How we picked (and what we actually verified)

Baseline: we ran Cal.com end-to-end on a free account (booking link in 31 seconds, unlimited event types, two visitor bookings, built-in Cal Video, cancel flow). Each alternative below is scored against what its free plan verifiably includes on its last capture date — prices captured from vendor pages, screenshots dated per row. No tool on this page gets a hands-on badge unless we say so.

Update 2026-10-01: we re-captured every row. One table changed materially: TidyCal’s free plan is no longer the capped “Lite” tier we described in September — the vendor now sells a genuinely unlimited free tier plus a restructured paid ladder. Details and screenshots below.

Update 2026-10-14: Setmore and ZenCal were re-captured on 10-13, and Setmore again on 10-14, with zero price drift on every row — Free stays capped at 4 users, Pro is still $5/user/mo on annual billing and $12/user/mo on monthly. One thing we will not quote: Setmore’s billing toggle carries a screen-reader summary line that names a team tier (“team $9 per month” on monthly, “team $5” on annual), yet the page renders only two cards — Start Free and Get Pro. Until Setmore publishes a Team card with its own price, we treat that line as unverified and leave it out of the table.

Update 2026-10-15: ZenCal no longer lists a free plan. Its pricing page — captured twice today from two independent network paths (headless Chrome, then a plain curl text-layer fetch) — now shows only Zencal Pro ($23.33/mo billed annually = $280 per specialist per year) and Enterprise. The free tier we captured on 09-02, 09-29 and 10-13 (“$0 forever: 1 agent, 1 schedule, 50 bookings per schedule”) appears nowhere on the page any more, and the site’s sign-up calls to action now read “Try for free” / “14 days free”, which is a trial and not a permanent plan. We have no evidence that a legacy free account was revoked — but there is also no way to start one from the page as it renders today, so the row below is corrected rather than quietly deleted. Everything else in the table was re-checked today with zero drift.

Update 2026-10-19 (correction to the 10-15 note): the “free tier gone” finding above was a wrong-domain capture. The 10-15 fetch hit zencal.io — a Polish company (Zencal 80) that builds business-billing software, priced at $280 per specialist per year — not zencal.co, the open-source, MCP-native agent-booking tool this row is about. Re-capturing zencal.co/pricing today from two independent paths (headless Chrome, then a curl text-layer fetch) shows the free tier still listed: Free $0 (1 registered agent, 1 schedule per user, 50 bookings per schedule, REST API

  • MCP server), Solo Agent $7/mo, and Team marked “Coming Q3 2026”; every plan’s button currently reads “Join the waitlist”, so nothing is live-signup-able yet — but the structure our 09-02, 09-29 and 10-13 captures documented has not changed. The table row below is corrected back to that structure, with this capture attached.
Tool Free plan Cheapest paid How we checked
Cal.com Unlimited event types & calendars, 1 user, Email+SMS, Cal Video, Stripe/PayPal $12/user/mo yearly (Teams) Page captured 09-29, re-checked 10-13 (zero drift vs 08-31, 09-02 and 09-29) + hands-on test log
Calendly 1 event type, 1 calendar connection, 1:1 only $10/seat/mo billed yearly (Standard) Page captured 09-30 (yearly state; $10 matches 09-02). Monthly toggle would not load from our network 09-30/10-01 — the $12 monthly figure from our 09-02 dual-toggle capture stays dated 09-02, not re-verified since
TidyCal $0 forever: unlimited bookings, unlimited booking types, paid bookings via Stripe/PayPal (1% platform fee), recurring & package bookings, date polls, 1 calendar connection Individual Lifetime $29 one-time (AppSumo; struck-through $144) Page + pricing FAQ captured 09-30 — material change from 09-02
Setmore Free $0: unlimited appointments, up to 4 users, Setmore branding stays Pro $5/user/mo annual ($12/user/mo shown for monthly billing) Page captured 09-29, re-checked 10-13 and 10-14 (zero drift; both prices on-page — the billing toggle’s summary line names a ‘team’ tier, but no Team card renders, so we quote no Team price)
ZenCal Free $0 (1 registered agent, 1 schedule per user, 50 bookings/schedule, REST API + MCP, agent-to-agent booking) — re-confirmed on the correct domain zencal.co on 10-19; the 10-15 “free tier gone” reading came from zencal.io, a different company Solo Agent $7/mo (waitlist signups; soft cap ~100 schedules/mo per account); Team “Coming Q3 2026” Page captured 09-02, 09-29, 10-13 (zero drift), 10-15 (wrong domain), re-captured 10-19 on zencal.co: free tier still listed — same result from two independent fetches

Quick takes

Calendly is the incumbent-default: if your customers expect a calendly.com link and you only ever book one meeting type, free genuinely works. The moment you need a second event type or payments, you’re at $10/seat/mo billed yearly (Standard, re-verified 09-30; Teams is $16/seat/mo yearly on the same capture). Monthly billing is higher — our 09-02 dual-toggle capture showed $12/seat/mo — but the monthly view would not load for us since, so treat that as a dated figure. Full math in Cal.com vs Calendly.

