Cal.com has long been the answer to "what's a free Calendly alternative?" Its free plan is genuinely generous: unlimited event types and calendars, payments, and two-way CRM sync for one user. If you want the most scheduling features for zero dollars, it's hard to beat.
Two things have changed in 2026 that most comparison pages haven't caught up with, and there's one problem neither Cal.com nor Calendly really solves.
The short answer
- Choose Cal.com if you want a free plan with lots of features, payments, routing on a budget, or deep developer tooling.
- Choose Held if your problem isn't booking but people not showing up, and you want to see which meetings are at risk and who actually joined.
- Use both if you like Cal.com's booking pages. Held reads your calendar, so it tracks Cal.com bookings like any other meeting.
What changed at Cal.com in 2026
It's no longer open source. On April 14, 2026, Cal.com moved to a closed-source license. The public repository now redirects to Cal.diy, an MIT-licensed fork with Teams, Organizations, Insights and Workflows removed, which the README recommends only for personal, non-production use. If you picked Cal.com because you could self-host it, check what you're actually running before your next upgrade.
Pricing settled into four tiers. From cal.com/pricing in October 2026:
| Plan | Cal.com (billed yearly) | Held |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 1 user, unlimited event types and calendars, payments, HubSpot and Salesforce sync | Your own held.page link, risk flags and Zoom attendance for one calendar |
| Entry paid | Teams: $12/user/mo, adds round robin, routing, branding removal | Pro: $5/mo or $48/yr, removes the Held footer and adds Zoom rooms and follow-up drafts |
| Mid | Organizations: $28/user/mo, SSO, sub-teams, compliance | Not offered |
| Enterprise | Custom | Not offered |
| Short vanity name | Company subdomain on Organizations | $29/yr for a one-word held.page name |
Cal.com's monthly (non-annual) prices aren't shown on its own pricing page, so I've left them out rather than guess.
How each one handles no-shows
| Cal.com | Held | |
|---|---|---|
| Reminders | Default email reminder on Free; custom email, SMS and WhatsApp workflows on Teams (Cal.com docs) | Booking confirmation, an optional day-before "still good?" email with one-click confirm, and flags on unaccepted invites |
| Knowing who showed up | Manual "mark as no-show"; automatic only on Cal Video (webhooks) | Checks Zoom attendance after the meeting and marks it held or no-show |
| Risk before the meeting | Not offered | Flags long lead times, unaccepted invites and companies that missed before |
| After a no-show | Workflow trigger when you mark a no-show, including an AI voice call with credits | Drafts the follow-up from your notes on the last meeting |
| Meetings booked elsewhere | Only Cal.com bookings | Every external meeting on your calendar |
Cal.com can do a lot once a no-show is marked. Held's focus is earlier: knowing which meetings are shaky before they start, and knowing for certain whether they happened.
Where Cal.com is clearly better
- Free features. Unlimited event types, payments and CRM sync on the free plan is unusually generous.
- Teams on a budget. Round robin and routing forms from $12 a user.
- Conferencing choice. Over 20 video integrations, including its own Cal Video.
- Developer tools. An API, embeds and components for building scheduling into your own product.
- Compliance. HIPAA on Teams and SOC 2, ISO and SAML on Organizations.
Where Held is better
- Attendance you can trust. Held reads Zoom's records to see who joined, so your show rate isn't based on what someone remembered to click.
- Warning before it happens. A weekly view of which meetings are at risk, so you confirm the right ones.
- One simple link. held.page/yourname, with direct links to a single time like held.page/ash/oct6-4pm that you can paste in an email.
- Follow-ups that remember the last call. With Granola connected, drafts reference what you actually discussed.
- Less to configure. Held is deliberately small. There are no workflows to build.
The bottom line
If you want the most scheduling features for free and you're comfortable configuring them, Cal.com is a great choice, as long as you know it's no longer open source. If you already have a way to get meetings booked and your real problem is the ones that don't happen, Held is built for exactly that. And since Held reads your calendar, you can try it alongside Cal.com without changing how anyone books you. Claim your link to start.