Calendly vs Acuity: which scheduler should you pay for?

Calendly and Acuity, side by side

Each cell links to the vendor's own page it comes from. The last column is PeachCalendar, limited to features it has today.

The verdict

Pick Calendly if you book meetings with leads or colleagues, want a free starting point, or need round-robin and CRM routing as a team. Pick Acuity if your clients book a paid service, answer an intake form first, or buy packages and memberships, and you want one price for the whole business. Consider PeachCalendar if you want to pay once: PeachCalendar costs $30 once and gives you a Google Calendar booking page with unlimited event types, but it takes no payments, sends no reminders and asks no intake questions.

What Calendly costs

Prices from Calendly's public pricing page, in USD, checked on October 10, 2026. Taxes excluded. Vendors change prices; follow the source links to see today's.

What Acuity costs

Prices from Acuity's public pricing page, in USD, checked on October 10, 2026. Taxes excluded. Vendors change prices; follow the source links to see today's.

The math over 1, 3 and 5 years

Calendly Standard is $10 per seat per month billed yearly ($120 a year) or $12 monthly, and one person is one seat. Acuity Starter is $16 a month billed yearly ($192 a year) or $20 monthly for one calendar. These are the cheapest plans with payments and reminders, which a free plan lacks. PeachCalendar is $30 once, about three months of Calendly Standard, but it does not replace payments or reminders.

Yearly-billing prices where offered (each vendor's cheapest rate), assuming today's prices never go up. PeachCalendar is a single $30 payment.

Different pricing logic

Calendly bills per seat. Standard is $10 per seat per month billed yearly, or $12 billed monthly. Teams is $16 per seat per month billed yearly, or $20 monthly. The page says seats are needed for people who connect calendars and host meetings; the people who book do not need one. So a solo consultant pays for one seat, and a five-person team pays five times that.

Acuity bills per account and scales with calendars. Starter has 1 calendar at $16 a month billed yearly or $20 monthly. Standard has up to 6 calendars at $27 yearly-billed or $34 monthly. Premium has up to 36 calendars at $49 yearly-billed or $61 monthly. The page also offers a 7-day free trial on any plan and lists no free plan. For a studio with four practitioners, one Standard account may cost less than four Calendly seats; for one person, Calendly Standard is the cheaper of the two paid starting points.

What you get on the first paid plan

Calendly's free plan keeps you to one event type and one connected calendar. Standard lifts that to unlimited event types and up to six calendars, and adds automations and reminders, Stripe and PayPal payments, and HubSpot and Mailchimp connections. Forms that screen invitees and route leads, plus round-robin, sit on Teams.

Acuity puts the client-business tools on its cheapest plan: payments and deposits through Stripe, Square, PayPal or Venmo, email reminders, and custom client forms. The step to Standard adds text message reminders, packages with payment plans, subscriptions, memberships, gift certificates and a waitlist. Acuity's page links a note on where text reminders are available, so check that for your country.

Team features versus client-business features

The two tools split on who the product is for. Calendly's higher tier is about teams: round-robin distribution, centrally managed event types, routing by HubSpot or Salesforce assignment on its feature table, and SSO as an add-on. Enterprise starts at $15k a year with at least 50 seats, per the page.

Acuity's higher tiers are about running a service business: more calendars for staff and locations, a waitlist, memberships, an AI Booking Assistant and a signed BAA for HIPAA on Premium. Premium also removes the Powered by line and opens a custom API and CSS. If you see yourself in that list, you are Acuity's customer. If you see round-robin and Salesforce, you are Calendly's.

Where a one-time purchase fits

Some people pay for Calendly Standard or Acuity Starter only to have several meeting types on a clean link. For that narrow job, a one-time tool can cost less than three months of Calendly Standard. PeachCalendar gives you unlimited event types of 15 to 120 minutes, weekly availability, date exceptions, the invitee's time zone, a Google Meet link, confirmation emails and embeds on your site.

It does not do what makes Acuity worth its price: payments, intake forms, reminders and packages. So the honest split is by job. Client business with money and forms: Acuity. Team or lead routing: Calendly. A solo person on Google Calendar who needs a booking link and nothing else: PeachCalendar, or Calendly Free if one event type is enough.

FAQ