TidyCal (the Acquired.com scheduling product) is the row that moved. As of our 2026-09-30 capture, its FAQ states verbatim: “The Free plan is $0 forever and includes unlimited bookings, unlimited booking types, paid bookings through Stripe and PayPal, recurring and package bookings, date polls, your own booking page and one-click translation. It connects 1 calendar. Payments taken on this plan carry a 1% platform fee, on top of Stripe’s own processing fees.” That replaces the capped ~10-event “Lite” free tier we documented on Sep 2. The paid ladder was restructured too: Individual Lifetime $29 one-time (AppSumo, shown against a struck-through $144), Agency Lifetime $79 one-time (vs $240), and a Pro subscription at $12/mo or $99/yr ($8.25/mo annualized) which removes the 1% platform fee, adds a custom domain and unlimited calendar connections. So the honest comparison now: TidyCal free matches Cal.com free on booking-type volume, and beats it on price simplicity if you buy lifetime — Cal.com still wins on 1 calendar connection vs unlimited, built-in video, and no per-payment platform fee. Good pick for solopreneurs who hate subscriptions; still no workflow/teams story to Cal.com’s.

Setmore is the old workhorse with the friendliest paid upgrade we found: $5/user/mo on annual billing with unlimited users on Pro — if a team of six needs branding removal and SMS reminders, nobody else in this table is that cheap (the same page shows $12/user/mo for monthly; re-checked 10-13 and 10-14, zero drift on both prices and on the 4-user free cap). Free is narrower than Cal.com’s in two verifiable ways (09-29 capture): it caps you at 4 users, and Setmore branding stays on the booking page. No built-in video equivalent.

ZenCal remains the interesting new-lane pick: open-source, MCP-native, aimed at AI agents booking meetings — the free tier exposes a REST API + MCP server and agent-to-agent booking at $0 (1 registered agent, 1 schedule, 50 bookings per schedule; re-confirmed on zencal.co/pricing on 2026-10-19). One honest caveat: every plan’s button currently reads “Join the waitlist” and Team is marked “Coming Q3 2026”, so it is not live-signup-able at the moment — the $0 structure is what the page lists, not an account you can walk away with today. (Our 10-15 “free tier gone” note was a wrong-domain capture of zencal.io, a different company; corrected in the 10-19 update above.)

SavvyCal — design-favored, 3 calendar connections free — rounded out earlier versions of competitor lists; we could not re-capture their pricing page within our check window, so we’re listing it as “known player, numbers unverified” rather than quoting stale figures.

Verdict

  • Stay on Cal.com if unlimited calendar connections, built-in video, or fee-free payments in the free tier matter — TidyCal’s revamped free plan matches on unlimited booking types, but not on that combination.
  • Switch to TidyCal if you want unlimited booking types and hate subscriptions — $29 one-time (Lifetime, AppSumo) is the cheapest paid step in this table, or run its unlimited free tier and accept the 1% payment fee + single calendar connection. Full breakdown of the free-tier 1% fee, the AppSumo-only lifetime terms, and the two refund clocks: TidyCal pricing.
  • Switch to Setmore if you’re a small team (4 or fewer users fit its free cap) price-shopping Pro features — unlimited users at $5/user/mo annual changes the per-seat math vs $12.
  • Try Calendly free if one meeting type is truly your whole life and you want zero config.
  • Hold ZenCal on the watchlist, not the shortlist: the 10-19 zencal.co capture re-confirms the $0 free tier (1 agent / 1 schedule / 50 bookings + REST API + MCP) and a $7/mo Solo Agent plan, but every plan currently signs up via a “Join the waitlist” button, so treat it as not-yet-shippable today rather than as a ready free alternative.

Every row re-checked from the vendor’s own pricing page on 2026-10-19: Cal.com with zero drift (5th re-check: Teams $12 / Organizations $28 / “Save 25%” yearly badge; old $15/$23/$29 confirmed absent), TidyCal and Setmore with zero drift, Calendly with zero drift (yearly-billing state, $10 Standard / $16 Teams), ZenCal corrected back to its free-tier structure on the correct domain (zencal.co) after the 10-15 wrong-domain capture. Earlier captures: Cal.com/Setmore/ZenCal 2026-09-29 and 09-02, TidyCal 09-30, Calendly 09-30 (screenshots above, full-page text dumps in our test log). The Cal.com column is additionally grounded by our 2026-08-31 hands-on test log. SavvyCal is explicitly flagged as not re-verified in this pass. See testing methodology.

More of our Cal.com guides: