Calendly, Cal.com or Google Calendar for website booking

TL;DR

• Google Calendar appointment schedules are the cheapest path if you already use Google Workspace and one or two people take meetings. They are simple, with no routing forms.
• Calendly is the polished hosted option. Routing forms and round robin start on its Teams plan, listed at $16 per seat per month billed yearly, and its Scheduling API lets an app or chat agent book on paid plans.
• Cal.com offers similar features at lower list prices, open source code you can self-host and a choice of US or EU hosting. Routing and round robin are on its Teams plan, listed at $12 per user per month billed yearly.

All prices and features below were checked on the vendors' pages on October 21, 2026. They change often; check before you buy.

What website booking needs

Before comparing tools, decide which of these you need. Most B2B sites need the first four; the rest depend on team size and stack.

1. An embed that keeps the visitor on your page.
2. Real availability across every calendar the host uses, so no double bookings.
3. Time-zone handling and reminders, so people show up.
4. A record in your CRM with the answers the visitor gave.
5. Routing: the right host for the region, segment or product, often with round robin.
6. Qualifying questions before the calendar appears.
7. An API if a chat or AI agent will book inside a conversation.
8. Data location and compliance if you sell into regulated or EU markets.

If you are still deciding whether to use a scheduler at all, or a form, a routing tool or an agent, our overview of booking meetings from your website compares the approaches.

Google Calendar appointment schedules

Appointment schedules are built into Google Calendar. According to Google's help page, you need "a personal Google Account or Workspace account," and you create schedules on a computer, not in the mobile apps.

What you get:

• A booking page that checks your calendar. With a free personal account or Business Starter you can create one booking page; more schedules need a premium plan.
• A booking form with name and email plus your own questions.
• Reminders, up to five per booking, though you cannot edit the reminder text.
• A minimum lead time of four hours by default, which you can change.
• Website embeds: a button that opens a pop-up, or an inline booking page, from the "Website embed" sharing option (Google Calendar Help). The booking page is public and shows your profile photo and account name.

Which features need which plan, per Google's comparison:

Good for: founders, consultants and small teams already on Google Workspace who want booking without another subscription. Limits: no routing forms, no round robin in the Calendly or Cal.com sense, and CRM integration needs a separate tool.

Calendly

Calendly is the best-known hosted scheduler. Its pricing page lists four plans:

• Free: one event type and one connected calendar.
• Standard, $10 per seat per month billed yearly: unlimited event types, up to six connected calendars, removing Calendly branding, automated reminders, custom webhooks and integrations with HubSpot, Mailchimp and Zapier.
• Teams, $16 per seat per month billed yearly: adds routing forms ("Create forms, screen invitees, and route leads based on responses"), round-robin distribution, routing by HubSpot owner and Salesforce for CRM record updates.
• Enterprise: "starts at $15k" per year, from 50 seats, adding routing by Salesforce owner and enterprise controls.

For booking from your own interface, Calendly's Scheduling API books meetings without the hosted page: you find the event type, request available times (up to 31 days per request) and create the invitee with a POST request. The usual invitations and notifications still fire. Two conditions apply: "Calendly customers are required to be on a paid plan" to use apps that call it, and booking on behalf of other users requires an OAuth application.

Good for: sales teams that want a polished hosted product, routing on the Teams plan and a ready CRM connection. Limits: per-seat prices add up as the team grows, and routing starts on Teams.

Cal.com

Cal.com offers a similar feature set with two differences that matter to some B2B buyers: its code is open source, and you can choose where data is hosted. Per its pricing page:

• Free: one user, unlimited event types and calendars, email and SMS notifications, Stripe and PayPal payments, and two-way Salesforce and HubSpot sync.
• Teams, $12 per user per month billed yearly: round-robin scheduling, routing forms, removing Cal.com branding, booking analytics and custom APIs, with a 14-day trial.
• Organizations, $28 per user per month billed yearly: SAML SSO and SCIM, a company subdomain, routing by custom variables, and a listing as "SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001 compliant."
• Enterprise: custom pricing, with a dedicated database and SLAs.

The pricing page also lists "US & EU hosting" so you can choose where data is stored, and links to the self-hosted code repository.

Cal.com's API v2 supports API keys sent as a bearer token and OAuth, which Cal.com recommends for integrations. Some endpoints, such as creating a booking, are public. API keys get 120 requests per minute by default. Teams customers can use all endpoints except those for the Platform and Organizations products.

Good for: teams that want routing at a lower list price, EU data hosting, or the option to self-host. Limits: self-hosting means you run and secure it yourself; check which features the hosted plan you pick actually includes.

Side by side

Which one to choose

• You are one or two people on Google Workspace: start with Google Calendar appointment schedules. Upgrade only when you need routing.
• You have several reps and need routing and round robin: compare Calendly Teams and Cal.com Teams on your real seat count. Cal.com is cheaper per seat at list price; Calendly has more ready-made sales integrations on its higher plans.
• You sell into the EU or regulated industries: Cal.com's EU hosting and its Organizations plan compliance list are worth a look; ask every vendor for its DPA and subprocessor list either way.
• Your developers want full control: Cal.com's open source code is the only self-hosting option of the three.
• You want a chat or AI agent to book meetings: all three can work. Check that your plan includes the API, as Calendly's Scheduling API needs a paid plan.

Booking inside a conversation

A scheduling page waits for the visitor to come to it. An agent can offer times at the moment the visitor is ready: after answering their questions and checking fit, it reads availability, proposes two or three slots and books one, then passes the conversation on with the meeting. That requires two API capabilities from the scheduler:

1. Read availability. Calendly's available times endpoint, Cal.com's API, or for Google Calendar the freebusy query, which "returns free/busy information for a set of calendars."
2. Create the booking, with the invitee's details, so the normal confirmations and reminders go out.

The agent should collect only what routing needs, then hand over the transcript with the booking so the host does not repeat the visitor's questions. That is good human handoff, and it is where most of the value lies. For ASDK, meeting booking through Cal.com, Calendly and Google Calendar is an early-access feature of the Sales agent, included from the Pro plan; see pricing.

Setup tips that apply to all three

For why fast booking matters in the first place, read speed to lead.

There is no single best scheduler. Google Calendar is enough for a small team already on Google; Calendly is the polished choice when routing and ready integrations matter; Cal.com wins on price, hosting choice and openness. Pick the one that fits your team size, CRM and data rules, and make sure it has the API you need if an agent will book on your behalf.