium, signed in the app |
| SAML SSO | Teams add-on (price not published) or Enterprise | Organizations | Not listed |
| Score (public pages) | 6.9 Good | 8.3 Excellent | 5.0 Fair |
What the public pages show
Calendly sells per seat. The Free plan allows one event type and one calendar. Standard ($10 per seat billed yearly) adds unlimited event types, collective meetings, reminders, Stripe and PayPal payments, webhooks and branding removal. Teams ($16) adds round robin, routing forms, admin-managed event types and Salesforce and Marketo, with SAML SSO as an add-on whose price is not published. Enterprise starts at $15,000 a year for 50 seats.
Cal.com sells per user. Its free plan for one user includes unlimited event types and calendars, Stripe and PayPal payments and CRM sync. Teams ($12 per user billed yearly) adds round robin, collective and managed event types, routing forms, Insights and 750 messaging credits per member a month. Organizations ($28) adds SAML SSO, SCIM, roles and audit logs, and the HIPAA page prices a BAA.
Acuity Scheduling, part of Squarespace, sells per account with a calendar allowance: 1 calendar on Starter ($16 a month billed annually), up to 6 on Standard ($27) and up to 36 on Premium ($55). Payments, intake forms and email reminders are on every plan; text reminders, packages, memberships and gift certificates on Standard; the HIPAA BAA, API and logo removal on Premium.
Strengths and things to know
Calendly. Strengths: routing forms, round robin and Salesforce and Marketo on one plan; integrations from Standard; its own SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001; 24/7 chat support from Standard. Things to know: it says it is not designed for HIPAA; the SSO add-on has no published price and SCIM and the audit log are on Enterprise; round robin starts on Teams; and the terms say fees are non-refundable, with renewals that may include a CPI plus 3% increase.
Cal.com. Strengths: a free plan that takes payments; round robin and routing forms at $12 per user; its own SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001; a HIPAA BAA with a published price. Things to know: SSO and audit logs start on Organizations; text messages are billed by credits beyond the monthly allowance; EU hosting is for Enterprise customers with at least 50 users; and its pages place HIPAA and EU hosting on different plans.
Acuity Scheduling. Strengths: one account price for up to 6 staff calendars; four payment processors on every plan; packages, memberships and gift certificates; a HIPAA BAA signed in the app; text messages at no charge to you. Things to know: no collective meetings, routing forms, SSO or EU hosting are listed; the API and logo removal are on Premium; the pages we read name no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 report; and the trial cannot send emails or texts.
Pricing reality
Reference scenario: 3 hosts on the cheapest plan that spreads bookings across them (round robin or pooled availability), billed annually, at US list prices before tax, without SMS or payment processor fees.
| Service | Plan | Monthly cost | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Acuity Scheduling | Standard | $27 | Account price for up to 6 calendars; Starter has 1 calendar, and pooling needs two or more |
| Cal.com | Teams | $36 | Computed: 3 × $12; the free plan is for one user |
| Calendly | Teams | $48 | Computed: 3 × $16; Standard ($10) has no round robin |
Month to month, the same setup costs $34 on Acuity, $48 on Cal.com and $60 on Calendly (computed). The gap changes with team size: Acuity's Standard price stays at $27 up to 6 calendars, while per-user prices grow with each host, so at 6 hosts Cal.com Teams comes to $72 and Calendly Teams to $96 a month billed yearly (our arithmetic). Above 6 calendars Acuity needs Premium at $55.
The plan you need for security features moves the number further: SSO on Cal.com means Organizations ($84 a month for 3 users billed yearly, computed), and on Calendly an add-on with no published price or Enterprise from $15,000 a year. Text messages are counted differently too: Acuity says texts are free to you, Calendly includes text reminders from Standard, and Cal.com bills them in credits beyond 750 per member a month on Teams.
How we scored them
Every product in this category is scored on the same six indicators, read from the vendor's own pricing, security, legal, help center and developer pages, with fixed formulas. The overall score is the plain mean. Our methodology page explains how these scores work.
| Indicator | Calendly | Cal.com | Acuity Scheduling |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing clarity | 8 | 7 | 9 |
| Free plan and trial | 5 | 9 | 2 |
| Price for 3 hosts | 6.1 | 7.1 | 8 |
| Booking features | 10 | 10 | 5.2 |
| Compliance and data residency | 5.5 | 8.6 | 2.5 |
| Admin, API and data export | 6.5 | 8 | 3.4 |
| Overall | 6.9 | 8.3 | 5.0 |
Pricing clarity loses a point for each price a page leaves out or each pair of pages that disagree: two for Calendly, three for Cal.com, one for Acuity. Cal.com's lead comes from its free plan, its compliance file and its admin features. Acuity's lower score comes from what its pages do not list for teams (routing forms, collective meetings, SSO, audit reports), not from its price, which is the lowest of the three for this scenario.
Also in this category
Zoho Bookings scores 7.0: the lowest price for the scenario at $18 a month on Basic (computed), with Zoho's SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 audits and EU hosting chosen at sign-up, while payments, text messages and routing forms are on Premium. SavvyCal scores 4.4: team round robin and collective links, the API and webhooks on its $10 plan and a booking page where invitees overlay their own calendar, but no SSO, text reminders or certifications of its own.
Who should choose which
- Choose Cal.com if you want a free plan that takes payments, or round robin and routing forms at $12 per user with SOC 2 and ISO 27001 behind them. Look elsewhere if you need SSO or an audit log on the entry team plan, or EU hosting below Enterprise size.
- Choose Calendly if you route inbound leads or candidates to the right person and want Salesforce and Marketo on the same plan as round robin. Look elsewhere if you need a HIPAA BAA, EU hosting or SSO at a published price.
- Choose Acuity Scheduling if your clients book and pay for services and you want packages, memberships and one account price for up to 6 staff calendars. Look elsewhere if you need routing forms, collective meetings, SSO or SOC 2 reports.
Bottom line
From public pages alone, Cal.com leads at 8.3: the strongest free plan, team routing from $12 per user and audits in its own name. Calendly (6.9) suits sales and recruiting teams that want routing and CRM integrations on one plan, at $48 a month for 3 hosts. Acuity Scheduling (5.0) is the cheapest of the three for 3 hosts and the one built for client services, with payments, packages and a HIPAA BAA, but it lists none of the team and security features our indicators look for.
How we checked
We read the vendors' pricing pages and plan tables, security and compliance pages, legal terms and DPAs, help center articles and developer docs on Oct 16, 2026. Calendly's and Cal.com's month-to-month prices come from each pricing page's monthly view. Acuity's help center answered direct page loads with a bot check, so we read its articles through the help center's public Help Center API. We did not sign up, start a trial or call an API. Facts the pages did not state, such as the price of Calendly's SSO add-on, are left out rather than guessed. Every figure is on the vendors' pages as of that date or, where marked, computed from them.
