Calendly and Cal.com are the two names that come up first when someone needs a booking link. Most comparisons online are out of date in at least one important way, so here's where both stand as of October 2026, with prices taken from each company's own pricing page.
The short answer
- Pick Calendly if your team lives in Salesforce or HubSpot, you want the biggest integration catalog, or you want the most familiar experience for the people booking you.
- Pick Cal.com if you want the strongest free plan, cheaper team seats, or developer tooling.
- Pick neither on its own if your main problem is people not showing up. Both treat a no-show as something you mark after the fact. More on that below.
Pricing in 2026
All prices are per user per month. Calendly from calendly.com/pricing, Cal.com from cal.com/pricing.
| Tier | Calendly (annual / monthly) | Cal.com (yearly) |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 1 event type, 1 calendar | Unlimited event types and calendars, payments, CRM sync |
| Individual paid | Standard $10 / $12 | Not needed for one user |
| Individual with AI | Standard Plus $18 / $24 | Not offered |
| Team | Teams $16 / $20 | Teams $12 |
| Team with AI | Teams Plus $24 / $32 | Not offered |
| Large org | Enterprise from $15k/yr, 50+ seats | Organizations $28; Enterprise custom |
Two things stand out. For one person, Cal.com's free plan covers what Calendly charges $10 a month for. For a 10-person team on annual billing, Calendly Teams costs about $1,920 a year and Cal.com Teams about $1,440.
What's new in 2026
Calendly added AI plans. In August 2026 Calendly launched Standard Plus and Teams Plus, which add a Notetaker that joins Zoom, Meet and Teams calls and drafts follow-up emails, plus an email scheduling assistant. They're English-only for now.
Cal.com went closed source. On April 14, 2026, Cal.com changed its license. The old public code lives on as Cal.diy, an MIT fork without team features, insights or workflows, recommended only for personal use. Many comparison pages still call Cal.com "open source," so be careful which one you're reading.
Features compared
| Calendly | Cal.com | |
|---|---|---|
| Integrations | 150+ | 100+ apps, 20+ conferencing |
| Round robin and routing | Teams and up | Teams and up |
| CRM routing depth | Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot | HubSpot and Salesforce sync (even on Free) |
| Payments | Stripe and PayPal, payment links, packages | Stripe and PayPal |
| SMS reminders | 250 credits per seat per month on paid plans | Credits on Teams and up |
| Custom workflows | Up to 50 on paid plans | Teams and up; Free gets a default reminder |
| AI notetaker | Plus plans, joins the call as a bot | Not offered |
| Developer tools | API and webhooks | API, embeds, components, webhooks |
| Compliance | SSO add-on; SAML, SCIM on Enterprise | HIPAA on Teams; SOC 2, ISO, SAML on Organizations |
How they handle no-shows
Both let you mark a meeting as a no-show after it starts, and both can trigger a follow-up email when you do (Calendly, Cal.com). Cal.com can detect no-shows automatically, but only on its own Cal Video. Neither documents automatic attendance detection for Zoom or Google Meet, and neither tells you in advance which meetings are likely to fall through.
That matters because the typical sales team loses around 13 to 14 percent of booked meetings, and the strongest predictor is how far out the meeting was booked. A reminder helps. Knowing which three meetings this week need a real confirmation helps more.
This is the gap Held fills. It works alongside either tool: it reads your calendar, flags risky meetings, and checks Zoom after each call to record who actually joined. You can keep Calendly or Cal.com for booking and use Held to make sure the meetings happen. If you'd rather use one link, Held has its own free booking page too.
Which should you choose?
- Solo seller, coach or advisor: Cal.com's free plan, or Held if no-shows are what's costing you.
- Small team, budget matters: Cal.com Teams.
- Sales team on Salesforce or HubSpot: Calendly Teams.
- Inbound-heavy team with RevOps support: compare against Chili Piper, which now starts at $15,000 a year.
- Anyone tired of empty Zoom rooms: add Held to whichever you choose.