Cal.com vs Calendly vs Acuity Scheduling: Best Appointment Scheduling Software for a Small Business
“Just book a time on my calendar” has become the default expectation for anything from a sales call to a haircut, and doing it manually — emailing back and forth over availability — is the kind of small friction that costs a business real bookings. Cal.com, Calendly, and Acuity Scheduling all solve the same core problem (a public booking page synced to your calendar) but come from different angles: Cal.com is the open-source, self-hostable option; Calendly is the category-defining SaaS tool most people already recognize; Acuity is built specifically for service businesses that take payments and manage class/appointment types, not just meetings.
Quick take
- Want a free-forever single-user tool with no feature gate, or want the option to self-host later: Cal.com
- Want the most widely recognized tool with the deepest calendar/CRM integrations and don’t mind paying per seat: Calendly
- Run a service business (salon, coaching, consulting) that needs payments, packages, and intake forms built in: Acuity Scheduling
The three options
Cal.com is open-source and free forever for a single user with no artificial feature cap — unlimited event types, calendar connections, and 100+ app integrations, all on the free tier. Paid tiers exist for teams: Teams at $12/user/month (annual billing) adds round-robin booking and team scheduling, and Organizations at $28/user/month adds SAML SSO and compliance certifications (SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001) for larger companies. Cal.com also publishes a self-hosted version on GitHub for teams that want to run it on their own infrastructure and avoid per-seat fees entirely — the same self-hosted-vs-cloud trade-off as Vikunja versus Trello, server/admin time instead of a subscription.
Calendly is the tool most people have already used to book a meeting, and its pricing reflects that market position: Free (1 event type, 1 calendar), Standard at $10/seat/month (annual billing, unlimited event types, HubSpot/Mailchimp integrations), Teams at $16/seat/month (Salesforce integration, round-robin meetings, SSO), and Enterprise starting at $15,000/year for large organizations needing audit logs and domain-level controls. Calendly’s strength is polish and integration depth — it plugs into more CRM and marketing tools out of the box than Cal.com or Acuity — but there’s no self-hosted option and no tier as generous as Cal.com’s free plan once you need more than one event type.
Acuity Scheduling (owned by Squarespace) is built specifically for appointment-based service businesses rather than generic meeting booking, and it has no free tier at all — Starter at $16/month (1 calendar, email reminders, custom forms), Standard at $27/month (up to 6 calendars, text reminders, memberships and gift certificates), and Premium at $49/month (up to 36 calendars, HIPAA-compliant option, custom API/CSS, hidden branding), all shown as annual-billing prices. The features that set Acuity apart — memberships, packages, gift certificates, and built-in payment collection — are exactly what a salon, studio, or consulting practice needs and what Cal.com/Calendly don’t really target.
Cost compared (2026)
| Cal.com | Calendly | Acuity Scheduling | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Free forever, single user, unlimited event types | 1 event type, 1 calendar | None |
| Entry paid cost | Teams: $12/user/month | Standard: $10/seat/month | Starter: $16/month |
| Mid tier | Organizations: $28/user/month (SSO, compliance) | Teams: $16/seat/month (Salesforce, SSO) | Standard: $27/month (6 calendars, payments) |
| Self-host option | Yes, free (open source) | No | No |
| Built for | General meeting booking, dev-friendly | General meeting booking, CRM-integrated | Service-business appointments, payments, packages |
For a solo consultant or freelancer, Cal.com’s free tier is the hardest to beat — genuinely unlimited event types with no seat cost. For a small team that lives in Salesforce or HubSpot, Calendly’s integration depth often justifies the $10-16/seat/month. For a business selling appointment slots directly (a studio, salon, or clinic), Acuity’s built-in payments and packages are worth its higher $16+/month floor since neither competitor replicates that feature set. Figures above are all annual-billing rates as published by each vendor — monthly billing runs higher on all three.
Which one should you actually pick?
- Solo user or small team, budget-conscious, don’t need CRM integrations: Cal.com’s free tier, or Teams at $12/user/month once you need round-robin booking.
- Team already using Salesforce/HubSpot for sales, want the most integrations: Calendly, budget $10-16/seat/month.
- Service business selling appointments/classes with payments and packages: Acuity Scheduling, starting at $16/month.
- Want to avoid per-seat SaaS fees long-term and already self-host other tools: Cal.com self-hosted — see Hetzner vs DigitalOcean vs Vultr for where to run it.
- Booked appointments need to turn into invoices automatically: pair whichever tool you pick with Invoice Ninja, Wave, or QuickBooks Simple Start, or automate the handoff with n8n, Zapier, or Make.
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Bottom line
Cal.com wins on pure value — a genuinely free single-user tier and a self-hosted path for teams that want to avoid subscriptions entirely. Calendly remains the safest choice if calendar/CRM integration depth matters more than price, at $10-16/seat/month. Acuity Scheduling is the only one of the three actually built for service businesses that take payments and sell packages, and it’s worth its no-free-tier $16+/month floor for that use case specifically.